The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Bit Players

  • Katherine DeMille

    Canadian-born Katherine Lester DeMille (1911-85) was in an orphanage in 1922 when she was adopted by Cecil B DeMille. This led to the good fortune of being given the role of a princess in a major Hollywood picture (The Crusades [1935]) as a birthday present.

    DeMille began her acting career on the stage, and worked as a film extra under the name Kay Marsh, in an attempt to avoid nepotism. This did not prevent her father from casting her as one of Henry VIII’s wives in Madam Satan.

    Her birth mother was Italian, and DeMille’s dark features helped to secure her the role of Pancho Villa’s wife in Viva Villa! (1934). She secured a contract at Paramount and, later, at Twentieth Century-Fox. Her career was unspectacular, but she tended to garner good reviews, and certainly got by on more than her family connections. She rarely played the lead, but one of the exceptions was her last credited role in The Judge (1949), made for Ida Lupino’s Emerald Productions

  • Bud Geary

    Sigsbee Maine Geary (1898-1946) was a character who made over 250 screen appearances, almost all without credit. His credited roles were at the start of his career, and included Will Scarlett in Robin Hood (1922), where he was billed as Maine Geary.

    During the sound era, Geary played in mostly low-budget pictures and serials (including many westerns), and maintained a parallel career as a stunt performer. Geary was the prison guard escorting James Cagney to the electric chair in Angels with Dirty Faces (1939), and a storm trooper in The Great Dictator (1940).

    Bud Geary had uncredited roles in seven MGM musicals: Madam Satan, Flying High, Stage Mother, Going Hollywood, A Night at the Opera, San Francisco and Ship Ahoy. 

  • Sethma Williams

    Sethma Williams (1915-2014) was a dancer who had a brief career, then gave it all up to raise a family.

    One of her earliest appearances must have been Madam Satan, in which she danced aboard the zeppelin, aged about 15.

    Williams acted in a handful of films during the 1940s and early 50s, culminating with the role of a dancer in My Favorite Spy (1951).

  • Rita and Rubin

    Dancer Jessie K Bailey (1913-??) and her husband, Ernest Benjamin Harris Rubins (1905-84), were what Variety called a “class adagio routine” under the name Rita and Rubin.

    They married in 1929, when Rita was sixteen, and appeared in a number of films during the 1930s and early 40s. Two of these were Madam Satan, in which they were part of the ‘Ballet Mécanique’, and A Night at the Opera.

  • Louis Natheaux

    Louis F Natho (1894-1942) frenchified his surname and started his film career in 1919. He went on to make over 150 appearances, including as one of the (many) reporters in Citizen Kane (1941). In the sound era, Natheaux was usually uncredited.

    Louis Natheaux made three musicals at MGM: Madam Satan, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry and Bitter Sweet.

  • Lorimer Johnston

    Lorimer Johnston (1858-1941) was an actor, writer and director from around 1913. 

    Johnston directed the last of around 70 films in 1923 (The Cricket on the Hearth, in which he also acted), and concentrated solely on performing, with and without credit. By 1930, when he played a butler in Madam Satan, it was mostly the latter. Johnston’s final appearance was in The Great McGinty (1940).

  • Betty Francisco

    Elizabeth Barton (1900-50), despite her chosen stage name, was from Little Rock, Arkansas. Her actor sisters, Margaret and Evelyn, also went by Francisco professionally.

    She started out as a child actor on the stage, and was a busy screen performer throughout the 1920s, almost always in credited supporting roles. 

    In 1930, Francisco was one of the costumed party-goers in Madam Satan.

  • Marie Deauville

    Maria Romano (1907-97) was an actor who appears to have made three screen appearances in the early 1930s. The first of these was at the zeppelin ball in Madam Satan. 

  • Wilson Benge

    George Frederick Benge (1875-1955) was an English actor who made a living in Hollywood mostly playing butlers, valets, footmen and assorted dogsbodies and lackies. Perhaps his finest hour was as Ronald Colman’s slightly-intrepid valet Danny in Bulldog Drummond (1929).

    It’s not clear when Benge relocated to America, but he made the first of his over-200 screen appearances in 1922, as one of Prince John’s henchmen in Robin Hood. He then played his first butler in The Ten Commandments (1923) (in the modern section, not running the Pharaoh’s household).

    Benge was in six Metro musicals: Madam Satan, (as the butler on a zeppelin) Rosalie, Sweethearts, Living in a Big Way, Royal Wedding and Million Dollar Mermaid.

  • Julanne Johnston

    Julanne Johnston (1900-88) was a dancer who appeared in her first film in 1917. Her big chance came when Douglas Fairbanks cast her as the Princess in The Thief of Bagdad (1924). 

    Unfortunately, after a few years, including one film in Germany, her career fizzled out and by 1929 she was doing small supporting roles, one of which was as Miss Conning Tower in Madam Satan. 

    Johnston retired in 1934.

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial
RSS
Facebook
X (Twitter)
WhatsApp
Copy link
URL has been copied successfully!