The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Bit Players

  • 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.

  • Milton Dickerson, Robert Couch and Walter Tait

    These three performers appeared as the younger children in the Johnson family of Hallelujah. Their dancing in an early scene is very entertaining, but there seems to be no information about any of them (although IMDb does claim 1920-77 as Robert Couch’s dates).

  • Eddie Nugent

    Edward J Nugent (1904-95) was a boy singer, then vaudeville performer, who went looking for work in Hollywood in the late 1920s. He was fortunate enough to get a credited role in his first film, The Man in Hobbles (1928).

    He had a featured part in Our Dancing Daughters (1928), and a prominent one in the Ramon Novarro vehicle The Flying Fleet (1929).

    Then, strangely, he crops up as an uncredited chorus boy in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. There is at least a possibility that this is misattributed, since Nugent was back to being third-billed in The Girl in the Show (1929).

    In 1939, Nugent went to New York to appear in a play and decided to stay in the East, settling in New England. He concentrated on the stage and radio, and in the 1950s moved into television directing.

  • Myrtle McLaughlin

    Myrtle McLaughlin (c1908-??) made a few appearances in films in the late 1920s. She is usually mentioned in reference to The General (1929), but it should be noted that this was a Benny Rubin short, not the Buster Keaton masterpiece of a few years earlier.

    McLaughlin made an uncredited appearance in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, on the receiving end of Charles King’s rendition of ‘Orange Blossom Time’.

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