Virginia Sale (1899-1992) was a trained character who maintained a career on stage and screen for almost fifty years. Her first film role was as Fifi in French Leave (1927), but she soon began to specialize in playing older women, though still in her twenties. She played many mothers, aunts and spinsters.
Sale cropped up in three MGM musicals: Lord Byron of Broadway, the 1930 New Moon and Strike Up the Band.
At the height of his career, Gordon Nance (1904-65) was generally billed as Wild Bill Elliott. So named, he featured in dozens of B westerns, mostly produced at Republic and Monogram, the upper end of Poverty Row. Elliott concluded his career playing Lieutenant Andy Doyle in a series of crime pictures for Allied Artists.
In the thirties, Elliott made uncredited appearances in five MGM musicals: Lord Byron of Broadway, Stage Mother, Dancing Lady, Hollywood Party and Reckless.
Iris Adrian Hostetter (1912-84) was at the very beginning of her career when she played an uncredited audience member in Lord Byron of Broadway. She did not go on to stardom of any kind, but maintained a steady career as a reliable and recognizable supporting player, usually as down-to-earth broads. Fourth-billed in Bob Hope’s The Paleface indicates the best amongst her credits. In the 1960s and 70s Adrian became a regular part of the Disney Studio’s live-action stock company.
Iris Adrian only featured in one other metro musical, uncredited as Mary Lou in Go West.
Italian-born Gino Corrado Liserani (1893-1982) had the occasional featured role during the silent period, such as Aramis in Douglas Fairbanks’s The Iron Mask (1929). He also made appearances in Intolerance (1916) and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927). In talking pictures, however, Corrado rarely strayed beyond restaurants and cafés, playing uncredited diners, chefs and no fewer than 86 waiters. He even served at table in Rick’s Café Américain in Casablanca (1942).
Corrado appeared in fifteen Metro musicals, starting with a credited role in Lord Byron of Broadway. He was then uncredited as a waiter in The Merry Widow, followed by A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, Broadway Melody of 1938, New Moon, Bitter Sweet (a waiter), I Married an Angel, I Dood It (another waiter), Yolanda and the Thief (yet another waiter), Two Sisters from Boston (credited as Ossifish), Holiday in Mexico, Fiesta, Words and Music (a final waiter) and An American in Paris.
After retiring from acting, Corrado opened a restaurant.
Marion Helen Schilling (1910-2004) was arguably the cinema’s first Scream Queen. With a technique she developed playing onstage with Bela Lugosi in Dracula, she utilized her scream both in her own performances and as a scream-double for other stars.
Shilling’s screen career only involved seven years of her very long life, and was mostly spent in second features, including many low-budget westerns.
The love interest in Lord Byron of Broadway, being both an ‘A’ picture and a musical, was an outlier in Shilling’s career.
Ethelind Terry (1899-1984) made her name on Broadway in the 1920s, most notably as the eponymous heroine of Rio Rita in the original 1927 production.
In 1930 Terry was cast as the vampish Ardis in Lord Byron of Broadway. The film was not a success and she made only one other film appearance, in a 1937 Tex Ritter western.
Charles Kaley (1902-65) was a popular singer and band leader who was unexpectedly–perhaps inexplicably–cast in the lead role in Lord Byron of Broadway. The film provided him with a successful recording of ‘Should I?,’ but Kaley’s acting career progressed no further than a handful of appearances in Poverty Row shorts and features.
| The Japanese Sandman | Richard A Whiting Ray Egan | Cliff Edwards |
| A Bundle of Old Love Letters | Arthur Freed Nacio Herb Brown | Charles Kaley; Cliff Edwards , Charles Kaley |
| Blue Daughter of Heaven | Dimitri Tionkin Ray Egan | James Burroughs, Albertina Rasch Dancers |
| Should I? | Arthur Freed Nacio Herb Brown | Charles Kaley; Ethelind Terry |
| The Woman in the Shoe | Arthur Freed Nacio Herb Brown | Ethelind Terry |
| Only Love is Real | Arthur Freed, Nacio Herb Brown | Marion Shilling, Cliff Edwards; Ethelind Terry |
| You’re the Bride and I’m the Groom | Arthur Freed, Nacio Herb Brown | Charles Kaley |
