The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Performers

  • Robert Edeson

    Robert Edeson (1868-1931) was an actor on Broadway and a vaudeville performer before making his film debut in 1914, starring in Cecil B DeMille’s The Call of the North. He had played his role in the original stage production.

    Edeson continued to play leading roles throughout the silent era, including as Colonel Zapt in Rex Ingram’s 1922 version of The Prisoner of Zenda. He also created the first screen version of lawyer Billy Flynn in Chicago (1927).

    Edeson acquired his most unusual assignment when actor Rudolph Christians died before Erich Von Stroheim had completed Foolish Wives (1922). Edeson took over as the character, but always acting with his back to the camera. 

    Robert Edeson’s only involvement in MGM musicals was as the General in Marianne.

  • Scott Kolk

    Walter Scott Kolk (1905-93) was a professional drummer before becoming an actor, and also sang in revues.

    Kolk made his film debut in Marianne, and the following year experienced the harsher side of the First World War when he played one of the volunteers in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). 

    Shortly before finally retiring from acting (he had taken several years out in the early thirties), Kolk portrayed the eponymous hero on the 12-part serial Secret Agent X-9 (1937), based on a comic strip co-written by Dashiell Hammett.

  • Georgia Woodruff

    Georgia Rodgers Woodruff (1906-81) was a Memphis-based pianist who was cast to be the lead soprano for the Dixie Jubilee Singers in Hallelujah. She became a close friend of Eva Jessye, who also appeared in the film. Jessye had been assigned by King Vidor to find a soprano, and was told she would find what she wanted at Memphis’s Central Baptist Church.

    Woodruff had previously been working with the celebrated gospel songwriter Lucie Campbell. After making Hallelujah, she returned to playing in her church, and eventually became a teacher.

  • Blue Washington

    Edgar Hughes Washington (1898-1970) was a junior boxer, then a pitcher and first baseman in the Negro baseball leagues, mostly known for playing in Chicago and Kansas City, Missouri. His nickname, Blue, was apparently given him by Frank Capra when they were children.

    Washington began a parallel acting career in 1919, and had accumulated nearly 90 appearances by the time of his last film, The Hustler (1961). He was usually uncredited, and this was the case when he played a member of the congregation in Hallelujah.  

  • Arvert Potts

    Arvert Potts (1923-2005) was one of the four Potts brothers who played children in films of the 1920s and 30s.

    Arvert was the oldest, and made his first film aged 3, Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1927). His connection with MGM musicals is an appearance in Hallelujah.

  • William Allen Garrison

    William Allen Garrison (dates unknown) played a heavy in Hallelujah. As with a number of Black performers in early Hollywood pictures, no other information seems available.

  • Eddie Conners

    Eddie Conners (dates unknown) is listed in most sources as a singer who appeared in Hallelujah, but no further information is available.

  • Evelyn Pope Burwell

    Evelyn Pope Burwell (1904-74) graduated with a degree in music from New York University, which had been one of the first American universities to admit Black students. After graduation, she worked in the chorus line at the Cotton Club, and was pianist and tutor for the dancing Berry Brothers.

    Burwell first joined the cast of Hallelujah as one of the Dixie Jubilee Singers, but was singled out by King Vidor, who nicknamed her ‘Hot Shot’. 

    She only made a couple of other uncredited film appearances.

  • Stymie Beard

    Matthew Beard Jr (1925-81) began appearing in Hollywood films when he was a baby, and was something of a veteran when he played an unnamed child in Hallelujah. 

    The following year Beard (or more probably his parents) signed a five year contract with Hal Roach to appear in the Our Gang series. Wearing a bowler hat given him by Stan Laurel, Beard played a character called Stymie, which he eventually adopted as his professional name.

    As he got older, Beard appeared in a range of Hollywood and independent ‘race’ films, but eventually the parts started to dry up. He spent many years on his uppers, using drugs and spending time in jail. But he cleaned himself up during the 1960s and developed a second career in television, in series such as Stanford and Son (1972-77) and Maude (1972-78). In 1978 he appeared, with his trademark bowler hat, in The Buddy Holly Story.

  • Dixie Jubilee Singers

    The singing group the Dixie Jubilee Singers appeared in two feature films, both in 1929. One was Universal’s near-silent version of Show Boat, where they sang in an added two-reel sound prologue alongside performers from the original Broadway show. 

    There other film was Hallelujah, in which they joined Daniel Haynes in singing Irving Berlin’s ‘Waiting at the End of the Road’.

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