Alice Donau (1880-1939) was 39 when she made her screen debut in 1919. It is reasonable to suppose that she had been working on the stage prior to that, but no information is readily available.
Belcher was a character actor with a comic bent, appearing mostly in minor roles in very minor pictures, though there were two exceptions to the latter rule. She was in Victor Sjöström’s He Who Gets Slapped (1924). And in 1933 she appeared in The Devil’s Brother.
Fern Maxine Salyer (1910-96) had a Hollywood career lasting about eighteen months.
As Marion Bardell, she made her debut in a supporting role in Henry Hathaway’s Under the Tonto Rim (1933). Immediately afterwards, she had her best-remembered role, as Ollie’s disappointed bride in the Laurel and Hardy short Me and My Pal (1933).
She made an uncredited appearance in The Devil’s Brother, and another in The Captain Hates the Sea (1934).
And that’s all, folks.
Jayne Dunham Francis Shadduck (1915-93) was barely 17 when MGM hired her to provide baby sounds in The Cuban Love Song.
This was followed by a ten-year career combining small parts in some decent films (for example, 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933 (both 1933) and Annie Oakley (1935) with voice work for Walt Disney. She provided the voices of Mickey Mouse’s nephews, Morty and Ferdie, in a number of short cartoons.
Shadduck was also an aviator at a time when this was rare for women.
After leaving show business, Shadduck lived in Hawaii and spent years being, by the account of her son, the mother from hell.
Some careers cannot be categorized in a few words. Almy Purves Pullen (1909-92) imitated birds and animals. But he did it in the most impressive way possible.
After various jobs, including a stint as a radio presenter, Pullen started as a voice actor, providing bird and animal noises for Walt Disney, in 1931. He whistled for Cock Robin in Who Killed Cock Robin? (1935), and worked on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). As a change of pace, he played a whistling saw in Pinocchio (1940), and was back to birds for Sleeping Beauty (1959). During this period, as well as providing sounds for Disney shorts, he also worked for Max Fleischer on Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons.
Pullen provided the voice of Cheeta in Tarzan pictures and was a coyote in DeMille’s The Crusades (1935).
In 1945, Pullen began working with Spike Jones and his City Slickers, and was renamed Dr Horatio Q Birdbath (the ‘Q’ stood for quinine, because he was hard to take). And on the side, Pullen had a nightclub act as a ventriloquist, with a dummy named Johnny and an invisible dog.
Purv Pullen’s connection with MGM musicals is that, in 1931, he provided monkey noises for The Cuban Love Song.
Harry R Strang (1892-1972) had the sort of career Hollywood was built on: thirty-six years and more than 500 appearances as a tough-guy character actor.
Strang trained at AADA and made his professional debut on the stage in 1910. His career in the theatre was interrupted by the First World War, in which he served with the marines. He then returned to the stage, working much of the time with stock companies.
Harry Strang was one of the many stage actors who found work in Hollywood after the introduction of sound, and he was frequently cast in military roles that would have benefitted from his own wartime experience. His many appearances included parts in Hell’s Angels (1930), The Seas Beneath (1931, becoming part of John Ford’s Stock Company), What Price Hollywood? (1932), King Kong (1933), The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), Gone With the Wind (1939), Saboteur (1942), Laura (1944), Detour (1945), The Lady from Shanghai (1945), White Heat (1949), Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956) and The Last Hurrah (1958).
Strang was in five Metro musicals: The Cuban Love Song (as a marine sergeant), San Francisco, Born to Dance, New Moon and Thousands Cheer.
When you have made eight films with John Ford and also worked with Hawks, Capra, Lang and Welles, you can definitely say you have had a career. A very active career in small parts was lucrative enough for Strang to maintain two homes after he retired in 1965, where he could pursue life as an avid birdwatcher.
Mystery surrounds the actor named George Kuma. According to IMDb, he played the “Japanese Tattoo Artist” at the beginning of The Cuban Love Song. There are no other credits, but it is stated that he was born in Hawaii in 1900. The AFI Catalog concurs about Cuban Love Song, but cites one other appearance, in the same year, a Fu Manchu tale called Daughter of the Dragon (1931).
The United States Federal Census for 1930 certainly confirms that a George Kuma, born in Hawaii in 1900, was living in California at the time of the census, so he could have made two screen appearances in the following year. Or he might not have.
Four feet and two inches tall, Tutie (or possibly Tufie) Fatella (1898-1968) emigrated with his family from Syria to the United States in around 1911. By the age of 18, he was in Hollywood, starting out on a career as a character actor that would last almost fifty years and about 250 performances.
George’s first film is believed to have been Bobbie of the Ballet (1916), which starred Lon Chaney. In the 1920s he worked regularly with both Chaney and director Tod Browning, being particularly memorable as Cojo in the macabre The Unknown (1927). He also featured in Rex Ingram’s The Prisoner of Zenda (1922) and Scaramouche (1923).
In the sound era, George played a scientist in both Browning’s Dracula and its Spanish version, Drácula (both 1931). He renewed his acquaintance with Bela Lugosi in Edgar G Ulmer’s The Black Cat (1934). Later appearances included The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), Canyon Passage (1946) and a cameo in the Lon Chaney biopic Man of a Thousand Faces (1957). George’s last big screen appearance was in One-Eyed Jacks (1963), but he continued working in television.
Amongst John George’s many roles were eleven in MGM musicals, all uncredited: The Cuban Love Song, Babes in Toyland, Rose-Marie, San Francisco, Let Freedom Ring, At the Circus, Du Barry Was a Lady, Two Sisters from Boston, Big City, Singin’ in the Rain and Deep in My Heart.
Thomas Aloysius Kennedy (1886-1965) had a face that bore testament to his first career as a heavyweight boxer. It was a face that brought him a fifty-year career as a character actor and appearances in more than 400 films and television programmes.
Kennedy made his first screen appearance in 1915 in The Lamb, a Douglas Fairbanks comedy-western. He later played First Officer Gibson, in hot pursuit of the Marx Brothers in Monkey Business (1931). He was the gangster Slim Murphy in 42nd Street and appeared regularly as Gahagan in the Torchy Blane series (“What a day! What a day!”).
Right at the end of his career, Kennedy was one of Spencer Tracy’s colleagues in the Santa Rosita Police Department in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).
Kennedy made two uncredited appearances in Metro musicals in the 1930s: Flying High and Hollywood Party.
Harry Ruilton Watson (1921-2001) came from a family of child actors, and actually appeared in several films alongside some of his brothers. Most notably, he and his brothers Delmar, Billy and Gary played the Governor’s sons in Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939).
Harry Watson also played Albert, the gambling pageboy, in the Fred Astaire picture Damsels in Distress (1937).
As a ten-year-old, Watson appeared in Metro’s Flying High.
Watson was a combat photographer during the Second World War, and later pursued a career as a press photographer.
Erma Beatrice Stephens (1907-88) played a chorus girl in her first film, After Midnight (1927), and she played a chorus girl in her final film, 21 years later (When My Baby Smiles at Me [1948]).
She also played a chorus girl or dancer in the majority of the fifty-odd pictures that came in between. She was well equipped for this as a career, having begun her dance training aged three.
Stephens appeared in two musicals for MGM: Flying High and I Married an Angel.
After leaving show business behind, Stephens had a long and successful career working for Procter & Gamble.
