The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Bit Players

  • 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.

  • George Magrill

    George Magrill (1900-52) was a bit-part player and occasional stunt performer whose work spanned cute cartoon animals and a range of henchmen, hooligans and thugs. When you accumulate around 500 films on your cv, it’s inevitable that some of them will be MGM musicals; in Magrill’s case, thirteen of them.

    Magrill began with Marianne in 1929 and ended with Three Little Words in 1950. In between came New Moon, The Merry Widow, The Bohemian Girl, San Francisco, Rosalie, The Great Waltz, New Moon (again), Meet the People, Music for Millions, Yolanda and the Thief and Good News.    

  • Sherry Hall

    Sherry Hall (1892-1984) appeared in more than 250 features, almost always without credit.

    His Metro musicals were Marianne, Hollywood Party, Student Tour, Here Comes the Band, San Francisco, Born to Dance, Hullabaloo, Words and Music, The Barkeleys of Broadway, Three Little Words and The Strip.

  • Alice Weaver

    Alice Weaver was a genuine New York show girl who had featured in the Ziegfeld Follies before making brief appearances as chorus girls in The Broadway Melody and Reckless.

  • Dorothy Vernon

    Dorothea Christine Arens (1875-1970) was a hard-working small-part actor who made four Metro musical appearances: The Broadway Melody, Madam Satan, Bitter Sweet and Presenting Lily Mars.

  • Blanche Payson

    Blanche Payson (1881-1964) was a bit-part player who started out in silents in 1916. Her two roles in Metro musicals were satisfyingly distinct: a wardrobe lady in The Broadway Melody and a jail matron in Dancing Lady.

  • The Mawby Triplets

    The Mawby Triplets were famous triplets who were not really triplets. Claudette (1922-42) and Claudine (1922-2012) were twins, but their sister Angella (1921-2000) was born a year earlier. They were British child actors who were marketed as triplets by MGM and made brief appearances in The Broadway Melody and The Hollywood Revue of 1929.

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