Plummer Hull Harmon (1886-1958) appeared in about 170 films, many of them comedies starring Hollywood’s greatest comedians: Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy, Harry Langdon.
Harmon was in three of Buster Keaton’s early films under his MGM contract, including the musical Free and Easy.
Harmon’s film career came to an abrupt halt in 1935 when he was sentenced to a term in Folsom Prison for stealing a horse. His final appearance was as a police officer in Modern Times (1936).
David Burton (1877-1963) was born in what is now Ukraine, though his original name and details of how he ended up in America are obscure.
Burton was a theatre director who went out to Hollywood at the introduction of sound to work with Nick Grinde, directing the actors in The Bishop Murder Case (1929).
Burton directed another sixteen pictures, for various studios. He never directed an MGM musical, but he did make an appearance as himself in the Hollywood-set Free and Easy, auditioning women to beat up Buster Keaton.
George D Morrison (1890-1973) was a star of silent westerns who had actually worked as a cowboy in his youth. He was working as an engine fireman when he started undertaking stunt work for the Essanay Studio in around 1910.
Morrison moved to Hollywood and became an early western star, now almost forgotten. With the introduction of sound, his parts became mostly uncredited, and he also returned to stunt work. He appeared as a cowboy in Montana Moon.
After retiring in 1935, Morrison maintained the western theme by becoming a rancher and sometime deputy sheriff in Colorado.
Ervin Thomas McClure (1883-1942) acted in over 100 films, virtually all of which were westerns, and in most of which he was uncredited. He rarely had dialogue.
In 1930, McClure played a cowboy at the party in Montana Moon.
Claudia Dell Smith (1909-77) became a chorus girl aged 16, and was soon appearing in the Ziegfeld Follies.
Dell was signed by Warner Bros to play opposite Al Jolson in Big Boy and the title character in Sweet Kitty Bellairs (both 1930). Shortly before, she had made an uncredited appearance as Cliff Edwards’s girlfriend in Montana Moon.
Dell later signed with RKO, and turned to radio when the film roles started to dry up, frequently working on Lux Radio Theatre productions. She was also a newspaper columnist.
Lloyd Chauncey Ingraham (1874-1956) made around 300 screen appearances, but it is arguable that only one was of any significance in the context of film history. He plays the judge who sentences The Boy to go to the gallows in Intolerance (1916).
Otherwise, it was a career largely uncredited, and which included the role of Joan Crawford’s dad in Montana Moon.
Ingraham also directed over 100 shorts and features between 1913 and 1930.
Jacob Krantz (1900-77) was the son of Jewish parents with East European backgrounds, but he grew up to have features that bore comparison with Latin lovers such as Rudolph Valentino and Ramon Novarro. With this in mind, he took Ricardo Cortez as his screen name.
By 1923, Cortez was getting featured character parts, and he occasionally played the lead, most memorably as the first Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1931). One of his prominent supporting roles, a year earlier, was with Joan Crawford in Montana Moon.
Cortez also directed seven low-budget programmers for 20th Century-Fox between 1938 and 1940.
His last big screen appearance was in a film that gave a number of other actors from Hollywood’s Golden Age their last hurrah: John Ford’s The Last Hurrah (1958). After a guest spot in an episode of Bonanza in 1960, Cortex became a stockbroker.
Ricardo Cortez’s brother, Stanley Cortez, was a celebrated cinematographer.
Belgian actors were few and far between in Old Hollywood, and Pauline Paquette (????-1950) had a career that included only five pictures.
The possibility that she might have deserved better is suggested by one review of her first picture, Bluff (1924), which noted: “A bit contributed by Pauline Paquette stands out in the film”.
Paquette appeared as Marie in Lord Byron of Broadway.
Hazel Craven (dates unknown) was a chorus girl who, in a brief Hollywood career, played a series of…chorus girls.
She started out with a credited part in Lord Byron of Broadway, dancing alongside Rita Flynn. Thereafter, Craven was uncredited, though in a string of prestigious pictures (The Kid from Spain [1932, 42nd Street, Footlight Parade and Duck Soup [all 1933]). She apparently played a bit part in one Rainy Afternoon (1936), and there the trail seems to end.
Edith Flynn (1905-73) was briefly Micky Flynn when performing on the stage in musical comedies, before settling on the “ritzier” Rita at the start of her film career.
Flynn was generally cast in supporting roles, though she was a featured player, as a character with her own name, in a series of short comedies known Hollywood Girls, directed by Roscoe Arbuckle in 1931-32.
A little earlier, Flynn appeared briefly in Lord Byron of Broadway, as one of the women inexplicably attracted to Charles Kaley.
In a chorus girl cliché, Flynn retired from acting in 1933 after marrying a millionaire.
