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.
Napoleon Bonaparte Kubuck (1893-1953) notched up over 660 film and TV appearances, most of them uncredited.
Phelps was in twenty MGM musicals: They Learned About Women, The Florodora Girl, A Lady’s Morals, Flying High, Dancing Lady, Reckless, A Night at the Opera, Rose-Marie, The Bohemian Girl, The Great Ziegfeld, Sweethearts, Balalaika, Little Nellie Kelly, Born to Sing (a rare onscreen credit), Music for Millions, Anchors Aweigh, The Harvey Girls, Till the Clouds Roll By, Take Me Out to the Ball Game and That Midnight Kiss.
John F Kelly (1901-47) was an actor whose film appearances fluctuated between small featured roles and walk ons. For instance, he went from playing an uncredited henchman in Everybody’s Doing It to being the not-so-bright Elmer in Bringing Up Baby (both 1938).
Kelly’s MGM musical appearances were all uncredited: They Learned About Women, San Francisco and Born to Dance.
Louise Brooks lookalike Rosalind Loretta Mooney (1904-1989) had worked as an extra on hundreds of silent films, when she was given her first small role in Flaming Youth (1923). Unfortunately, her career did not flourish and she never progressed beyond bit parts.
Byrne’s final two appearances before retiring in 1930 were in They Learned About Women and Children of Pleasure.
Harry Bernard (1878-1940) was a member of the Mack Sennett comedy stable and a regular collaborator with Laurel and Hardy for Hal Roach. It was in this capacity that he made appearances in The Rogue Song, The Devil’s Brother and The Bohemian Girl. Bernard can also be spotted as a baseball spectator in They Learned About Women.
As his name makes clear, Francis Everly Bushman (1903-78) was the son of the screen’s original Messala in Ben-Hur (1925), who himself made an uncredited appearance in Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry.
Bushman Jr had a less prestigious career, though he did feature in They Learned About Women as the practical joker Haskins. Some years later he turned up uncredited in Let Freedom Ring.
Tom Dugan (1889-1955) was an Irish actor who appeared in well over 250 Hollywood films. He started out at the tail-end of the silent era, and featured in the first full-length talking picture, Lights of New York (1928). Two of his many appearances stand out. In Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not To Be (1942) he is the first character seen, the Polish actor Bronski wandering down a city street disguised as Adolf Hitler. And in On the Town he played the sentimental Officer Tracy, who passes around the hat for the three sailors and their girls.
Dugan’s other MGM musicals were They Learned About Women, San Francisco (uncredited), Nobody’s Baby, Easy to Wed (uncredited), as Pooch in the 1947 Good News, Take Me Out to the Ball Game and The Belle of New York (uncredited).
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.
August Von Glahn (1886-1968) and Joseph Thuma Schenck (1891-1930) were a popular vaudeville, Broadway and recording duo. They combined comedy and singing in their act, with Van’s baritone and Schenck’s light tenor combining in pleasant harmonies, which Schenck accompanied on the piano. They were the first to record, in 1917, ‘For Me and My Gal,’ which went on to become a standard. They also scored a big hit with ‘Ain’t We Got Fun’ in 1925, a song with almost anthemic significance in the 1920s. Gus Van was a talented dialect comedian, and was able to carry that skill into his singing.
Van and Schenck’s first Broadway success was in The Century Girl (1916), the show in which Ziegfeld first launched his signature celestial staircase. Throughout the 1920s they were regular top-liners at the Palace, the New York venue discussed in reverent terms in so many backstage musicals.
Van and Schenck appeared for Vitaphone and MGM in four musical shorts in 1928-29 before their feature debut in They Learned About Women. Any further film career was cruelly curtailed by Schenck’s sudden death from a heart attack at the age of 39.
Gus Van continued performing, latterly in nightclubs, for another 38 years, but never with the same success. His film career ended after a few more musical shorts.
