The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Bit Players

  • Carl M Leviness

    Carleton Mortimer LeViness (1884-1964) first appeared as the Tragedian in a silent version of Nicholas Nickleby in 1912 and his last appearance was an uncredited bit as a man in the hallway of a newspaper office in The Great Race in 1963. He was in hundreds of films, mostly uncredited, and even spent the period 1914-16 as a director. It was an unobtrusively spectacular career.

    Leviness’s MGM musical appearances were The Broadway Melody, Hollywood Party, Reckless (in all three he played a guest at a party), Nobody’s Baby (for a change of pace, he played an elevator passenger), A Day at the Races (another party guest), Ship Ahoy (as a passenger), Presenting Lily Mars (as a tired man–must have been all the partying), Two Girls and a Sailor (nightclub patron), Music for Millions (theatregoer), Thrill of a Romance (hotel guest), Yolanda and the Thief (as a man who says tally-ho), On an Island With You (desk clerk), The Barkeleys of Broadway (guest at a country house), In the Good Old Summertime (patronizing a supper club), The Toast of New Orleans (eating in a restaurant this time), The Great Caruso (opera-goer, naturally), Small Town Girl (back to being a party guest), The Band Wagon (an investor), Easy to Love (maiitre d’), The Student Prince (churchgoer), Athena (another party guest) and Ten Thousand Bedrooms (another nightclub patron). 

    Twenty-two films: Carl M Leviness definitely did his bit for the MGM musical.

  • Beatrice Hagen

    Beatrice Hagen (1917-99) claimed a minor place in film history by providing the voice of Snow White in the French version of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). As well as being a Disney voice actor (she played Mickey’s nephews), she was a ubiquitous chorus girl in musicals from a number of studios.

    For MGM, Hagen made uncredited appearances in The Broadway Melody, Hollywood Party, The Merry Widow, Naughty Marietta, Broadway Melody of 1936, The Great Ziegfeld, Born to Dance, Maytime, Broadway Melody of 1938, Rosalie, Ziegfeld Girl, Babes on Broadway, Thousands Cheer, The Harvey Girls and Texas Carnival. 

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.  

  • 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,

  • Phyllis Crane

    Supporting player Phyllis Crane (1914-82) was just 15 when she played a college student in So This Is College and definitely too young to have been involved in the craziness of Madam Satan. She made her last appearance at the grand old age of 23.

  • Oscar Rudolph

    Oscar Rudolph (1911-91) was a bit-part actor who went on to a career as a prolific director of television episodes.

    After appearing as a freshman who loses his trousers in So This Is College, he played another student in In Gay Madrid, a cook in It’s a Great Life and a peasant in Maytime.

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