Robert David Somers (1932-1982) made his screen debut aged seven months, playing Eddie Quillan as a baby in the MGM musical Broadway to Hollywood.
Some sources suggest that Somers also appeared with the Little Rascals, though it is unclear whether or not this is accurate. His adult career in the cinema began in 1953 when he worked as both actor and stunt performer on The War of the Worlds. Stunt work in film and television constituted the major part of his work over the next twenty years. Most of his work would appear to be uncredited and, in many cases, unrecorded.
Thomas Joseph Nawn (1863-1949) was a Scottish-born vaudevillian who specialized for many years in playing comic Irishmen. He and his wife Hettie toured the world with the Tom Nawn Polite Vaudeville Company, an iteration of which makes an appearance in MGM’s Broadway to Hollywood.
Nawn was in a few silent comedy pictures, most notably Buster Keaton’s masterpiece The General (1926).
Charles Rice (dates unknown) and Fred Cady (dates unknown) were vaudeville and burlesque performers who established a long-running partnership in 1900. They also worked in musical theatre, including touring productions of the Weber-Fields comedy Fiddle Dee Dee.
They appeared separately in a handful of films, and were seen together in MGM’s Broadway to Hollywood.
Joan Bennett, Mae Clarke, Jean Harlow, Eleanor Powell, Carole Lombard, Dorothy Lamour, Jane Powell: just a few of the stars who had the delightful Una Merkel (1903-86) as a best friend during Hollywood’s Golden Age. With an unmistakeable Kentucky twang, Merkel was rarely the star of her pictures, but was also rarely unmemorable in them.
Aged 17, Merkel worked as a stand-in for Lillian Gish on Way Down East (1920), which means it is sometimes her you see in the famous ice floe sequence. After plying the acting trade in the legitimate theatre and in vaudeville, she worked for D W Griffith again when he cast her as Ann Rutledge in Abraham Lincoln (1930).
A hard-working supporting player, Merkel appeared in forty pictures released in the five-year period 1930 to 1934, perhaps most famously partnered with Ginger Rogers in the ‘Shuffle off to Buffalo’ number in 42nd Street (1933).
Una Merkel’s most famous scene is unquestionably her fight with Marlene Dietrich in Destry Rides Again (1939). Both actors eschewed stunt doubles and ended up heavily bruised, as well as soaking wet from James Stewart’s bucket of water.
In the 1950s, Merkel was a successful and Tony award-winning stage actor, and was nominated for the Supporting Actress Oscar for Summer and Smoke (1961).
Merkel’s nine MGM musicals took her from Alice Brady in 1933 (Broadway to Hollywood) to Elvis Presley in 1966 (Spinout). In between came The Merry Widow, The Night is Young, The Merry Widow, Broadway Melody of 1936, Born to Dance, Rich Young and Pretty, The Merry Widow (again) and I Love Melvin.
Edward J Peil (1882/3-1958) studied drama at university, which ultimately led him to pursue a career in acting. His obituary stated that he was in a film, Charley’s Aunt, as early as 1906, , and that he starred in the first five-reel picture in 1910. What is certain is that he began to accumulate credits in 1913, following a period working in the theatre.
Peil worked for various studios in the 1910s, including playing a German officer in D W Griffith’s The Greatest Thing in Life (1918). He also performed in yellow face in Griffith’s Broken Blossoms (1919), doing so again in John Ford’s The Iron Horse (1924) and a number of other films of the 1920s.
Edward Peil acted in well over 420 pictures, though most of his appearances in the sound era were uncredited, apart from the many ‘B’ westerns he made for minor studios.
Seven of his uncredited appearances were in MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Reckless, Girl of the Golden West, Two Girls on Broadway, For Me and My Gal, Three Daring Daughters and Excuse My Dust.
Josephine Domingue (1866-1945) was performing on the stage from 1887, initially in comic operas and musical comedies, and later in vaudeville.
Sabel was a singer more renowned for her comedic than vocal skills, yet was still known as ‘the Queen of Song’. The best-known song popularized by her was ‘There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight’, later sung in MGM’s The Florodora Girl.
Sabel was internationally known and toured widely. She was particularly appreciated in France, and Maurice Chevalier credited her with an important role in his early career.
Like many other aging vaudevillians, Sabel contributed to the aborted musical The March of Time. The footage was later used in Broadway to Hollywood, though the film’s IMDb page currently misspells her surname.
Helen Virginia Parrish (1923-59) was a prolific child actor whose adult career as a supporting player was brought to an end by her untimely death.
Parrish made her screen debut aged 4, playing Babe Ruth’s daughter in Babe Comes Home (1927). By the age of 10 she had made almost thirty pictures and been directed by Frank Capra, John Ford, Raoul Walsh and Wesley Ruggles. She later played the nemesis of Deanna Durbin in three Universal musicals. As an adult, she mainly appeared in programmers made by minor studios.
As a child, Helen Parrish was in two Metro musicals, Broadway to Hollywood and Maytime. She was the sister of editor and director Robert Parrish.
British actor Alexander Pollard emigrated to the United States during the 1920s, and made his first film in 1928. He went on to make close to 200 screen appearances, all of them uncredited. He was a utility character actor, invariably cast as some kind of domestic or public functionary: over two thirds of his roles were as butlers or waiters.
Pollard ran the luncheon counter where Fay Wray got her much-needed meal in King Kong (1933). He was a waiter hired by Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man (1934). He was a guest at the sinister party in Saboteur (1942). And in The Woman in the Window (1944) he played the club waiter who wakes up Edward G Robinson (twice).
Pollard was in eight MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, A Night at the Opera, Nobody’s Baby, Lady Be Good, Ship Ahoy, Thrill of a Romance, Easy to Wed and Words and Music.
Irish-born Edwin Maxwell (1886-1948) emigrated to America as a child and made his first stage appearance aged seven. This led to a long career in the theatre and on screen. He made one silent film, but began to concentrate on films in 1929. He never abandoned the stage, however, and toured the country in the 1940s in the road show version of Life With Father.
Maxwell was a character actor, often credited, sometimes not. Some of his most notable roles included: the Chief of Detectives in Scarface (1932), the chief villain in Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), the first Secretary of War in Duck Soup (1933), corrupt Will Vickery in Fury (1936), John T Stuart in Young Mr Lincoln (1939), the jeweller in Ninotchka (1939) and the inept state psychiatrist in His Girl Friday (1940).
Edwin Maxwell appeared in four Metro musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Hollywood Party, The Great Ziegfeld and the 1940 version of New Moon, his only credited role.
Not a lot of information is available about Miriam Marlin (1905-89), whose brief Hollywood career (1933-37) mostly involved playing chorus girls. It seems reasonable to assume that she had some experience in that area before appearing in pictures.
Marlin was a chorus girl in all three of her uncredited appearances in MGM musicals, Broadway to Hollywood, Stage Mother and Dancing Lady.
