British stage actor Boyd Irwin (1880-1957) made his first films in Australia, starting in 1915. By 1920, he was working in Hollywood for pioneer filmmaker Bessie Barriscale.
Irwin worked throughout the 1920s, notably playing Rochefort in Douglas Fairbanks’s The Three Musketeers (1921).
By the 1930s, his screen roles had diminished, though he was featured as the Zeppelin captain in Madam Satan. He also appeared, without credit, as the Swedish Ambassador in A Lady’s Morals. Irwin’s later appearances were all uncredited.
A screen career that begins in 1915 at Famous Players-Lasky under the direction of Edwin S Porter, and ends playing Commodore Schmidlapp in the 1966 Batman picture, can be called a career. And such was the life of Reginald Leigh Dugmore (1891-1967).
Denny started out as a stage actor in the United Kingdom, travelling to America and elsewhere on theatrical tours. It has been suggested he may have appeared on screen as early as 1911, but no titles have been suggested. He played the leads in many silent films, including in Leather Pushers, a series of boxing shorts made in 1922-23. The makers of the series had a liking for punning titles like The Taming of the Shrewd (1922) and Barnaby’s Grudge (1923).
Denny transitioned to character roles in the 1930s, though he was the romantic lead in his two MGM musicals, Madam Satan and A Lady’s Morals. Later on, he played Algy in several Bulldog Drummond pictures, giving a more low-key performance than Claude Allister. He was also Maxim’s estate manager and friend in Rebecca (1940).
Reginald Denny was an aeroplane gunner during the First World War, and had a lifelong interest in aviation. This included not only flying full-size planes (he worked as a stunt pilot on at least one occasion), but also models. He designed a remote-controlled ‘drone’ which was used by the US Army in the Second World War, and also established Reginald Denny’s Hobby Shop on Hollywood Boulevard (where Marilyn Monroe worked as a teenager).
Augustus Scheu (1893-1945) was a song-and-dance man in vaudeville and on Broadway, noted as an ‘eccentric’ dancer like Ray Bolger and Buddy Ebsen.
Shy made his Broadway debut in 1915 and worked regularly throughout the 1920s. His biggest show was Good News (1927), in which he played Bobbie. He and the leading lady, Mary Lawlor, recreated their roles in the 1930 film version.
Unlike Lawlor, Shy stuck around in Hollywood, and featured in two further Metro musicals: A Lady’s Morals and New Moon. He had been in the original production of The New Moon (1927), but playing a different role.
Gus Shy also worked as a dialogue director on a number of films before retiring from acting to become a Hollywood agent.
Dorothy Farnum (1897-1970) acted in a couple of films as a teenager, but realized that her real strength was writing. In 1919 she sold an original scenario to producer Harry Rapf, who would later be a colleague at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. After a few years of journeyman work in which she learned her trade, Rapf hired Farnum to write Beau Brummel (1924). Star John Barrymore told a newspaper it was the best part he had ever been given, and the film launched Farnum’s reputation as an expert adapter of literary works.
Farnum became one of MGM’s top-earning writers, In 1926 her adaptation of the potboiler The Torrent was the first of several collaborations with Greta Garbo. It was described at the time as “the first picture with an unhappy ending to win a box-office success”.
Dorothy Farnum wrote two MGM musicals, providing the stories for Call of the Flesh and A Lady’s Morals. Shortly afterwards she relocated to Europe, writing a screenplay in French (she was fluent in a number of languages, and had previously written the French version of A Lady’s Morals), and then working for Gaumont-British. In 1934 she retired to the south of France.
No one would claim that Italian-born Francesco Yaconelli (1898-1965) had a distinguished film career, yet after his death a Senate resolution described him as “devoting a lifetime to unselfish service and entertainment to people all over the world”.
Yaconelli could most often be seen in cheap westerns, frequently as a Mexican, and sometimes playing the accordion, at which he was proficient. In the mid-twenties he and his brother set up their own studio, for which he both produced and directed a handful of pictures before it was wiped out by the Depression.
