The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Bit Players

  • Karl Dane

    Rasmus Karl Therkelsen Gottlieb (1886-1934) was a Danish-born comedian who found fame supporting John Gilbert in Vidor’s The Big Parade (1925). Under contract to MGM, he formed a successful comedy partnership with George K Arthur, but things became difficult with the introduction of sound, as Dane had a strong accent. His contract was terminated and he took his own life a few years later. At the urging of Jean Hersholt, MGM paid for his burial.

    Dane made an appearance with Arthur in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and had small parts in Montana Moon, Free and Easy and New Moon. 

  • William Haines

    Charles William Haines (1900-73) was a popular actor of the 1920s and one of MGM’s biggest stars. His career was cut short by his refusal to hide the fact that he was in a gay relationship by entering into a lavender marriage. This led Louis B Mayer to tear up his contract. Haines went on to become one of Hollywood’s top interior designers, aided in no small part by the willingness of his former colleagues to give him work.

    In The Hollywood Revue of 1929 it is Haines who, bizarrely, cuts Jack Benny’s tuxedo to shreds. And in Free and Easy he is glimpsed as a guest at the premiere.

  • Joel McCrea

    Joel Albert McCrea (1905-90) worked with many of Hollywood’s greatest directors during his career, including Hitchcock, Hawks, Vidor, Wyler, George Steven and Preston Sturges.

    Before all that, he was the guy who got the girl in Sam Wood’s So This Is College.

  • Ward Bond

    Few actors appeared in more of Hollywood’s greatest films than Wardell Edwin Bond (1903-60), outstanding supporting player and notorious conservative antisemite. This was, in great part, owing to his membership of the John Ford Stock Company.

    Ford met Bond when he was still a member of the University of Southern California football team, casting him in Salute (1929). In the same year, Bond featured in So This Is College as…a USC footballer. It was his only Metro musical appearance.

  • Madame Sul-Te-Wan

    Nellie Crawford (1873-1959) was enrolled into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame under the much more exotic stage name she began using at some point in the late 20s or early 30s. Donald Bogle has suggested that she chose the unusual name because it enabled her to seek work as Asian as well as Black characters. Sul-Te-Wan was the first Black actor to secure a Hollywood contract when D W Griffith hired her at $25 a week for The Birth of a Nation (1916). 

    Like Clarence Muse and others, Sul-Te-Wan was a talented actor restricted by Hollywood racism, but she achieved significant praise for her appearance as Tituba in Maid of Salem, Paramount’s story of the Salem witch trials.

    Sul-Te-Wan’s MGM musicals were Hallelujah, San Francisco and Broadway Rhythm, all in uncredited parts.

  • Sam McDaniel

    Samuel Rufus McDaniel (1886-1962) started his show business career singing with his three sisters, including the subsequently renowned Hattie. Like most Black actors, his Hollywood career was largely limited to servants and railway porters, though he was notable as Doc (a cook) in Captains Courageous (1937), even if his name was misspelt in the credits.

    McDaniel’s MGM musical appearances were Hallelujah, Going Hollywood, Music for Millions and Living in a Big Way.

  • Clarence Muse

    Clarence  Muse (1879-1969) was limited in his roles by Hollywood’s institutional racism, but was an actor of great ability. He is a member of the Black Filmmakers’ Hall of Fame.

    In the 1920s Muse acted on the New York stage as part of the Harlem Renaissance. In Hollywood, he appeared in the first all-Black musical, Fox Hearts of Dixie (1929), followed immediately by an uncredited appearance in the second all-Black musical, Hallelujah.

    Muse’s was not a musical career, although he was a talented singer and composer.  

  • Eva Jessye

    Eva Jessye (1895-1992) was an internationally-renowned choral conductor and composer and a member of the Harlem Renaissance. Later in life, she was part of the civil rights movement.

    Cinema played a very small part in Jessye’s prestigious life and career. She made only three films, but one was an MGM musical, she was the choral director and sang in Hallelujah.

    In the 1960s Jessye acted in Black Like Me (1964) and Slaves (1969), two well-intentioned anti-racist films. 

  • Dick Winslow

    Not every child actor goes on to a career of well over sixty years as a successful character actor and band leader, but Richard Winslow Johnson (1915-91) managed it. Along the way he made appearances in five MGM musicals and may be the only actor to have worked with both Marion Davies and Roy Orbison.

    The films were Marianne (playing the accordion),Thousands Cheer,On an Island With You,Torch Song and The Fastest Guitar Alive.

  • Harry Tenbrook

    Norwegian-born Henry Olaf Hansen (1887-1960) made his first film appearance in 1911 and worked regularly for almost fifty years, most notably as a long-serving member of the John Ford Stock Company.

    Tenbrook was one of the many doughboys in Marianne and subsequently made appearances in Naughty Marietta, Let Freedom Ring, Easter Parade, The Belle of New York and Singin’ in the Rain.

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