Alphonse Martell (1890-1976) was born in Strasbourg (then in Germany, now in France). It is unclear when he travelled to the USA, but he appeared in his first films in 1924, for various minor production companies.
Martell was in at least 200 films and many television episodes, making his final appearance in Mission: Impossible in 1968. His speciality was playing waiters.
Notable productions featuring Martell, almost always without credit, include Possessed (1931), Edgar G Ulmer’s The Black Cat (1934), Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938), I Was an Adventuress (1940), Meet John Doe (1941), The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), The Song of Bernadette (1945), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), The Prisoner of Zenda (1952) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953).
Martell can be seen in eleven MGM musicals: Student Tour, A Night at the Opera, Everybody Sing, Broadway Melody of 1940, I Married an Angel, Bathing Beauty, The Barkleys of Broadway, Rich, Young and Pretty, Show Boat, Lovely To Look At and I’ll Cry Tomorrow.
Walter Joseph Donaldson (1893-1947) wrote dozens of popular songs, beginning professionally in 1915, though he had begun composing while still at school. He flirted with a life on Wall Street, but gave it up for Tin Pan Alley.
After serving in the First World War, Donaldson was hired by Irving Berlin’s company, where he stayed until the late 1920s. His most frequent collaborator was Gus Kahn, with whom he wrote more than 100 songs. Donaldson predominantly composed the music, but could turn his hand to lyrics as well, as he did for ‘Little White Lies’. He established his own publishing company in 1928.
Donaldson’s many hits included ‘How ‘Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down On The Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree)’, ‘My Mammy’, ‘Carolina In The Morning’, ‘My Blue Heaven’, ‘Yes Sir, That’s My Baby’, ‘Riptide’, and the song immortalized by Nina Simone, ‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’.
Walter Donaldson’s songs featured in thirteen MGM musicals: Hollywood Party, Here Comes the Band, The Great Ziegfeld, Hullabaloo, Ziegfeld Girl, Panama Hattie, For Me and My Gal, Du Barry Was a Lady, Thousands Cheer, Music for Millions, Good News, Love Me or Leave Me and I’ll Cry Tomorrow.
John A Deery (1892-1965) worked as an articled clerk in Australia before serving in the First World War. It is unclear when he took up acting, but he was definitely working in Hollywood by 1929, when he played the protagonist’s butler in Disraeli, starring George Arliss.
The AFI Catalogue restricts Deery to 25 films up to 1952, but IMDb suggests hundreds of uncredited appearances as background characters. His pictures included Hell’s Angels (1930), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Down Argentine Way (1940), To Be or Not To Be (1942), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) and All About Eve (1950).
Deery performed uncredited bits in eighteen MGM musicals: Hollywood Party, Bitter Sweet, Two Girls and a Sailor, Meet the People, Ziegfeld Follies, Two Sisters from Boston, Holiday in Mexico, Easter Parade, In the Good Old Summertime, The Toast of New Orleans, Rich, Young and Pretty, The Band Wagon, Rhapsody, Athena, Hit the Deck, I’ll Cry Tomorrow, Meet Me in Las Vegas and The Opposite Sex.
Elizabeth J Flowers (1898-1984) was dubbed ‘the Queen of Hollywood Extras’, but it is unlikely the exact details of her career will ever be known. Every reference source cites a different number of appearances, ranging from IMDb’s 1100+ down to the AFI’s verified 238 feature films. The true number is undoubtedly somewhere in between, and probably more towards the upper than the lower end.
The problem is that, while she sometimes had specific roles, a great deal of the time she worked as a background extra and her name was not included in studio records.
Flowers’s first verified appearance was a credited role in the aptly-titled Hollywood in 1923. Thereafter, some of the highlights of her long career include It Happened One Night (1934 [she was a regular in Frank Capra’s films]), Dames (1934), Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), Holiday (1938), Love Affair (1939), Meet John Doe (1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), Double Indemnity (1944), The Big Clock (1948), Alias Nick Beal (1949), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958) and, her final film, Move Over, Darling (1963).
Online sources suggest Flowers appeared in 46 MGM musicals. If true, this would mean she worked over 20 per cent of the studio’s musical output. The films are: Hollywood Party, Student Tour, A Night at the Opera, Nobody’s Baby, A Day at the Races, The Great Waltz, Sweethearts, Honolulu, Broadway Melody of 1940, Ziegfeld Girl, Lady Be Good, Ship Ahoy, I Married an Angel, Best Foot Forward, Broadway Rhythm, Music for Millions, Till the Clouds Roll By, On an Island With You, A Date With Judy, The Barkleys of Broadway, Neptune’s Daughter, Nancy Goes to Rio, The Duchess of Idaho, The Toast of New Orleans, Royal Wedding, The Great Caruso, Rich, Young and Pretty, Show Boat, Texas Carnival, Singin’ in the Rain, Because You’re Mine, Small Town Girl, The Band Wagon, Latin Lovers, Torch Song, Easy to Love, The Student Prince, Athena, Interrupted Melody, Guys and Dolls, I’ll Cry Tomorrow, Meet Me in Las Vegas, The Opposite Sex, Ten Thousand Bedrooms, This Could be the Night and Jailhouse Rock.
