Elizabeth Kathryn Leopold (1910-2005) was a dancer who was, apparently, discovered at a young age by prima ballerina and dessert inspirer Anna Pavlova.
She made a handful of screen appearances in the late twenties,and her low point as a dancer may well have been in the chorus line of The Broadway Melody.
Edward Dillon (187?-1933) appeared on at least 340 films, most of them in the silent era, from 1908 onwards. He worked under D W Griffith and played leads opposite Mary Pickford. He also directed around 140 films, including a 1915 version of Don Quixote.
In sound pictures, Dillon was usually uncredited. This includes The Broadway Melody, which starred Bessie Love, whom Dillon had directed in A Daughter of the Poor (1917).
J Emmett Beck (19??-45) is an actor with just three citations in the AFI register.
One of these, and the last one, is Babe Hatrick in The Broadway Melody.
In the manner of one of Hollywood’s own stories, Frederick William Bowditch (1906-73) was working as a film booker when he was persuaded to audition for the moving pictures.
After a number of uncredited appearances, including as a student in Good News, Richmond won the lead in The Leather Pushers (1922), a boxing series at Universal. According to Richmond, he ended up fighting two or three hundred rounds for the camera, breaking his nose (twice) a hand and an ankle.
Richmond notched up over 100 credits before retiring from the screen, including working alongside the Gipper in Knute Rockne, All American (1940).
Samuel Newman (1906-99) was, as the nickname ‘Rubber Legs’ might suggest, a dancer of the eccentric variety, in the manner of Ray Bolger.
Al Norman found his greatest success in vaudeville and nightclubs, and occasionally in Broadway revues, but he also made a number of film appearances, usually as a speciality performer. The sheer weirdness of his act can be seen at its best in Universal’s King of Jazz (1930), but soon after that he turned up at MGM in Good News.
Clarence Linden Crabbe II (1908-83) was an Olympic swimmer who used his good looks and athletic prowess to maintain a long career as a minor film star.
Most of Crabbe’s films were ‘B’ westerns, but he was also the only actor to play Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and Tarzan. The first of these kept his name alive for many years thanks to repeated Saturday morning television re-runs.
Buster Crabbe’s first screen appearance was as a student in Good News.
Abraham Simon (1897-1957) was a drummer who ended up leading his own orchestra. One of his regular singers in the 1920s was Charles Kaley, who starred in Lord Byron of Broadway.
Lyman was also a songwriter, his biggest hit being the standard ‘I Cried for You’, co-written with Gus Arnheim and with lyrics by Arthur Freed. It was sung by Judy Garland in Babes in Arms.
Abe Lyman and his Orchestra made their screen debut in Syncopated Symphony (1928), a Vitaphone short. Out of a dozen or so subsequent film appearances, two were in Good News and Madam Satan.
Lyman gave up music in the late forties to become a restaurateur.
Kurt Fritz Schneider (1902-85) was a member of the Doll Family, four siblings all affected by dwarfism. For more than forty years, starting in the 1910s, they toured the United States, appearing in circuses and sideshows.
Earles made a number of films, most memorably a starring role in Todd Browning’s Freaks (1932). His sister Daisy was also in Freaks, and they both appeared as Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz.
Earles had earlier made a brief appearance in Good News.
Vera Merle Marsh (1905-84) was a vaudeville performer who hit the big time in 1932 when understudying Adele Astaire in The Band Wagon (1931). Adele Astaire left the show when she got married, leaving Vera Marsh (as she was then known) to dance with brother Fred in the remaining performances. Marshe also performed regularly in a comedy duo with Sterling Holloway.
Marshe’s screen career was lengthy, though not auspicious. One of her few leads was opposite Eddie Foy Jr in Nearly Naked (1933), a comedy set in a nudist camp.
A few years earlier she had made a brief appearance in Good News and was ‘Call of the Wild’ in Madam Satan.
What can be said about Helyn Virgil (19??-??)? She spelled her name funny. She had no known relationship with the Roman poet. And she made a credited appearance in the 1930 Good News as ‘Girl’.
That’s it.
