The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Bit Players

  • Jean Alden

    IMDb claims that Jean Alden (dates unknown) secured a Universal contract in 1926 after winning a beauty contest. If she did, this does not seem to have translated into any screen work.

    The IBDb (the Broadway equivalent) cites Jean Alden as part of the chorus line in a 1926 production of Rainbow Rose. This would appear more in line with her known film appearances.

    Alden is listed as one of the chorus girls in MGM’s Dancing Lady. A few years later, the studio engaged her again as the miniature Apache dancer who falls to her death  from the table in The Devil-Doll. Finally, she appeared as a dancer in Swiss Miss.

  • Shirley (Aaronson) Deane

    Confusion surrounds the participation in MGM’s Dancing Lady of Shirley Deane Blattenberger (1913-83). She is given two IMDb entries, as Shirley Aaronson and Shirley Deane, but these would both appear to be Ms Blatternberger.

    After some early stage experience as a child performer, and training with Albertina Rasch, Shirley Aaronson (having adopted the name of her stepfather), made her screen debut as a chorus girl in Dancing Lady. After a few years playing bit parts, she changed her name to Shirley Deane, and went on to play featured roles in films such as Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936).

    In 1937, she played an imposter claiming to be the long-lost heiress in Nancy Steele is Missing. She was then cast as Bonnie in Big Business, the first of the Jones Family series at 20th Century-Fox.

    Deane is perhaps best-remembered for playing Princess Aura in Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940).

     

  • Edmund Mortimer

    Edmund Mortimer Olson (1874-1944) started out as a professional actor in 1904 and had extensive stage experience when he made his first film ten years later. He would eventually appear in over 380 pictures.

    After serving in the First World War, Mortimer turned his hand to direction and made a couple of dozen films, two of which he also wrote. He returned to acting in 1930, but most of his many roles were without credit.

    Films featuring Mortimer include Red-Headed Woman (1932), Duck Soup (1933), Imitation of Life (1934), Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Stella Dallas (1937), The Awful Truth (1937), Holiday (1938), Midnight (1939), Wuthering Heights (1939), Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Story of Dr Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet (1940), Foreign Correspondent (1940) and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1941).

    Mortimer appeared uncredited in fifteen MGM musicals: Stage Mother, Dancing Lady, Broadway Melody of 1936, A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, Sweethearts, At the Circus, Little Nellie Kelly, Ship Ahoy, I Dood It, Thousands Cheer, Swing Fever, Two Girls and a Sailor and Bathing Beauty.

  • Tammany Young

    Tammany Young (1886-1936) made regular appearances on Broadway throughout the 1920s, including creating the role of Schwartz in the original production of The Front Page in 1928. He was well-known enough in the theatre world to have his caricature in the collection at Sardi’s restaurant.

    Young’s parallel career as a film actor began way back in 1911, and in 1914 he appeared in a D W Griffith short. In 1914-15, he starred in thirteen short films as Bill the Office Boy. Altogether, he acted in over 100 silent pictures.

    In the sound era, he made many uncredited appearances, but also had featured roles in films such as She Done Him Wrong (1933), Hallelujah, I’m a Bum (1933), Tugboat Annie (1933) and It’s a Gift (1934).

    Young was only in one MGM musical, playing a taxi driver in Stage Mother. His career and well-publicized hobby of gatecrashing high-profile events were ended by his sudden death from a heart attack.

  • Beal Wong

    For a Chinese actor, making a career in Golden Age Hollywood was no easy task, but Beal Wong (1906-62) gave it a good go.He made his debut in an uncredited walk-on in MGM’s Stage Mother, and was still working almost thirty years later, with a final appearance in a Dean Martin comedy, Who’s Got the Action? (1962).

    Wong’s work could be niche, as suggested by the titles of some of the pictures he appeared in: The Mysterious Mr Wong (1934), Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935), China Passage (1937), Think Fast, Mr Moto (1937), Torchy Blane in Chinatown (1939), Escape from Hong Kong (1942), East of Chinatown (1942).

