The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Performers

  • Herbert Braggiotti

    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.

  • Guy Kibbee

    As if to separate himself from the multitude of his contemporaries who started their show business careers in vaudeville, the teenage Guy Bridges Kibbee (1882-1956) started out entertaining on Mississippi riverboats. He later became a leading man for a variety of stock companies.

    The big time came well-on in his career: he made his Broadway debut in 1930, and soon afterwards was signed by Paramount. (He had previously made one short comedy for Warner Bros.) He went on to become one of those immediately-recognizable characters who helped make 30s’ Hollywood as great as it was. His speciality was jovial, a bit dim, occasionally lecherous. The last of these came to the fore in two great Warner musicals, 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933 (both 1933).

    Kibee had a rare starring role in Babbitt (1934), the Warners’ less-than-faithful adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’s prize-winning novel. He also played malleable Governor Hopper in Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and Dr Gibbs in the film of Our Town (1940). 

    Guy Kibbee was in four Metro musicals: Flying High, Let Freedom Ring, Babes in Arms and Girl Crazy. 

  • Charles Winninger

    Karl John Winninger (1884-1969), the son of Austrian immigrants, was a seasoned vaudeville performer by the time he made his first short film in 1915. He made the occasional film thereafter, but launched his film career proper after the advent of sound with Soup to Nuts (1930), which was the debut of the Three Stooges.

    Prior to this, Winninger had created the role of Cap’n Andy Hawks in Show Boat (1927), a role which he recreated in Universal’s 1936 film version.

    Winninger was a reliable supporting player throughout his film career, notably in Nothing Sacred (1937) and Destry Rides Again (1939). He only ever played one leading role, in John Ford’s frequently-misunderstood masterpiece The Sun Shines Bright (1953), where he played Judge Billy Priest.

    Charles Winninger co-starred in six MGM musicals, beginning as the doctor in Flying High in 1931. He followed this with Babes in Arms (playing Mickey Rooney’s father), Little Nellie Kelly and Ziegfeld Girl (playing Judy Garland’s father in both), Broadway Rhythm (as George Murphy’s father) and Living in a Big Way (as Gene Kelly’s father-in-law). 

  • Kathryn Crawford

    Kathryn Moran (1902-80) could have ruined her life when she eloped at 15 with her sister’s boyfriend. Luckily for her, that did not happen. She got her life back together and, aged 17, gave up a job as a shop assistant to pursue a career in musical theatre. 

    After a few years performing with stock companies, Crawford was spotted by director Wesley Ruggles, who got her a part in a Hoot Gibson western. She told a newspaper that she and Ruggles intended to marry, but that never happened.But Crawford did get a contract at Universal and made seven films in 1929. 

    Crawford made her only Broadway appearance in 1930, in Cole Porter’s The New Yorkers, where she controversially introduced the song ‘Love for Sale’.

    In 1931, Crawford’s career took a downturn. She starred in MGM’s Flying High, then the quality of her roles declined and she stopped acting in 1933 before marrying for the second time. She made one further appearance in 1941, in an obscure ‘B’ picture about sex trafficking, but had a long and successful career as an interior designer. 

  • Pat O’Brien

    William Joseph Patrick O’Brien (1899-1983) will be remembered as a key member of the Warner Bros company of the 1930s, alongside his friend James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Edward G Robinson and Bette Davis.

    O’Brien trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and pursued a successful stage career, including on Broadway. New York-based, he made his first short films for Vitaphone, before travelling to Hollywood to star in The Front Page (1931), in which he had appeared on Broadway. 

    He went on to star in around 100 pictures, playing more than his share of wiseguys, reporters and cops. In 1932 he was loud-mouthed flyer Duke Talbot in John Ford’s Air Mail, and, in1939, as a change of pace, he was the priest who persuades Cagney to turn yellow for the sake of the Dead End Kids.

    Musicals were not really Pat O’Brien’s things, but he did co-star (in a non-singing role)with Bert Lahr in Flying High. He played, of course, a fast-talking con man.  

  • Bert Lahr

    Although he appeared in around thirty films, Irving Lahrheim (1895-1967) was fundamentally a stage comedian, with a personality and technique that were too big for the screen. Nevertheless, he is an indisputably iconic figure in film history thanks to one performance, as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.

    Lahr left school to start performing in vaudeville as a teenager, working his way up to become what was called ‘top banana’. He made his Broadway debut in 1927, and was a major draw there for the rest of his career. As late as 1965, Lahr won a Tony for the musical Foxy. 

