Category: Stage Mother

Thomas J Gray

Thomas Joseph Gray (1888-1924) was a writer and lyricist who was contributing songs to Broadway shows as early as 1914. He served in the First World War, then picked up his career both at home and for London revues. His most frequent songwriting collaborators were Fred Fisher and Ray Walker.

Gray started contributing stories to films in 1917, writing for actor Victor Moore. In 1924, he began writing titles for Harold Lloyd, working on films as that included Girl Shy (1924) and The Freshman (1925).

Back in 1910, Gray and Fisher wrote a song with the catchy title ‘Any Little Girl That’s a Nice Little Girl Is the Right Little Girl For Me’. In 1933, MGM used it in Stage Mother, sung by Alice Brady, with a little help from Ted Healy.

Gray died aged 36, from “a bronchial ailment”.

September 2, 2026
Bradford Ropes

Bradford Ropes (1905-66) was one of the people who revived–perhaps saved–the Hollywood musical after its total slump in 1932. It was in that year that he published, at the age of 27, a novel called 42nd Street, inspired by his own experiences as a performer in vaudeville and, more specifically, on Broadway. The subsequent 1933 adaptation by Warner Bros revived the musical genre and became arguably the most successful musical of the first ten years of talking pictures.

Ropes’s second novel, Stage Mother, came out in 1933 and was rushed into production by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Less successful as a musical–it had no Busby Berkeley–it was a grittier film, closer to the source novel. This is attributable to the fact that Ropes co-wrote the screenplay.

Ropes went on to sign a contract with, of all studios, Republic, which resulted in some of the 1930s more interesting ‘B’ westerns. He also did further work for MGM, providing the stories for Hullabaloo and Ship Ahoy.

In the 1950s, Ropes moved into writing for television

September 1, 2026

Stage Mother

The Crew

Charles Brabin	Director
John Meehan	Screenplay
Bradford Ropes	Screenplay
Arthur Freed	Songwriter
Nacio Herb Brown	Songwriter
Fred Fisher	Sonwriter (uncredited)
Thomas J Gray	Songwriter (uncredited)
Ernest Ball	Songwriter (uncredited)
Chauncey Olcott	Songwriter (uncredited)
George Graff	Songwriter (uncredited)
Don Redman	Songwriter (uncredited)
Hunt Stromberg	Producer
Maurice De Packh	Composer (uncredited)
Louis Silver	Composer (uncredited)
Louis Silver	Conductor
George J Folsey	Cinematographer
Frank E Hull	Editor
Stan Rogers	Art Director
Edwin B Willis	Interior Decorator
Adrian	Costume Designer
Douglas Shearer	Sound Recording Director
Joseph M Newman	Assistant Director
Albertina Rasch	Choreographer

September 1, 2026

Arthur Jarrett

Arthur Leonard Jarrett Jr (1907-87) was a singer, multi-instrumentalist and bandleader of note during the 1930s and 40s.

Jarrett had a distinctive high tenor voice and, from the late 1920s, he sang with a variety of bands and also developed a recording career. He also made occasional appearances on the vaudeville stage, and appeared in a Betty Boop animation in 1932.

Jarrett founded his own orchestra in 1936, and appeared in a handful of films during the 1930s, including a Poverty Row western.

Jarrett’s first involvement with MGM musicals was offscreen, when he dubbed for Sam Ash in Stage Mother, singing ‘Beautiful Girl’. In the same year, he appeared as himself in Dancing Lady, followed by Hollywood Party in 1934.

Later in life, Jarrett worked extensively on television.

September 1, 2026
Edmund Mortimer

Edmund Mortimer Olson (1874-1944) started out as a professional actor in 1904 and had extensive stage experience when he made his first film ten years later. He would eventually appear in over 380 pictures.

After serving in the First World War, Mortimer turned his hand to direction and made a couple of dozen films, two of which he also wrote. He returned to acting in 1930, but most of his many roles were without credit.

Films featuring Mortimer include Red-Headed Woman (1932), Duck Soup (1933), Imitation of Life (1934), Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Stella Dallas (1937), The Awful Truth (1937), Holiday (1938), Midnight (1939), Wuthering Heights (1939), Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Story of Dr Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet (1940), Foreign Correspondent (1940) and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1941).

Mortimer appeared uncredited in fifteen MGM musicals: Stage Mother, Dancing Lady, Broadway Melody of 1936, A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, Sweethearts, At the Circus, Little Nellie Kelly, Ship Ahoy, I Dood It, Thousands Cheer, Swing Fever, Two Girls and a Sailor and Bathing Beauty.

