It was in the nature of classical Hollywood that an actor could appear in 25 feature films, work with actors like James Cagney, Fred Astaire and Barbara Stanwyck, and under directors including Michael Curtiz, Frank Capra, Jacques Tourneur, Max Ophuls and Douglas Sirk, yet almost never play a character with a name, let alone a credit.
Such was the career of Tom Costello (1892-1954), who appeared briefly in In Gay Madrid.
Jack Dart Richards (1916-76) was a child actor who made a handful of appearances in Hollywood pictures in 1929-30.
One of these, now lost, was in The Rogue Song.
In old Hollywood, actors would sometimes show up in one or two pictures, then disappear, leaving behind no clue as to how they came to stand briefly in the spotlight. One such was Ruth Metzger (dates unknown).
IMDb states that she appeared in Honky Tonk (1929), a Sophie Tucker musical, and in The Rogue Song. No specific character is named in either case.
Presumably someone had a basis for inputting this information, but it is difficult to be certain that Ruth Metzger actually existed.
Edward Martindel (1876-1955) was a Broadway actor and singer who started making films in 1915. His early pictures were made in New York, but he seems to have relocated to Hollywood in around 1920.
Martindel was always a supporting player, though generally in credited roles. One of the exceptions was his appearance as Mr Thayer in Children of Pleasure.
IMDb states that an actor named Billy May appeared uncredited in Free and Easy, and suggests that the Billy May in question is Edward William May Jr (1916-2004), a jazz trumpeter who found his greatest success as a composer and orchestrator. Billy May worked with some of the top orchestras of the Big Band era, including Glenn Miller’s. He also arranged songs for, amongst others, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee and Bobby Darin. In addition, May worked with humourist Stan Freberg on many of his comedy records.
However, this particular Billy May would only have been aged 14 at the time, and unlikely to be the performer in the MGM picture, whose identify remains a mystery.
Theodore Lorch (1873-1947) translated stage experience into a 170-film career as a character. His appearance as Chingachgook in an early version of The Last of the Mohicans (1920) did not foreshadow his many later appearances in shorts starring the Three Stooges.
Lorch made appearances uncredited in Free and Easy and Reckless.
Plummer Hull Harmon (1886-1958) appeared in about 170 films, many of them comedies starring Hollywood’s greatest comedians: Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy, Harry Langdon.
Harmon was in three of Buster Keaton’s early films under his MGM contract, including the musical Free and Easy.
Harmon’s film career came to an abrupt halt in 1935 when he was sentenced to a term in Folsom Prison for stealing a horse. His final appearance was as a police officer in Modern Times (1936).
George D Morrison (1890-1973) was a star of silent westerns who had actually worked as a cowboy in his youth. He was working as an engine fireman when he started undertaking stunt work for the Essanay Studio in around 1910.
Morrison moved to Hollywood and became an early western star, now almost forgotten. With the introduction of sound, his parts became mostly uncredited, and he also returned to stunt work. He appeared as a cowboy in Montana Moon.
After retiring in 1935, Morrison maintained the western theme by becoming a rancher and sometime deputy sheriff in Colorado.
Ervin Thomas McClure (1883-1942) acted in over 100 films, virtually all of which were westerns, and in most of which he was uncredited. He rarely had dialogue.
In 1930, McClure played a cowboy at the party in Montana Moon.
Claudia Dell Smith (1909-77) became a chorus girl aged 16, and was soon appearing in the Ziegfeld Follies.
Dell was signed by Warner Bros to play opposite Al Jolson in Big Boy and the title character in Sweet Kitty Bellairs (both 1930). Shortly before, she had made an uncredited appearance as Cliff Edwards’s girlfriend in Montana Moon.
Dell later signed with RKO, and turned to radio when the film roles started to dry up, frequently working on Lux Radio Theatre productions. She was also a newspaper columnist.
