The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Films

  • Mary Doran

    Florence Arnot (1910-95) had a strange career arc, which is epitomized by her roles in MGM musicals. She was uncredited as Flo in The Broadway Melody, then played the second female lead (below Bessie Love) in They Learned About Women. After that, there were just uncredited appearances as a jilted lover in Lord Byron of Broadway and as a Casquette girl in Naughty Marietta. 

    It is ironic that Doran’s career never really took off, given that she was married for a time to Joseph Sherman, a senior member of Metro’s publicity department.

  • Drew Demorest

    Drew Demorest (1893-1949) was a small-part player who on occasion wore costumes designed by his wife, Henrietta Frazer.

    Demorest made appearances in The Broadway Melody (uncredited, but fittingly playing Turpe the costumer), Marianne (as a doughboy), They Learned About Women (with onsceen credit as Edwards), Free and Easy (as Robert Montgomery’s valet), Children of Pleasure (as a songwriter) and as a French officer in The Firefly. All of these were uncredited.

  • The Biltmore Trio

    The Biltmore Trio actually began as a quartet in The Broadway Melody and comprised Eddie Bush (1911-69), Paul Gibbons (1904-87), Ches Kirkpatrick (19??-19??) and Bill Seckler (1905-83). They performed ‘Truthful Parson Brown,’ the only song not written by Freed-Brown.

    They appeared again, as the Biltmore Quartet, in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and also in a musical by Fox, Words and Music (1929). After that, Kirkpatrick seems to have disappeared and they became the Biltmore Trio, featuring in Chasing Rainbows, Children of Pleasure and Love in the Rough. They were also the eponymous stars of a Metro musical short. 

  • Ray Cooke

    Ray Cooke (1905-63) was a go-to player in the 1930s if you needed a bellhop, or a messenger, or a cabbie. His career peaked when he starred in a series of comedy shorts from Poverty Row as a character named Torchy (not to be confused with the Glenda Farrell character of the same name).

    Cooke was a bellhop in The Broadway Melody, a messenger in The Hollywood Revue of 1929,a student (like pretty much everyone else) in So This Is College, another bellhop in Love in the Rough and a cinema-goer in Hollywood Party.

  • James Burroughs

    James Burroughs (????-19??) had a brief career not appearing in MGM musicals.

    In 1929 Burroughs sang ‘Wedding of the Painted Doll’ offscreen in The Broadway Melody and ‘Tableau of the Jewels’ in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. He followed these non-appearances the next year by singing ‘Blue Daughter of Heaven’ in Lord Byron of Broadway. 

  • Carla Laemmle

    Rebekah Isabelle Laemmle (1909-2014) was minor Hollywood royalty, being the niece of Universal founder Carl Laemmle (one of the relatives who did not entirely rely on Uncle Carl for employment). In an extremely long life, she spent a few years as a dancer and actor. In this capacity she featured, uncredited, in The Broadway Melody, as a speciality dancer, and The Hollywood Revue of 1929, as the scantily-clad Pearl Dancer.

    She was also, apparently, an uncredited swimmer in Bathing Beauty.

  • Kenneth Thomson

    Charles Kenneth Thomson (1899-1967) was a featured player in silent and early sound films, notable for hosting the meetings that led to the formation of the Screen Actors Guild.

    Thomson played the wolf Jacques Warriner in The Broadway Melody and Pat’s on-again-off-again fiancé in Children of Pleasure.

  • Eddie Kane

    Eddie Kane (1899-1989) was a bit player with around 250 appearances who featured, albeit uncredited, as the loosely-disguised Ziegfeld character in The Broadway Melody. He later turned up uncredited in Ice Follies of 1939, Two Girls and a Sailor and Bathing Beauty.  

  • Grady Sutton

    Grady Harwell Sutton (1906-95) was a hard-working supporting player for 60 years, often in codified gay roles. He is probably best-known today for his four films with W C Fields.

    Sutton’s first uncredited appearance in a Metro musical was as a football spectator in So This Is College. He then waited sixteen years for his most substantial part, as Kathryn Grayson’s would-be suitor in Anchors Aweigh.

    This was followed by uncredited appearances in Ziegfeld Follies, Two Sisters from Boston, Holiday in Mexico, No Leave, No Love and, after another sixteen years, Billy Rose’s Jumbo.

  • Dorothy Dehn

    The three MGM-musical roles of Dorothy Dehn (1908-98) represent a downward spiral. From the wholesomeness of the campus in So This Is College, via the part of Quicksilver in Madam Satan, she ended up as a Maxim’s girl in Lubitsch’s The Merry Widow,

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