Bess Flowers was a charter member of the Screen Extras Guild.
Composer Maurice De Packh (1896-1960) was already working as an orchestrator on Broadway by the time he was 22, and its was in that capacity that he excelled. He continued to work on Broadway for decades, while maintaining a parallel career in films.
De Packh, usually without credit, arranged the scores for some of Hollywood’s greatest Golden Age pictures. The total exceeded 240, but some of the highlights were: Queen Christina (1933), The Informer (1935), Top Hat (1935), Ninotchka (1939), Gone With the Wind (1939, one of several), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Nightmare Alley (1947), Unfaithfully Yours (1948), All About Eve (1950), A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Rio Bravo (1959) and Spartacus (1960, his final film).
De Packh started out in MGM musicals composing incidental music for Stage Mother and Dancing Lady. He was also the arranger on the latter, and later orchestrated Annie Get Your Gun, The Belle of New York, Singin’ in the Rain, The Merry Widow, The Student Prince, I’ll Cry Tomorrow and Gigi.He also co-wrote the song ‘Schnarzan’ for Hollywood Party.
British-born Margaret Bert (1896-1971) was not an especially prolific Hollywood character actor; fewer than 200 appearances in 35 years is nothing special. But she was a stalwart of the MGM musical, showing up without credit in thirty-one of them.
It is unclear when Bert emigrated to the United States, but her earliest-known credit is The Blackbird, a Tod Browning crime story with Lon Chaney. She was always uncredited and almost always in small, background parts, though she did have more to do as the heroine’s mother in Sarge Goes to College (1947) and its sequel, Campus Sleuth (1948).
Bert was frequently cast as nurses, flitting around while others did the acting, and this was the case in her first three MGM musicals, Stage Mother, Reckless and San Francisco. These were followed by Bitter Sweet, Little Nellie Kellie, Rio Rita, Music for Millions, Two Sisters from Boston, No Leave, No Love, Till the Clouds Roll By, The Unfinished Dance, Summer Holiday, Easter Parade, Luxury Liner, Words and Music, The Barkeleys of Broadway, Annie Get Your Gun, Summer Stock, Royal Wedding, Singin’ in the Rain, Skirts Ahoy, Because You’re Mine, Everything I Have is Yours, I Love Melvin, Give a Girl a Break, Easy to Love, Rose Marie, The Student Prince, Brigadoon, The Glass Slipper and I’ll Cry Tomorrow.
Harry MacGregor Woods (1896-1970) was a Tin Pan Alley composer whose name is rarely heard, but who produced many standards from the Great American Songbook. These included ‘When the Red, Red Robin (Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along)’, ‘I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover’, ‘Side by Side’ and ‘Try a Little Tenderness’.
Woods rarely wrote directly for the screen, though his songs have been heard in hundreds of films. One exception was Metro’s A Lady’s Morals.
‘When the Red, Red Robin’ is sung by Susan Hayward in I’ll Cry Tomorrow.
French-born Alphonse Martell (1890-1976) had a forty-year career as a character actor in Hollywood, making over 250 films and many television appearances.
In 1933, Martell became a Poverty Row auteur when he wrote and directed Tarnished Youth (also known as Gigolettes of Paris).
Martell played a variety of parts, but his speciality was waiters, in which role he made at least 80 appearances, as well as cropping up many times as a maitre d’.
Alphonse acted in twelve Metro musicals across three decades. A Lady’s Morals was followed by Student Tour, A Night at the Opera, Everybody Sing, Broadway Melody of 1940, I Married an Angel, Bathing Beauty, The Barkeleys of Broadway, Rich, Young and Pretty, Show Boat, Lovely To Look At and I’ll Cry Tomorrow.
Bit player Kenneth Koch Gibson (1898-1972) spent a lot of time being paid to party. He was in fourteen MGM musicals, and in at least eight of them was a party guest or nightclub patron.
In a career stretching from 1921 to 1969, Gibson notched up approaching 300 screen appearances. He was actually the male lead in his first film, Big Town Ideas (1921), but by 1929 was generally uncredited. He became a regular bit player for Cecil B DeMille and Preston Sturges, and can be found in some excellent pictures, including This Gun for Hire (1942), The Big Sleep (1946), Sunset Boulevard (1950) and A Star is Born (1954).
Gibson’s musicals at Metro were: Madam Satan, New Moon (1940), Yolanda and the Thief, Luxury Liner, The Barkeleys of Broadway, Duchess of Idaho, The Toast of New Orleans, Rich, Young and Pretty, Singin’ in the Rain, Small Town Girl, Interrupted Melody, It’s Always Fair Weather, I’ll Cry Tomorrow and Ten Thousand Bedrooms.
