Category: Performers

Wynne Gibson

Winifred Elaine Gibson (1898-1987) was an actor who starred in films without ever really becoming a film star. She had performed in vaudeville, burlesque and musical comedies before featuring in Nothing But the Truth (1929). The following year she was given the female lead in Children of Pleasure.

Thereafter, Gibson mostly appeared in ‘B’ pictures; Richard Barrios calls her “one of the best tough blondes in Depression cinema”. In the 1950s, as she moved into television work, she and her partner, Beverley Roberts, were heavily involved in the development of theatrical trade unionism in New York.

April 5, 2026

Children of Pleasure

Performers

Lawrence Gray	Danny Regan
Wynne Gibson	Emma Gray
Judith Wood	Pat Thayer (as Helen Johnson)
Kenneth Thomson	Rod Peck (as Kenneth Thompson)
Lee Kohlmar	Bernie (as Lee Kolmar)
May Boley	Fanny Kaye
Benny Rubin	Andy Little
Jack Benny	Himself (uncredited)
Sidney Bracey	Miles – Butler (uncredited)
Eddie Bush	Member of Biltmore Trio – Party Vocalists (uncredited)
Rosalind Byrne	Girl at Party (uncredited)
Mary Carlisle	Secretary (uncredited)
Carrie Daumery	Dowager at Party (uncredited)
Drew Demorest	Song Writer (uncredited)
Ann Dvorak	Chorus Girl (uncredited)
Jay Eaton	Eddie Brown (uncredited)
Cliff Edwards	Himself (uncredited)
Paul Gibbons	Member of Biltmore Trio – Party Vocalists (uncredited)
Maude Turner Gordon	Dowager at Party (uncredited)
Edward Martindel	Mr. Thayer (uncredited)
Doris McMahon	Society Girl at Party (uncredited)
William H. O’Brien	Party Butler #2 (uncredited)
Hal Price	Song Writer (uncredited)
Herbert Prior	Jeweler (uncredited)
Bill Seckler	Member of Biltmore Trio – Party Vocalists (uncredited)
Polly Ann Young	Society Girl at Party (uncredited)

April 4, 2026

Doris McMahon

Doris McMahon (1910-61) was a performer whose short, mostly precode, career could largely be described as scantily clad.

She was in three MGM musicals, Free and Easy, Children of Pleasure and Madam Satan.

March 25, 2026
Theodore Lorch

Theodore Andrew Lorch (1873-1947) was a busy supporting player who notched up over 170 screen appearances, most of those in the sound era being uncredited. His adaptability is indicated by a sample of his work in 1934: an abortionist (The Road to Ruin), a ringmaster (A Modern Hero), an executioner (The Affairs of Cellini), a jury member (Two Heads on a Pillow) and a native fakir (Kid Millions).

Lorch found time to be in three Metro musicals: Free and Easy, A Lady’s Morals and Reckless.

March 25, 2026
Lottice Howell

Lottice Howell (1897-1982) was a versatile soprano who was happy in both opera and the vaudeville stage.

Howell signed a contract with MGM in 1929, but only appeared in a handful of films before returning to the stage. Two of these were the musicals Free and Easy and In Gay Madrid.

March 25, 2026
Jackie Coogan

John Leslie Coogan (1914-84) claimed his place in cinema history at a very young age when he played the eponymous character in Chaplin’s The Kid (1921). It is a performance for the ages, though the downside is that Coogan’s parents exploited his earnings, with subsequent legal action culminating in the California Child Actors Bill (the Coogan Act).

Unlike many other child actors who have immediate success, Coogan had other substantial parts while young, such as Oliver Twist (1922) and Tom Sawyer (1930), and also continued his career into adulthood. He found renewed fame in the sixties playing Uncle Fester in The Addams Family (1964-66). His final credit, as far removed as possible from The Kid, was in the 1983 slasher movie The Prey.

Jackie Coogan made two appearances in Metro musicals, and with the longest gap between of any performer. In 1930 he appeared as himself in the Hollywood-set Free and Easy. Thirty-five years later he played a cop in Girl Happy (1965), an Elvis Presley vehicle. Chaplin to Presley is a long journey.

March 25, 2026
Louise Carver

Mary Louise Stieger (1869-1956) began her performing career singing grand opera, and made her first screen appearance in 1908, in a very abbreviated version of Macbeth (she played Lady Macbeth).

She worked more steadily in films from 1916 on, usually in minor roles in comedies, frequently uncredited. One of her credited appearances was as El Brendel’s mother-in-law in The Big Trail (1930).

In the same year she appeared in Free and Easy, without credit. Her one other musical at MGM was The Devil’s Brother.

March 25, 2026
Edward Brophy

Edward Santree Brophy (1895-1960) was one of the most recognizable character actors in Golden Age Hollywood, both physically and vocally. He made his first screen appearance in 1920, but mostly worked as a unit manager or assistant director during the twenties.

After standing in for an absent actor in Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman (1928) (on which he was working as unit manager), Brophy’s acting career took off, aided by several other supporting roles with Keaton. He specialized in cops, gangsters and sidekicks, notably Goldie Locke in the Falcon series. His distinctive New York accent also won him the voice role of Timothy Q Mouse in Disney’s Dumbo (1941).

Brophy made a couple of uncredited appearances in MGM musicals: with Keaton again, in Free and Easy, and in Broadway to Hollywood. He was then credited as Zeke, one of the settlers who tramp-tramp-tramps with Nelson Eddy in Naughty Marietta.

In keeping with Brophy’s Runyonesque personality, it is fitting that he is alleged to have died while watching a boxing match.

March 25, 2026
Jack Baxley

Andrew Jackson Baxley (1884-1950) appeared in a handful of excellent films during his career as a character actor, including two with Orson Welles (The Magnificent Amberson in 1942 and The Lady from Shanghai in 1947). But there, as in most of his other pictures, he was uncredited.

Baxley was in eight Metro musicals: Free and Easy, The Florodora Girl, Dancing Lady, The Great Ziegfeld, San Francisco, Strike Up the Band, Thrill of a Romance and Summer Holiday.

March 25, 2026
William Collier Sr

William Morenus (1864-1944) ran away from home, aged 11, to join the theatre. He interrupted his successful stage career forty years later, in 1915, to make a few silent shorts (his first role was playing himself in Fatty and the Broadway Stars), but his film career really started in 1929 with the introduction of sound.

Collier played himself again in Free and Easy, as the MC at the premiere. For a hattrick, he was seen as William Collier Sr once again in Broadway to Hollywood. His non-musical roles offered more variety.

March 25, 2026