The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Bit Players

  • Iris Adrian

    Iris Adrian Hostetter (1912-84) was at the very beginning of her career when she played an uncredited audience member in Lord Byron of Broadway. She did not go on to stardom of any kind, but maintained a steady career as a reliable and recognizable supporting player, usually as down-to-earth broads. Fourth-billed in Bob Hope’s The Paleface indicates the best amongst her credits. In the 1960s and 70s Adrian became a regular part of the Disney Studio’s live-action stock company.

    Iris Adrian only featured in one other Metro musical, uncredited as Mary Lou in Go West.

  • Gino Corrado

    Italian-born Gino Corrado Liserani (1893-1982) had the occasional featured role during the silent period, such as Aramis in Douglas Fairbanks’s The Iron Mask (1929). He also made appearances in Intolerance (1916) and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927). In talking pictures, however, Corrado rarely strayed beyond restaurants and cafés, playing uncredited diners, chefs and no fewer than 86 waiters. He even served at table in Rick’s Café Américain in Casablanca (1942).

    Corrado appeared in fifteen Metro musicals, starting with a credited role in Lord Byron of Broadway. He was then uncredited as a waiter in The Merry Widow, followed by A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, Broadway Melody of 1938, New Moon, Bitter Sweet (a waiter), I Married an Angel, I Dood It (another waiter), Yolanda and the Thief (yet another waiter), Two Sisters from Boston (credited as Ossifish), Holiday in Mexico, Fiesta, Words and Music (a final waiter) and An American in Paris.

    After retiring from acting, Corrado opened a restaurant.

  • Jack Byron

    Byron Moses Cheek (1895-1991) began his film career with a featured role in Fixed By George (1920), but spent the next thirty-five years mostly in uncredited parts. His final appearance was as a photographer at the start of This Island Earth (1955).

    Byron played five uncredited roles in Metro musicals, in Lord Byron of Broadway, Madam Satan, Hollywood Party, Du Barry Was a Lady and Swing Fever.

  • Polly Ann Young

    Like Sally Blane, Polly Ann Young (1908-97) was the less-successful sister of Loretta Young. She acted in around 40 films, mostly in uncredited parts.

    Young’s three Metro musicals were made in a cluster in 1930: They Learned About Women, Children of Pleasure and Love in the Rough.

  • George H Reed

    George Henry Reed (1866-1952) got a strong start in films when he played Jim in the 1920 version of Huckleberry Finn. But the opportunities for Black actors were few at that time and, apart from his appearance as Aaron in the all-Black Green Pastures (1936), Reed was thereafter restricted to a very narrow range of small parts.

    The restrictions and stereotyping faced by Black performers are demonstrated in Reed’s three 1930 Metro musicals, They Learned About Women, Montana Moon and Love in the Rough. He played a train porter in all three of them. 

  • John Kelly

    John F Kelly (1901-47) was an actor whose film appearances fluctuated between small featured roles and walk ons. For instance, he went from playing an uncredited henchman in Everybody’s Doing It to being the not-so-bright Elmer in Bringing Up Baby (both 1938).

    Kelly’s MGM musical appearances were all uncredited: They Learned About Women, San Francisco and Born to Dance.

  • Rosalind Byrne

    Louise Brooks lookalike Rosalind Loretta Mooney (1904-1989) had worked as an extra on hundreds of silent films, when she was given her first small role in Flaming Youth (1923). Unfortunately, her career did not flourish and she never progressed beyond bit parts. 

    Byrne’s final two appearances before retiring in 1930 were in They Learned About Women and Children of Pleasure. 

  • Harry Bernard

    Harry Bernard (1878-1940) was a member of the Mack Sennett comedy stable and a regular collaborator with Laurel and Hardy for Hal Roach. It was in this capacity that he made appearances in The Rogue Song, The Devil’s Brother and The Bohemian Girl. Bernard can also be spotted as a baseball spectator in They Learned About Women. 

  • Robert Milasch

    Robert Emmett Milasch (1885-1954) began his film career in 1903 and appeared in The Great Train Robbery (1903). He had many credited roles through the silent era, but his appearances in sound pictures were almost all uncredited bit parts, which suggests his voice was not up to the task. He was in 140 films after 1929, and in forty of these studio records describe him as ‘Townsman’. The word ‘Barfly’ crops up quite a few times as well.

    Milasch was in three MGM musicals: Chasing Rainbows, The Girl of the Golden West (as a townsman) and Two Sisters from Boston.

  • Eugene Borden

    Parisian Élysée Eugène Prieur-Bardin (1897-1971) emigrated to America as a teenager, but played many Frenchmen (and sundry other continentals) in a fifty-year career. He started out in The Great Secret (1917), a serial with jeopardy and super-villains, and concluded with one of James Coburn’s sixties’ Flint adventures.

    His contributions to MGM musicals, all uncredited, spanned 27 years. They were in Chasing Rainbows, The Cat and the Fiddle, The Merry Widow, The Firefly, Thrill of a Romance, Yolanda and the Thief, On the Town, An American in Paris, Million Dollar Mermaid, Dangerous When Wet, Interrupted Melody, It’s Always Fair Weather and Silk Stockings.

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