Linda Parker (1915-69) was the younger sister of Cecilia Parker, the actor best-remembered for playing Marian Hardy in the Andy Hardy series.
In 1930, Linda ‘joined’ her sister to play Siamese twins in Lon Chaney’s sound remake of The Unholy Three. They were immediately asked to repeat the trick in A Lady’s Morals.
Linda Parker had uncredited parts in four other Metro musicals: Dancing Lady, Hollywood Party, Student Tour and Naughty Marietta (which also featured Cecilia).
Martha Sleeper (1910-83) reversed the usual actor’s journey of her day by starting out in films and transitioning to Broadway.
Sleeper made her first film appearance in 1923, aged 12. She was spotted by Hal Roach, who signed her to appear in comedy sorts. She appeared in a number of early films directed by Leo McCarey.
Aged 17, Sleeper was selected as a WAMPAS Baby Star, and played the lead in half-a-dozen pictures in 1928-29 for a minor studio. She was then signed by MGM and played many supporting roles. Two of these were as Fish Girl in Madam Satan and an uncredited appearance in Hollywood Party.
Sleeper was unhappy with the work she was doing, and began seeking roles in local stage productions. In 1936, she effectively retired from screen acting and moved with her husband to New York, where she worked for ten years both on and off Broadway. She also began designing jewellery.
Sleeper made one last film in 1945, The Bells of St Mary’s, as a favour to Leo McCarey. In 1949, she relocated to Puerto Rico, where she began designing clothes, running her own business for twenty years.
Clarence Hummel Wilson (1876-1941) had been acting on the stage for a quarter of a century when he made his film debut in 1920. He spent the next twenty years playing a variety of bailiffs, landlords and old grumps, often in featured roles, at other times without credit, totalling around 200 appearances.
Notable films featuring Wilson include: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), as the money lender; The Front Page (1931), as the sheriff; and You Can’t Take It with You (1938), as the property developer.
Wilson appeared in four MGM musicals: Love in the Rough and, uncredited, Flying High, Hollywood Party and Maytime.
Julia Griffith (1880-1961) started out in the theatre, but became a perennial bit-part player in Hollywood, from her debut as ‘town gossip’ in 1923 to her last appearance as ‘committee woman’ twenty years later. She was usually uncredited.
Griffith can be spotted in four MGM musicals. She was an audience member at the opera in Call of the Flesh, and then a party guest in Hollywood Party. She was back in the audience for A Night at the Opera and later played a committee woman in Girl Crazy.
Jay Eaton (1899-1970) had a featured role in his first picture, Her First Elopement (1920), directed by Sam Wood. He went on to act in upwards of 240 films, working for some of Hollywood’s greatest directors, but mostly making small, uncredited appearances.
Nine of these were in MGM musicals, starting with Children of Pleasure, followed by Stage Mother, Hollywood Party and A Night at the Opera (reunited him with Sam Wood). Eaton was in The Great Ziegfeld, Broadway Serenade, Ship Ahoy, Swing Fever and Easy to Wed.
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.
Lawrence Wells Steers (1888-1951) appeared in around 550 films during his thirty-year career, sometimes credited, more often not.
Twenty-seven of those uncredited roles were in Metro musicals, starting in 1930 with Lord Byron of Broadway. Steers was subsequently in Stage Mother, Dancing Lady, Hollywood Party, Reckless, Here Comes the Band, The Great Ziegfeld, Nobody’s Baby, The Great Waltz, At the Circus, Broadway Melody of 1940, Ziegfeld Girl, Lady Be Good, Two Girls and a Sailor, Meet the People, Ziegfeld Follies (giving the hattrick of MGM Ziegfeld titles), Yolanda and the Thief, Holiday in Mexico, No Leave, No Love, Till the Clouds Roll By, A Date with Judy, The Barkeleys of Broadway, That Midnight Kiss, Annie Get Your Gun, Duchess of Idaho, The Toast of New Orleans and The Great Caruso.
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.
Harry Rapf (1880-1949) joined MGM on its formation in 1924 and worked as one of the studio’s three production supervisors, under the direction of Irving Thalberg. His son Maurice claimed that Thalberg and his father disliked each other, but then Rapf seemed to struggle to be liked by anyone, especially writers. He is also credited with more Goldwynisms than Sam Goldwyn himself: “I woke up last night with a terrific idea for a movie–but I didn’t like it”. Nonetheless, he was one of the powerful inner circle at Metro.
Rapf did some uncredited work on The Broadway Melody and The Hollywood Revue of 1929, but his first credit on a feature musical was Broadway to Hollywood; it might have been The March of Time if it had not been abandoned. He was uncredited again on Hollywood Party and Student Tour, and next produced Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry and Everybody Sing.
Let Freedom Ring followed, and then Rapf inflicted The Ice Follies of 1939 on Joan Crawford, whom he had brought to Hollywood years earlier and had a relationship with.
Rapf’s final musical effort was on Swing Fever, uncredited.
