Lodovico Tomarchio (1886-1947) was an Italian operatic tenor who made his professional debut in 1910. He made his first stage appearances in the United States in 1923, and had settled there by 1931.
Retired from the stage, Tomarchio began teaching, and became involved with the Paris Inn, a bohemian nightclub with singing waiters, all of whom were former professional singers. As well as supervising them, he also performed in the venue himself.
Tomarchio made appearances in eight films during the 1930s, including four MGM musicals: The Cat and the Fiddle, A Night at the Opera, Maytime and Swiss Miss (in which he was credited). He can also be glimpsed in archive footage in a montage sequence in Lady Be Good.
One online source claims that the real name of Jacques Vanaire (1888-1954) was August Jack van Roosendael who went to the United States to breed cattle. Whatever the truth of this, he was certainly a Belgian who spent a dozen or so years playing Frenchmen in Hollywood.
Vanaire appeared in about sixty films, including French language versions of studio films. They included Le spectre vert (1930, apparently the first French film made in Hollywood), Jewel Robbery (1932), Sylvia Scarlett (1936), Jezebel (1938), Ninotchka (1939), Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1941) and Holiday Inn (1942).
He was uncredited in five MGM musicals: The Cat and the Fiddle, The Merry Widow, Everybody Sing, Swiss Miss and I Married an Angel.
William Stanley Blystone (1894-1956) had a proper job in the mining industry as a young man, before he switched to the cinema. During the silent era he started out working behind the camera, including as an assistant director, making his first appearance onscreen in 1924. In thirty-three years, he was in well over 500 pictures.
Blystone was usually uncredited, though he had a few featured roles, mostly in ‘B’ westerns. He was most prominent in Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936), where he played Paulette Goddard’s father, shot and killed during the street protest.
He was also pitted against the Three Stooges in a number of their short films, and also appeared with Laurel and Hardy. He made a fleeting appearance in John Ford’s The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), but his career was generally very much in the lower half of a double bill.
Blystone made uncredited contributions to nine MGM musicals: Dancing Lady, A Night at the Opera, Swiss Miss, Born to Sing, Big City, Words and Music, That Midnight Kiss, Rich, Young and Pretty and Jupiter’s Darling.
IMDb claims that Jean Alden (dates unknown) secured a Universal contract in 1926 after winning a beauty contest. If she did, this does not seem to have translated into any screen work.
The IBDb (the Broadway equivalent) cites Jean Alden as part of the chorus line in a 1926 production of Rainbow Rose. This would appear more in line with her known film appearances.
Alden is listed as one of the chorus girls in MGM’s Dancing Lady. A few years later, the studio engaged her again as the miniature Apache dancer who falls to her death from the table in The Devil-Doll. Finally, she appeared as a dancer in Swiss Miss.
Norbert F Brodine (1896-1970) had a forty-four year career as a cinematographer, working predominantly with Loretta Young in television for the last few years, for which he won an Emmy. He was credited on more than 130 pictures.
Having worked as an army photographer during the First World War, Brodine started out in Hollywood as a stills photographer, before shooting his first film for Goldwyn Pictures in 1919.
Brodine worked prolifically throughout the 1920s and 30s, including repeatedly for Hal Roach. He shot Libeled Lady (1936) for MGM, as well as Topper (1937), Topper Takes a Trip (1938) and Topper Returns (1941).
But Brodine did his best work after joining Twentieth Century-Fox in 1943: The House on 92nd Street (1945), 13 Rue Madeleine, Kiss of Death (both 1947) and The Desert Fox (1949) for Henry Hathaway; I Was a Male War Bride (1949) for Howard Hawks; and Thieves’ Highway (1949) for Jules Dassin.
Brodine shot three MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Nobody’s Baby and Swiss Miss. In addition, he was the cinematographer on the French-language version of A Lady’s Morals, titled Jenny Lind and filmed on the same sets as the original in 1931.
William Hilton Terhune (1899-1940) directed half a dozen shorts for Hal Roach in the 1930s, but was predominantly an editor, starting at the studio as a cutter in 1926.
Terhune was the editor on Topper (1937) and its first sequel, Topper Takes a Trip (1938). He also worked on the Joan Crawford picture Susan and God (1940) for MGM.