Yaconelli had served in a US aero squadron during the First World War. In the Second World War, he worked as a USO tour director, also performing his vaudeville act. He did the same during the Korean War. It was these activities that secured the citation from the Senate.
Yaconelli was in four 1930s MGM musicals: Call of the Flesh, A Lady’s Morals, A Night at the Opera and The Firefly.
Judith Voselli (1895-1966) was born in Barcelona, but was playing supporting roles on Broadway throughout the early 1920s, including several musical comedies.
Vosselli made her first film in 1926, and worked regularly until 1935. Three of her films were MGM musicals. One of these, The Rogue Song, gave her one of her best roles, as the scene-stealing Tatiana. She also made appearances in A Lady’s Morals and Naughty Marietta.
Sidney Bracy [sic] (1877-1942) was a stage actor in his native Australia before moving to America and commencing his film career in 1909. Later in life he tended to be cast as authority figures and servants, including upwards of 54 butlers and a variety of valets and chauffeurs.
Four of Bracey’s MGM musical appearances were as butlers: Children of Pleasure, A Lady’s Morals, Hollywood Party and San Francisco. He also showed up uncredited in Broadway to Hollywood, The Firefly and Rosalie.
Theodore Andrew Lorch (1873-1947) was a busy supporting player who notched up over 170 screen appearances, most of those in the sound era being uncredited. His adaptability is indicated by a sample of his work in 1934: an abortionist (The Road to Ruin), a ringmaster (A Modern Hero), an executioner (The Affairs of Cellini), a jury member (Two Heads on a Pillow) and a native fakir (Kid Millions).
Lorch found time to be in three Metro musicals: Free and Easy, A Lady’s Morals and Reckless.
Napoleon Bonaparte Kubuck (1893-1953) notched up over 660 film and TV appearances, most of them uncredited.
Phelps was in twenty MGM musicals: They Learned About Women, The Florodora Girl, A Lady’s Morals, Flying High, Dancing Lady, Reckless, A Night at the Opera, Rose-Marie, The Bohemian Girl, The Great Ziegfeld, Sweethearts, Balalaika, Little Nellie Kelly, Born to Sing (a rare onscreen credit), Music for Millions, Anchors Aweigh, The Harvey Girls, Till the Clouds Roll By, Take Me Out to the Ball Game and That Midnight Kiss.
Herbert Pope Stothart (1885-1949) is a composer whose name is less familiar today than, say, Dimitri Tiomkin or Max Steiner, but in Hollywood’s golden age he was ranked alongside them for his work at MGM.
Stothart had a successful career writing stage musicals, most notably Rose-Marie, but was invited to join Metro in 1929. He signed a contract and stayed there for the rest of his life.
Scores by Stothart were prominent in some of the studio’s most important pictures of the 1930s and 40s. These included Queen Christina (1933), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Camille (1936), The Good Earth (1937), Pride and Prejudice (1940), Mrs Miniver (1942), They Were Expendable (1945) and The Yearling (1946). In all, Stothart wrote over 100 scores.
Stothart worked on many of MGM’s musicals. He and Clifford Grey wrote the songs for Devil-May-Care and contributed numbers to Montana Moon, The Rogue Song, In Gay Madrid, The Florodora Girl, Call of the Flesh, New Moon and Madam Satan.
He worked with other lyricists on A Lady’s Morals, The Cuban Love Song, Here Comes the Band, Maytime, The Firefly (composing ‘The Donkey Serenade’), Broadway Serenade, Balalaika, The Chocolate Soldier and I Married an Angel.
Stothart was the musical director on some of these films and also on The Cat and the Fiddle, Lubitsch’s The Merry Widow, The Night is Young, Naughty Marietta, Reckless, San Francisco, Rosalie, The Girl of the Golden West, Sweethearts, The Wizard of Oz (picking up an Oscar), New Moon, Bitter Sweet, Rio Rita, Thousands Cheer, Ziegfeld Girl, Cairo, Thousands Cheer, Kismet, The Unfinished Dance. Musical direction usually involved writing incidental music.
And, of course, Metro produced two versions of Stothart’s greatest stage success, Rose-Marie, and he worked on the first version.