September 1, 2026
Tammany Young

Tammany Young (1886-1936) made regular appearances on Broadway throughout the 1920s, including creating the role of Schwartz in the original production of The Front Page in 1928. He was well-known enough in the theatre world to have his caricature in the collection at Sardi’s restaurant.

Young’s parallel career as a film actor began way back in 1911, and in 1914 he appeared in a D W Griffith short. In 1914-15, he starred in thirteen short films as Bill the Office Boy. Altogether, he acted in over 100 silent pictures.

In the sound era, he made many uncredited appearances, but also had featured roles in films such as She Done Him Wrong (1933), Hallelujah, I’m a Bum (1933), Tugboat Annie (1933) and It’s a Gift (1934).

Young was only in one MGM musical, playing a taxi driver in Stage Mother. His career and well-publicized hobby of gatecrashing high-profile events were ended by his sudden death from a heart attack.

August 31, 2026
Beal Wong

For a Chinese actor, making a career in Golden Age Hollywood was no easy task, but Beal Wong (1906-62) gave it a good go.He made his debut in an uncredited walk-on in MGM’s Stage Mother, and was still working almost thirty years later, with a final appearance in a Dean Martin comedy, Who’s Got the Action? (1962).

Wong’s work could be niche, as suggested by the titles of some of the pictures he appeared in: The Mysterious Mr Wong (1934), Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935), China Passage (1937), Think Fast, Mr Moto (1937), Torchy Blane in Chinatown (1939), Escape from Hong Kong (1942), East of Chinatown (1942).

He also had to be ‘ethnically flexible’. During the Second World War, there were plenty of roles as long as he was prepared to play a Japanese.

But Wong did manage to get work in a better class of picture from time to time: Preston Sturges’s Christmas in July (1940); Across the Pacific (1942); Lady of Burlesque (1943); The Keys of the Kingdom (1944); The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947); and Experiment in Terror (1962).

In addition to Stage Mother, Wong appeared in two other MGM musicals, Student Tour and Lady Be Good.

August 31, 2026
Glen Walters

Canadian Glen Walters (1901-97) made one of her earliest appearances with Greta Garbo in Flesh and the Devil (1936). Her final acting role was in the television series Kung Fu (1973). You do not get careers like that any more.

In close to 100 film appearances, Walters would seem to have gained only one role with an onscreen credit, in Henry King’s She Goes to War (1929), and, for some unknown reason, in the only surviving version of the picture, only her first name is given. But she was an exceptionally tall woman, and it is unmistakably her.

For this reason, it is usually easy to spot Walters in her background roles in films such as The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Swamp Water (1941), The Southerner (1942), Unconquered (1947), All the King’s Men (1947), Adam’s Rib (1949) and The Night of the Hunter (1955).

Walters appeared in three MGM musicals: Stage Mother, Summer Stock and, most noticeably, in the ‘A Shine on Your Shoes’ number in The Ban Wagon.

August 31, 2026
Monte Vandergrift

John Montanye Vandergrift (1893-1939) was a character actor who appeared in around 140 pictures, playing police officers in at least sixty of them.

Prior to making films, Vandergrift worked in vaudeville, performing in a double act with his wife. He also acted on Broadway.

Vandergrift made his screen debut in 1930, and mostly worked uncredited in programme features. Exceptions included John Ford’s Flesh (1932), King Kong (1933), Magnificent Obsession (1934), Captains Courageous (1937) and It’s a Wonderful World (1939).

He acted in three Metro musicals, Stage Mother, Here Comes the Band and Balalaika (his final film).

August 31, 2026
Guy Usher

James Guy Usher (1883-1944) was a theatre actor who became a character actor in films in his late forties, appearing in close to 200, predominantly ‘B’, pictures. His first credited role was as a murder victim in The Penguin Pool Mystery (1932), after which he was frequently cast as senior police officers, including Inspector Queen in The Spanish Cape Mystery (1935).

The few ‘A’ pictures Usher worked on without credit included Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), Gabriel Over the Whitehouse (1933), It’s a Gift (1934, with onscreen credit), Fury (1936), Union Pacific (1939) and Meet John Doe (1941).

Usher appeared in two MGM musicals in the mid 1930s: Stage Mother and Naughty Marietta (where he gets killed by pirates).

August 31, 2026