    Much more serious off-stage than on it, Lahr was impressed by Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1952), and played Estragon in a highly-praised 1956 Broadway production. A few years earlier he had won critical acclaim as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

    Lahr’s screen debut was in a 1929 short called Faint Heart. This was followed two years later by his first Metro musical, Flying High, based on Lahr’s own hit stage musical. He recreated the role of Rusty Krause.

    The Wizard of Oz followed eight years later, and Lahr made a further three musicals at MGM: Ship Ahoy, Meet the People and the 1954 version of Rose Marie. 

    Bert Lahr died during the production of his final film, The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968), but the filmmakers worked around it and his performance was retained.

  • Flying High

    The Cast

    Bert LahrRusty Krause
    Charlotte GreenwoodPansy Potts
    Pat O’BrienSport Wardell
    Kathryn CrawfordEileen Smith
    Charles WinningerDoctor Brown
    Hedda HopperMrs. Smith
    Guy KibbeeMr. Smith
    Herbert BraggiottiGordon
    Gus Arnheim and his OrchestraThemselves
    Loretta AndrewsChorus Girl (uncredited)
    Mary AshcraftChorus Girl (uncredited)
    Edna CallahanChorus Girl (uncredited)
    Richard CarleHotel Manager (uncredited)
    Tommy ConlonUndetermined Secondary Role (uncredited)
    Nick CopelandAviator with the Jokester (uncredited)
    Mary DeesChorus Girl (uncredited)
    Mildred DixonMiss Dixon / Dancer (uncredited)
    James DurkinMr. Rankin – Detective (uncredited)
    Janet CurrieChorus Girl (uncredited)
    Ruth EddingsChorus Girl (uncredited)
    Gloria FaytheChorus Girl (uncredited)
    Bud GearyClub Patron (uncredited)
    Mary HalseyChorus Girl (uncredited)
    Amo IngrahamChorus Girl (uncredited)
    Clarence WilsonLunch Counter Manager (uncredited)
    Tom McGuireAngry Investor (uncredited)
    Beatrice HagenChorus Girl (uncredited)
    Donald NovisOrchestra Singer (uncredited)
    Dave O’BrienDancer (uncredited)
    Broderick O’FarrellAngry Investor (uncredited)
    Lee PhelpsReporter from the News (uncredited)
    Nita PikeChorus Girl (uncredited)
    Herbert PriorAngry Investor with Spectacles (uncredited)
    Betty RecklawChorus Girl (uncredited)
    Buddy RooseveltAviator (uncredited)
    Bee StephensChorus Girl (uncredited)
    Harry WatsonLittle Boy (uncredited)
    Tom KennedyJokester with Firecrackers (uncredited)

  • Charles R Moore

    Hattie McDaniel famously said “I’d rather play a maid than be one”. The actor Charles Randolph Moore could have said much the same about being a railway porter. He played the role at least 38 times, in well over one-third of his total appearances. He also played more than his fair share of lift operators. 

    Moore worked for some of Hollywood’s top directors, including William A Wellman, Josef von Sternberg, Victor Fleming, Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks, Frank Capra and William Wyler. He was a member of Preston Sturges’s stock company, and acted in six of his pictures. In Sullivan’s Travels (1941), he was the cook who was shaken to pieces in the speeding land yacht.

    In all three of Moore’s MGM musicals–The Prodigal, Reckless and Two Girls on Broadway–Moore played a porter.

  • Jules Cowles

    Julius D Cowles (1877-1943) was aYale-educated, experienced Shakespearean actor who made his film debut in 1914. He was also an accomplished writer.

    Cowles played supporting roles throughout the 1920s, including Zambo (in blackface) in The Lost World and Yankee Joe in Lord Jim (both 1925). He was predominantly associated with ‘heavy’ roles; one newspaper headline ran “A Mean Looker But Really He’s A Perfect Gent”.

    In the 1930s, the importance of Cowles’s parts diminished and he was more frequently uncredited. He turned up, without credit, in four MGM musicals: The Prodigal, Love Finds Andy Hardy, Hullabaloo and I Dood It.

  • John Larkin

    John Larkin Smith [?] (1877-1936) had a long career in minstrel shows and vaudeville, and was billed as ‘Jolly John Larkins–the Rajah of Mirth’. He toured the world as leader of the Dandy Dixie Minstrels.

    It was only in the final six years of his life that he devoted himself to films, in the usual menial role reserved for Black actors, and almost never playing to his comedic strengths. In this mode, he was the loyal family retainer to the Southern family in The Prodigal.

    Larkin acted in two further Metro musicals: Stage Mother (as a porter) and The Great Ziegfeld (uncredited, but at least as a named character, Sam).

    His last film, made in the year of his death, was Warner’s all-Black The Green Pastures (1936).

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