    He also had to be ‘ethnically flexible’. During the Second World War, there were plenty of roles as long as he was prepared to play a Japanese.

    But Wong did manage to get work in a better class of picture from time to time: Preston Sturges’s Christmas in July (1940); Across the Pacific (1942); Lady of Burlesque (1943); The Keys of the Kingdom (1944); The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947); and Experiment in Terror (1962).

    In addition to Stage Mother, Wong appeared in two other MGM musicals, Student Tour and Lady Be Good. 

  • Glen Walters

    Canadian Glen Walters (1901-97) made one of her earliest appearances with Greta Garbo in Flesh and the Devil (1936). Her final acting role was in the television series Kung Fu (1973). You do not get careers like that any more.

    In close to 100 film appearances, Walters would seem to have gained only one role with an onscreen credit, in Henry King’s She Goes to War (1929), and, for some unknown reason, in the only surviving version of the picture, only her first name is given. But she was an exceptionally tall woman, and it is unmistakably her.

    For this reason, it is usually easy to spot Walters in her background roles in films such as The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Swamp Water (1941), The Southerner (1942), Unconquered (1947), All the King’s Men (1947), Adam’s Rib (1949) and The Night of the Hunter (1955).

    Walters appeared in three MGM musicals: Stage Mother, Summer Stock and, most noticeably, in the ‘A Shine on Your Shoes’ number in The Ban Wagon.

  • Monte Vandergrift

    John Montanye Vandergrift (1893-1939) was a character actor who appeared in around 140 pictures, playing police officers in at least sixty of them.

    Prior to making films, Vandergrift worked in vaudeville, performing in a double act with his wife. He also acted on Broadway.

    Vandergrift made his screen debut in 1930, and mostly worked uncredited in programme features. Exceptions included John Ford’s Flesh (1932), King Kong (1933), Magnificent Obsession (1934), Captains Courageous (1937) and It’s a Wonderful World (1939).

    He acted in three Metro musicals, Stage Mother, Here Comes the Band and Balalaika (his final film).

  • Guy Usher

    James Guy Usher (1883-1944) was a theatre actor who became a character actor in films in his late forties, appearing in close to 200, predominantly ‘B’, pictures. His first credited role was as a murder victim in The Penguin Pool Mystery (1932), after which he was frequently cast as senior police officers, including Inspector Queen in The Spanish Cape Mystery (1935).

    The few ‘A’ pictures Usher worked on without credit included Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), Gabriel Over the Whitehouse (1933), It’s a Gift (1934, with onscreen credit), Fury (1936), Union Pacific (1939) and Meet John Doe (1941).

    Usher appeared in two MGM musicals in the mid 1930s: Stage Mother and Naughty Marietta (where he gets killed by pirates).

  • Bradley Page

    Bradley Page (1901-85) had worked on Broadway before making his first film, Sporting Blood, in 1931. He eventually made over 100 pictures, split between credited feature parts and uncredited appearances.

    Page made few films of note. In fact, the two MGM musicals he appeared in–Stage Mother and The Big Store (credited as one of Douglass Dumbrille’s henchmen)–may be the most prestigious projects with which he was associated in a career that lasted just over ten years. 

    There seems to be no information about what Page did during the last forty years of his life.

  • Garry Owen

    Garry Owen (1902-51) was a hard-working character actor who laboured in the fields of programme pictures, usually without credit, over 180 times. But, unlike many of his peers, he was granted two standout appearances.   

    In 1936, Howard Hawks cast him as Mike Owens, the tragic figure in Ceiling Zero whose brain damage symbolizes the dangers inherent in early aviation. And, at the opposite end of the scale, Frank Capra gave him the final shot and the last line in his adaptation of Arsenic and Old Lace (1944): “I’m not a cab driver, I’m a coffee pot!”.

    Owen acted in six Metro musicals, starting with Stage Mother. This was followed by Music for Millions, Anchors Aweigh, Ziegfeld Follies, No Leave, No Love and On an Island With You.

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