Henry Thomas Sharp (1892-1966) became a cinematographer in 1920, and went on to become a favourite of Douglas Fairbanks. Films shot by Sharp included Don Q Son of Zorro (1925), The Black Pirate (1926), The Iron Mask (1929) and Fairbanks’s curio, Around the World with Douglas Fairbanks (1931).
Sharp also photographed The Marriage Circle (1924) for Ernst Lubitsch and Vidor’s The Crowd (1928)
Henry Sharp’s two MGM musicals were Lord Byron of Broadway and \love in the Rough.
Like Sally Blane, Polly Ann Young (1908-97) was the less-successful sister of Loretta Young. She acted in around 40 films, mostly in uncredited parts.
Young’s three Metro musicals were made in a cluster in 1930: They Learned About Women, Children of Pleasure and Love in the Rough.
George Henry Reed (1866-1952) got a strong start in films when he played Jim in the 1920 version of Huckleberry Finn. But the opportunities for Black actors were few at that time and, apart from his appearance as Aaron in the all-Black Green Pastures (1936), Reed was thereafter restricted to a very narrow range of small parts.
The restrictions and stereotyping faced by Black performers are demonstrated in Reed’s three 1930 Metro musicals, They Learned About Women, Montana Moon and Love in the Rough. He played a train porter in all three of them.
John Charles Nugent (1868-1947) was a vaudeville performer who became a playwright, actor and screenwriter. Several of his plays were adapted for the screen. He was the father of Elliott Nugent, who appeared in So This Is College.
Nugent had supporting roles in They Learned About Women and Love in the Rough.
The exotically-named Basilio Petrovich von Wrangell (1906-77) was born in Italy, in the Russian embassy, and educated in England. After acting as an interpreter for director Fred Niblo during the production of Ben-Hur (1925), he travelled to the USA to train as an editor. A long and successful career in films and television followed, with an Oscar nomination in 1937 for The Good Earth.
Wrangell edited Marianne (uncredited) and Love in the Rough.
W C Fields’s fans will know George Chandler (1898-1985) as Chester Snavely, the unfortunate youth who drank The Fatal Glass of Beer (1933).
In his fifty-year career Chandler kept very busy, right up to a final appearance in the Lou Grant TV series. He made credited appearances in two MGM musicals–In Gay Madrid and The Florodora Girl–and also showed up uncredited in Devil-May-Care, Love in the Rough, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, Broadway Melody of 1940, Swing Fever and The Pirate.
Dorothy Jordan (1906-88) made her film debut in Black Magic (1929), one of the many trained stage actors to find employment in Hollywood with the advent of sound. After playing Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew (1929), she starred opposite Ramon Novarro in his talking debut in Devil-May-Care.
Jordan and Novarro were teamed again in two more musicals, In Gay Madrid and Call of the Flesh. She was also female lead to Robert Montgomery in Love in the Rough.
Jordan retired in 1933 after marrying producer Merian C Cooper, returning later only in occasional supporting roles. She made notable appearances in two of John Ford’s greatest films: The Sun Shines Bright (1953), where she was the sex worker whose life and death are central to two plot lines; and as John Wayne’s sister-in-law, who meets a tragic end, in The Searchers (1956)
We may never know how many screenplays Robert E Hopkins (1886-1966) contributed to if Thomas Schatz’s description of him prowling the Culver City lot providing one-liners as required is accurate. We certainly know he contributed to The Hollywood Revue of 1929, Chasing Rainbows, Children of Pleasure (uncredited), Love in the Rough and The Cuban Love Song.
Nineteen-thirty-six was a year of extremes. He got an Academy Award nomination for providing the story for San Francisco, and wrote without credit for Hollywood Party. Such was the life of a contract writer at MGM.
Charles Francis Reisner (1887-1962) was an actor and director who might best be described with the word ‘competent’. Yet he managed, in both careers, to be associated with some very impressive projects. Reisner acted with Chaplin in A Dog’s Life (1918), The Kid (1921) and The Pilgrim (1923), and also worked for him as a gag writer. And he was the named director on Keaton’s masterpiece, Steamboat Bill Jr (1928). In fact, it was Reisner who came up with the original story idea, and who was literally on his knees praying while Keaton performed the stunt where the house fell down around him.
Reisner’s career at MGM was less prestigious, though he was considered a capable pair of hands. This is why he was brought in to rescue The Hollywood Revue of 1929 when Christy Cabanne’s work was judged to be lacking by Irving Thalberg.
From there Reisner moved straight on to directing Chasing Rainbows, to which he also contributed dialogue. He then directed Love in the Rough and was working on The March of time when it was abandoned. His next completed musical was Flying High.
Reisner did uncredited writing for Hollywood Party and was one of its eight directors. He directed Student Tour, then took a break from musicals after a busy couple of years. He returned in 1941 to direct The Big Store, the last and least of the Marx Brothers’ films for Metro.
In 1943 Reisner made Swing Fever, and ended his career in MGM musicals with Meet the People.