William Terhune edited the four Laurel and Hardy musicals, The Devil’s Brother, Babes in Toyland, The Bohemian Girl and Swiss Miss, as well as the Marx Brothers’ At the Circus.
Albert Adrian Jordan (1887-1983) worked in the British film industry in the 1910s before emigrating to America, where he found work as a cutter at Vitagraph.
Jordan moved to the Hal Roach Studios in 1921, where he stayed for the bulk of his career. Stan Laurel, who was the creative force behind the Laurel and Hardy films, admired Jordan’s work to the extent of insisting that he edit all of their pictures, if he was available.
This meant that Jordan worked on virtually all of the Laurel and Hardy features, including their four musicals, The Devil’s Brother, Babes in Toyland, The Bohemian Girl and Swiss Miss.
Jordan also edited one of the Roach studio’s most prestigious productions, Lewis Milestone’s Of Mice and Men (1939).
After leaving Hal Roach, Jordan worked mostly in television until he retired, aged 75.
Arthur Raymond Lloyd (1897-1954) was a journeyman cinematographer who shot all of his 200 shorts (plus a handful of features) for the Hal Roach Studios.
Lloyd was a regular on both Laurel and Hardy and the Our Gang pictures. He shot such classics as Laughing Gravy (1931), County Hospital, Towed in a Hole (both 1932) and Block-Heads (1938).
He also shot all four of Laurel and Hardy’s operettas: The Devil’s Brother (with Hap Depew), Babes in Toyland, The Bohemian Girl and Swiss Miss.
Composer Thomas Marvin Hatley (1905-86) achieved a form of immortality when he wrote a piece called ‘Dance of the Cuckoos’ (sometimes known as ‘Ku-Ku’). In 1930, this became the theme music for Laurel and Hardy’s sound shorts after it was heard on the radio. According to Laurel, Hal Roach gave the composer “about fifty bucks’ for the rights to the music.
But Hatley did also find a job at the Roach studio as musical director, in which capacity he wrote and arranged probably hundreds of scores. Two Laurel and Hardy features, Way Out West (1937) and Block-Heads (1938) earned him nominations for the Best Original Score Oscar.
Hatley also enjoyed appearing in front of the camera whenever a musician or conductor was required. And he provided the piano sounds for The Music Box (1932).
He was musical director of The Devil’s Brother, which also utilized ‘Dance of the Cuckoos’, and he composed for The Bohemian Girl and Swiss Miss.
Hatley was deemed surplus to requirements when Roach restructured his studio in 1939, though Laurel insisted he be brought back to work on Saps at Sea (1940). Hatley became a lounge pianist, often remarking that he was earning more than Hal Roach ever paid him.
Charles Rogers (1887-1956) is generally known as Charley and, like his namesake Charlie Chaplin and his close friend Stan Laurel, he started out working in British music halls, before emigrating to the United States in 1912.
In the same year, Rogers played the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist, one of the earliest multi-reel features, produced by a New York studio. He continued to work in the East Coast film industry for several years, before finally making his way to Hollywood.
In 1927, Rogers appeared uncredited in Love ‘em and Feed ‘em, and stayed at the Hal Roach Studios for many years, quickly moving into writing and directing.
Rogers has been described as, in creative terms, second only to Stan Laurel on the Roach lot, and he worked on a number of Laurel and Hardy’s best shorts and features. These included, as a gag writer, We Faw Down, Two Tars (both 1928), Hog Wild and Laughing Gravy (both 1930). Rogers contributed the original stories and screenplays for Block-Heads (1938), A Chump at Oxford and Saps at Sea (both 1940).
Rogers directed or co-directed, and also contributed to the writing of, three of Laurel and Hardy’s operettas: The Devil’s Brother, Babes in Toyland (in which he also played Simple Simon) and The Bohemian Girl. He also wrote gags for Swiss Miss.
Away from Laurel and Hardy, Rogers played Josef Goebbels in the studio’s bizarre wartime semi-feature That Nazty Nuisance (1943). One of his last jobs was an uncredited appearance in Chaplin’s Limelight (1952).
