The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Bit Players

  • Nina Quartero

    Gladys Quartaro (1908-85) was a New York-born Italian whose Mediterranean looks led to a career playing characters named Consuelo, Maria, Lola, Anita, Chiquita and Rosita.

    Quartero made her debut aged 18 with a bit part in D W Griffith’s The Sorrows of Satan (1926). One of her more prominent roles was with John Wayne in Arizona (1931), playing Conchita. She acted for about seventeen years, making her final appearance (again with Wayne, but this time as Carmencita) in The Lady Takes a Chance (1943). She retired after marrying her third husband.

    Nina Quartero made a brief appearance in the first New Moon. 

  • David Mir

    A 1931 newspaper article described Vladimir Lasareff (1886-1962) as a “former prince of royal Russian Blood [who] today earns a livelihood in slapstick comedy roles”.

    Mir, who was cousin to the prince who murdered Rasputin, had fled Russia during the October Revolution. Finding himself in Hollywood, he renewed a pre-Revolution acquaintance with the writer Elinor Glyn and was given a part in His Hour (1924), which she wrote and directed with King Vidor. This meant John Gilbert had to play a Russian nobleman alongside the real thing. 

    Mir worked on a number of other Glyn pictures, even designing costumes for The Only Thing (1925).

    Mir worked steadily as a supporting player during the last years of silent cinema, but the parts began to dry up after the introduction of sound. His last appearance was a bit in Artists and Models Abroad (1938).

    In 1930, Mir was probably the only genuine Russian aboard the New Moon.

  • Lew Meehan

    James Llewellyn Meehan (1890-1951) began his film career in 1919 and was in nearly 250 pictures, mostly without credit. The majority of these were westerns, though generally of the ‘B’ kind; the rare exceptions included Cimarron (1931), Annie Oakley (one of eight westerns he made in 1935) and Fritz Lang’s The Return of Frank James (1940).

    The 1930 version of New Moon was Meehan’s sole appearance in an MGM musical.

  • Babe London

    Anyone who grew up watching Laurel and Hardy shorts on television would recognize Jean Glover (1901-80) as Dulcy, who struggles against all the odds (plus Stan) to elope with Ollie in Our Wife (1931).

    London had made her screen debut aged 18, and made over fifty silent pictures, working with Chaplin, Keaton, Langdon and Fields. Most of her roles focussed on her size. When health issues in the 1940s forced her to lose a lot of weight, the quality of the parts offered declined.  

    She continued acting in small roles until Sex Kittens Go to College in 1960. Then, in the 1960s, she developed a second career as an artist. Her paintings of silent stars became very popular, and she put on a solo exhibition called ‘From Pratfalls to Portraits’.

    Babe London appeared in two Metro musicals, the first New Moon and No Leave, No Love.

  • Tex Driscoll

    The Hollywood career of John W Morris (1889-1970) ran parallel to the development of Hollywood itself. He made his debut in Cecil B DeMille’s The Squaw Man (1914), generally considered to be the first feature film to be made in Los Angeles, shot in a converted barn on the corner of Selma and Vine.

    Driscoll acted in around 200 films, and was in scores of westerns, including Stagecoach (1939), Destry Rides Again (1939), The Return of Frank James (1940), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), Canyon Passage (1946), My Darling Clementine (1946) and Wichita (1955). He worked under many of the great directors of classical Hollywood: Ford and Hawks (in the same year), Lang, Wellman, Daves, Mann, Tourneur and Fuller. He also made a number of other pictures with DeMille, including the 1931 remake of The Squaw Man..

    Tex Driscoll was in five MGM musicals: New Moon, Naughty Marietta, The Girl of the Golden West, Swiss Miss and Bitter Sweet.

  • Harry Cording

    Hector William Cording (1891-1954) was British and educated at a top public school. After serving in the First World War, he worked on a transatlantic steamship and eventually decided to stay in America. He made the first of his 280-plus films in 1925.

    Cording was a big man and so was frequently cast as henchmen and thugs, most stylishly when he played Dickon Malbete, would-be slayer of Richard the Lionheart, in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).

    Cording made two uncredited appearances in 30s’ Metro musicals: New Moon and, playing a pirate, Naughty Marietta.

  • Harry Wilson

    The figures of 350+ film and TV appearances by Harry Wilson (1897-1978) is made more impressive by the fact that Wilson worked almost entirely in the sound era, when the turnover of pictures was not so great as in the silent days.

    British-born Wilson dubbed himself ‘the ugliest man in movies’ (though there was competition), and he was many studios’ go-to actor for convicts and criminal henchmen. He features with Mike Mazurki in Some Like it Hot (1959) as one of George Raft’s goons.

    Wilson appeared uncredited in no fewer than fifteen MGM musicals, across more than thirty years and four decades. In the 1930s he made A Lady’s Morals, The Bohemian Girl, A Day at the Races, Let Freedom Ring and The Wizard of Oz (as a Winkie Guard). In the 40s, Wilson was in Go West, Born to Sing, Swing Fever, Luxury Liner and Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

    His 1950s appearances were in Million Dollar Mermaid, It’s Always Fair Weather, Guys and Dolls and Merry Andrew. And finally, in 1963, Wilson played a roustabout in Billy Rose’s Jumbo. 

    As if Wilson was not busy enough making his own films, he worked for fifteen years as Wallace Beery’s stand-in.

  • Carl Stockdale

    William Carlton Stockdale (1874-1953) accumulated over 300 screen appearances in a thirty-year career that began in 1913 with Broncho Billy’s Last Deed. The title was misleading, because Stockdale went on to appear in more than thirty of Broncho Billy Anderson’s popular shorts, always playing a different character.

    Prior to his film career, Stockdale was a stage actor and vaudeville performer. In pictures, he came to specialize in villains and heavies, though his first appearance in an MGM musical was on the right side of the law, playing the New York Chief of Police in A Lady’s Morals.

    Stockdale made four additional contributions, in Stage Mother, Student Tour, San Francisco and Babes in Arms (though it would appear his scenes were not used).

    Stockdale became a footnote in Hollywood history when he provided actor Charlotte Selby with an alibi when she was under suspicion for the 1922 murder of William Desmond Taylor. Persistant rumours maintain that the alibi was bought and paid for. 

  • Frank Reicher

    Franz Reichert (1875-1965) was a German actor and director who found his greatest success in the United States. 

    Reicher first appeared on Broadway in 1899, and made his screen debut in 1915, the same year in which he directed his first picture .He then concentrated on directing until 1921, after which he mostly acted in character parts. His most notable role was as Captain Englehorn in King Kong, a role he repeated in Son of Kong (both 1933).

    Reicher acted in three MGM musicals: A Lady’s Morals, I Married an Angel and Song of Love. He was also one of the directors of Wir schalten um auf Hollywood (1931), an alternative, German-language version of The Hollywood Revue of 1929.

  • Linda Parker

    Linda Parker (1915-69) was the younger sister of Cecilia Parker, the actor best-remembered for playing Marian Hardy in the Andy Hardy series.

    In 1930, Linda ‘joined’ her sister to play Siamese twins in Lon Chaney’s sound remake of The Unholy Three. They were immediately asked to repeat the trick in A Lady’s Morals. 

    Linda Parker had uncredited  parts in four other Metro musicals: Dancing Lady, Hollywood Party, Student Tour and Naughty Marietta (which also featured Cecilia).

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