The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Performers

  • Ray Cooke

    Ray Cooke (1905-63) was a go-to player in the 1930s if you needed a bellhop, or a messenger, or a cabbie. His career peaked when he starred in a series of comedy shorts from Poverty Row as a character named Torchy (not to be confused with the Glenda Farrell character of the same name).

    Cooke was a bellhop in The Broadway Melody, a messenger in The Hollywood Revue of 1929,a student (like pretty much everyone else) in So This Is College, another bellhop in Love in the Rough and a cinema-goer in Hollywood Party.

  • James Burroughs

    James Burroughs (????-19??) had a brief career not appearing in MGM musicals.

    In 1929 Burroughs sang ‘Wedding of the Painted Doll’ offscreen in The Broadway Melody and ‘Tableau of the Jewels’ in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. He followed these non-appearances the next year by singing ‘Blue Daughter of Heaven’ in Lord Byron of Broadway. 

  • Carla Laemmle

    Rebekah Isabelle Laemmle (1909-2014) was minor Hollywood royalty, being the niece of Universal founder Carl Laemmle (one of the relatives who did not entirely rely on Uncle Carl for employment). In an extremely long life, she spent a few years as a dancer and actor. In this capacity she featured, uncredited, in The Broadway Melody, as a speciality dancer, and The Hollywood Revue of 1929, as the scantily-clad Pearl Dancer.

    She was also, apparently, an uncredited swimmer in Bathing Beauty.

  • Kenneth Thomson

    Charles Kenneth Thomson (1899-1967) was a featured player in silent and early sound films, notable for hosting the meetings that led to the formation of the Screen Actors Guild.

    Thomson played the wolf Jacques Warriner in The Broadway Melody and Pat’s on-again-off-again fiancé in Children of Pleasure.

  • Eddie Kane

    Eddie Kane (1899-1989) was a bit player with around 250 appearances who featured, albeit uncredited, as the loosely-disguised Ziegfeld character in The Broadway Melody. He later turned up uncredited in Ice Follies of 1939, Two Girls and a Sailor and Bathing Beauty.  

  • Grady Sutton

    Grady Harwell Sutton (1906-95) was a hard-working supporting player for 60 years, often in codified gay roles. He is probably best-known today for his four films with W C Fields.

    Sutton’s first uncredited appearance in a Metro musical was as a football spectator in So This Is College. He then waited sixteen years for his most substantial part, as Kathryn Grayson’s would-be suitor in Anchors Aweigh.

    This was followed by uncredited appearances in Ziegfeld Follies, Two Sisters from Boston, Holiday in Mexico, No Leave, No Love and, after another sixteen years, Billy Rose’s Jumbo.

  • Dorothy Dehn

    The three MGM-musical roles of Dorothy Dehn (1908-98) represent a downward spiral. From the wholesomeness of the campus in So This Is College, via the part of Quicksilver in Madam Satan, she ended up as a Maxim’s girl in Lubitsch’s The Merry Widow,

  • Phyllis Crane

    Supporting player Phyllis Crane (1914-82) was just 15 when she played a college student in So This Is College and definitely too young to have been involved in the craziness of Madam Satan. She made her last appearance at the grand old age of 23.

  • Oscar Rudolph

    Oscar Rudolph (1911-91) was a bit-part actor who went on to a career as a prolific director of television episodes.

    After appearing as a freshman who loses his trousers in So This Is College, he played another student in In Gay Madrid, a cook in It’s a Great Life and a peasant in Maytime.

  • Arthur Lange

    Arthur Lange (1889-1956) was a prolific composer of songs, scores and incidental music for dozens of films at a variety of studios.

    At MGM Lange began by composing and arranging music for the Buster Keaton ‘underwater’ sequence in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, where he also appeared onscreen conducting the orchestra. Lange also made an appearance as himself in Free and Easy. He was subsequently the musical arranger onSo This Is College, and composed and arranged forThe Great Ziegfeld and  Let Freedom Ring.  

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