Canadian James Peter Durkin (1876-1934) worked in regional theatres in the United States before making his Broadway debut in 1906.
Durkin worked in silent cinema in the period 1913-16, though mostly as a director, often on films starring his then-wife, Maude Fealy. His career as a screen actor began properly in 1930, frequently in uncredited roles.
In 1931, Durking appeared as a detective in Flying High.
Mildred Lucile Dixon (1910-85) was in many a chorus line on screen, and often stood out owing to her distinctive bobbed hair.
Always uncredited, Dixon was in some substantial pictures, including 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade and Duck Soup (all 1933).
She was in a couple of dozen films, including Metro’s Flying High.
Mary Ella Dees (1911-2004) is perhaps best known for her most macabre job. Jean Harlow, who had befriended Dees after she played a bit in Red-Headed Woman (1932), died in 1937 during the production of Saratoga. Dees was hired to stand in for Harlow, in floppy hats and viewed obscurely, during the few scenes that remained to be shot.
Mary Dees was uncredited in about 22 films all told, including two MGM musicals, Flying High and Born to Dance, playing a chorus girl in both. Her film career ended in 1946, but she continued to act on the stage well into her seventies.
Dees’s obituary quotes her channeling Norma Desmond: “We were stars. Today actors look like any other jerk on the street”. Calling herself a star might be stretching it, but she’s otherwise not wrong.
Nicholas W Copeland (1894-1940) died aged 45, but still managed to notch up well over 100 screen appearances in a career lasting just twelve years.
Copeland made a short at Fox in 1928, and followed this with his first feature, playing a henchman, at Warner Bros. He was usually uncredited, but showed up in some top-class pictures, including Twentieth Century and The Thin Man (both 1934), Theodora Goes Wild (1936), You Can’t Take It With You (1938) and Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939).
Copeland played parts in five MGM musicals. Flying High was followed by Student Tour, Reckless, Swiss Miss and New Moon (his final film).
He had served in the First World War and was buried with military honours.
Tommy Conlon (1917-2000) made the first screen appearance of his short career, at the age of 14, in MGM’s Flying High.
Conlon went on to make about a dozen films, with a prominent role in DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross (1932). His final role was also for DeMille, uncredited in Reap the Wild Wind (1942).
Edwina G Callahan (1912-2007) was, unlike many of her contemporaries in studio chorus lines, a dancer with training. She had begun dancing professionally while still in high school and was working regularly on the stage by her late teens.
Callahan made her screen debut, aged 18, in Fox’s weird and wonderful Just Imagine (1930), and made an appearance the following year in MGM’s Flying High.
Callahan’s film career was over by 1937, but she had by then been in four more Metro musicals: Dancing Lady, The Great Ziegfeld, Born to Dance and Rosalie (her final film).
In the 1930s, Callahan was briefly married to cinematographer Gregg Toland.
Like many other young women of her time, the show business ambitions of Mary Ashcraft (1905-79) ended up with a few appearances as chorus girls and the like.
One of those appearances was in Metro’s Flying High.
In 1927, there were press reports that Ashcraft had been saved from drowning on the set of Swim, Girl, Swim by renowned swimmer Gertrude Ederle, who was starring in the picture. It may be true, but the story reeks of the studio publicity machine.
Loretta (possibly Lorena) Andrews (1911-2004)was a long-lived actor whose Hollywood career was quite short. She made her debut in Palmy Days (1931), and by 1936 had appeared in 29 pictures, mostly musicals, mostly in uncredited roles as chorus girls and models.
Andrews’s greatest distinction was probably being present in four classic Warner Bros musicals with dance direction by Busby Berkeley: 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade and Dames. She had earlier worked under Berkeley on MGM’s Flying High. Andrews also appeared in The Great Ziegfeld.
Andrews is described as a “former film actress” in a press report about a court case concerning the estate of her late husband.
IMDb suggests Andrews made a one-film comeback in 1941 in a Judy Canova comedy.
Gustavus Arnheim (1897-1955) was a band leader and songwriter, whose most lasting composition was ‘I Cried for You’, written in 1923, with Abe Lyman and Arthur Freed.
Arnheim started out as a pianist, working for a time as accompanist to Sophie Tucker. He set up his own orchestra in 1927.
Arnheim and his band appeared in Vitaphone shorts in 1928-29 before making their feature debut in Universal’s Broadway in 1929. The orchestra was in about a dozen pictures, one of which was Metro’s Flying High. They also showed up in Howard Hawks’s Scarface (1932).
‘I Cried for You’ was sung by Judy Garland in Babes in Arms, by Helen Forrest in Bathing Beauty and, briefly, by Doris Day in Love Me or Leave Me. Arnheim’s song ‘Sweet and Lovely’ was ‘performed’ by June Allyson and Gloria DeHaven in Two Girls and a Sailor, with the voices of Virginia Rees and Dorothy Jackson.
Italian Sebastiano Herbert Braggiotti (1904-84) was an actor about whom there seems to be little public information, but whose earliest successes seem to have been during the years 1930-32.
IMDb credits Braggiotti with three films, one of which is MGM’s Flying High. The Internet Broadway Database puts him in the opening night cast of a play called A Woman Denied, which ran for 37 performances in 1931.
After that, a New York Times obituary suggests that he undertook stage work under the name Stiano Braggiotti. He appeared in around ten further Broadway productions and toured with Katherine Cornell.
Btagiotti’s sisters Berthe and Francesca performed as risqué dancers, the latter also making several film appearances before becoming the wife of an American diplomat and Governor of Wisconsin.
