The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Performers

  • Bee Stephens

    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.

  • Buddy Roosevelt

    Kenneth Stanhope Sanderson (1898-1973) must be considered one of Hollywood’s nearly-men. After slaving away in dozens of Poverty Row westerns for four years, he was finally offered a part in an ‘A’ picture. Roaul Walsh had been forced to give up the role of the Cisco Kid in In Old Arizona (1931) following the bizarre car accident that cost him his eye, and the part was given to Buddy Roosevelt. However, just before shooting was scheduled to start, he also had an accident, breaking his leg. The part ended up with Warner Baxter, who won an Academy Award and went on to a successful career. For Roosevelt, it was back to the cheapo westerns.

    Buddy Roosevelt had started out as a Hollywood stuntman in 1916, after spending time as a cowboy. He got his first substantial acting role in 1924, and was soon on the ‘B’ western treadmill. He made occasional appearances in non-westerns, for example playing a secret service agent in Gabriel Over the White House (1933). He also continued to undertake stunt work, and doubled for Ronald Colman in Under Two Flags (1936) and Lost Horizon (1937). Roosevelt continued acting in films and television until 1962, with a final appearance in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

    Roosevelt made uncredited appearances in four Metro musicals, in none of them playing a cowboy: Flying High, Annie Get Your Gun, The Belle of New York and Merry Andrew.

  • Betty Recklaw

    Betty Recklaw

    Little is known about Betty Recklaw (19??-2002), not even the year of her birth.

    IMDb suggests that she made her uncredited debut in the Betty Bronson version of Peter Pan (1924) as the mermaid queen. She then appears to have done very little until playing one of the chorus girls in The Broadway Melody. Her only other MGM musical is given as Flying High, again in the chorus line.

    After Sis Hopkins (1941), nothing else is known.

  • Nita Pike

    Juanita Magda Pike (1913-54) became a Goldwyn Girl at the age of 18 and made her screen debut in the Eddie Cantor hit Palmy Days (1931). Immediately after this, she played a chorus girl in MGM’s Flying High.

    Pike made a couple of dozen pictures during the 1930s and 40s, including appearing as a maid in Lubitsch’s The Merry Widow. She also played a secretary in The Great Dictator (1940).

    Nita Pike’s life ended tragically when she committed suicide two days after the death of her husband.

  • Tom McGuire

    Thomas McGuire (1873-1954) was a British stage actor who made his way to Hollywood and, in his forties, began a thirty year career comprising over 180 films.

    McGuire’s most enduring performances from the silent era was J J King, the heroine’s father, in Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill Jr (1928).

    Strangely, given his background in the theatre, the quality of McGuire’s roles declined in the sound era, where he was generally uncredited. He was in four of Preston Sturge’s later films.

    Tom McGuire appeared in six MGM musical, starting with Flying High, then A Night at the Opera, San Francisco, Two Girls on Broadway, Thousands Cheer and Two Girls and a Sailor.

  • Amo Ingraham

    Herberta Amo Ingraham (1909-83) was, as her full name suggests, the daughter of the celebrated composer Herbert Ingraham, who clearly had planned for a son.

    Ingraham became a night club dancer after leaving school and, after one short, made her feature debut with an uncredited role in Dorothy Arzner’s The Wild Party (1929). She never did obtain a credit, but worked steadily in bit parts throughout the 1930s, mostly at Warner Bros. She was in Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) and two more in that series. She also played one of the bridesmaids in Merrily We Go to Hell (1932).

    Ingraham only made one MGM musical, Flying High. Her final screen appearance was in 1942, in Mitchell Leisen’s Green-Eyed Woman.

  • Mary Halsey

    Mary Halsey (1913-89) also worked under the name Mary Jane Halsey, but, in over forty feature films, she never achieved a credit.

    On the positive side, she was not, unlike many of her peers, restricted solely to playing chorus girls. She was a nurse in The Falcon’s Brother, and featured prominently in Cat People (both 1942), as the receptionist who hears the scream in the swimming pool.

    Having said that, Halsey appeared in six Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals, and was a chorus girl in all of them. They were Flying High, Dancing Lady, The Merry Widow (technically a Maxim’s girl), Broadway Melody of 1936 and The Great Ziegfeld. The outlier was her last musical for the studio, Rosalie.

    Halsey worked for the Red Cross during the Second World War. 

  • Gloria Faythe

    Gloria K Cook (1914-85) was born in Los Angeles, so at least she did not have to travel far in pursuit of a Hollywood career.

    She got an early break playing a little girl in Chaplin’s The Kid (1921). There was then a break until 1929, when, aged 15, she started playing on-screen chorus girls, including in MGM’s Flying High. It must have helped that she had received some dance training from MGM alumnus Ernest Belcher.

    Faythe continued to play chorus girls and dancers throughout the 1930s. Her final appearance seems to have been in 1945.

  • Ruth Eddings

    Ruth Eddings (1908-95) was a bit-part player working in Hollywood from 1926. She was in more than thirty films, but never obtained a credit.

    In 1931, Eddings was one of the many chorus girls in Flying High. Her final film was Jacques Tourneur’s Experiment Perilous (1944).

    Some sources suggest that she continued acting, largely on radio, under her married name, following her marriage to actor William Tannen.

  • Janet Currie

    Janet Currie (1909-34) was a beauty pageant winner who had just started attempting a career in Hollywood when she died, aged 24, from complications following an operation.

    Currie made just two screen appearances: in MGM’s Flying High and Meet the Baron (1933), a Three Stooges feature.

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