The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Performers

  • Edward Peil Sr

    Edward J Peil (1882/3-1958) studied drama at university, which ultimately led him to pursue a career in acting. His obituary stated that he was in a film, Charley’s Aunt, as early as 1906, , and that he starred in the first five-reel picture in 1910. What is certain is that he began to accumulate credits in 1913, following a period working in the theatre. 

    Peil worked for various studios in the 1910s, including playing a German officer in D W Griffith’s The Greatest Thing in Life (1918). He also performed in yellow face in Griffith’s Broken Blossoms (1919), doing so again in John Ford’s The Iron Horse (1924) and a number of other films of the 1920s. 

    Edward Peil acted in well over 420 pictures, though most of his appearances in the sound era were uncredited, apart from the many ‘B’ westerns he made for minor studios. 

    Seven of his uncredited appearances were in MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Reckless, Girl of the Golden West, Two Girls on Broadway, For Me and My Gal, Three Daring Daughters and Excuse My Dust.  

  • Josephine Sabel

    Josephine Domingue (1866-1945) was performing on the stage from 1887, initially in comic operas and musical comedies, and later in vaudeville. 

    Sabel was a singer more renowned for her comedic than vocal skills, yet was still known as ‘the Queen of Song’. The best-known song popularized by her was ‘There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight’, later sung in MGM’s The Florodora Girl.

    Sabel was internationally known and toured widely. She was particularly appreciated in France, and Maurice Chevalier credited her with an important role in his early career.

    Like many other aging vaudevillians, Sabel contributed to the aborted musical The March of Time. The footage was later used in Broadway to Hollywood, though the film’s IMDb page currently misspells her surname.

  • Helen Parrish

    Helen Virginia Parrish (1923-59) was a prolific child actor whose adult career as a supporting player was brought to an end by her untimely death.

    Parrish made her screen debut aged 4, playing Babe Ruth’s daughter in Babe Comes Home (1927). By the age of 10 she had made almost thirty pictures and been directed by Frank Capra, John Ford, Raoul Walsh and Wesley Ruggles. She later played the nemesis of Deanna Durbin in three Universal musicals.  As an adult, she mainly appeared in programmers made by minor studios.

    As a child, Helen Parrish was in two Metro musicals, Broadway to Hollywood and Maytime.  She was the sister of editor and director Robert Parrish.

  • Alexander Pollard

    British actor Alexander Pollard emigrated to the United States during the 1920s, and made his first film in 1928. He went on to make close to 200 screen appearances, all of them uncredited. He was a utility character actor, invariably cast as some kind of domestic or public functionary: over two thirds of his roles were as butlers or waiters.

    Pollard ran the luncheon counter where Fay Wray got her much-needed meal in King Kong (1933). He was a waiter hired by Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man (1934). He was a guest at the sinister party in Saboteur (1942). And in The Woman in the Window (1944) he played the club waiter who wakes up Edward G Robinson (twice).

    Pollard was in eight MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, A Night at the Opera, Nobody’s Baby, Lady Be Good, Ship Ahoy, Thrill of a Romance, Easy to Wed and Words and Music.

  • Edwin Maxwell

    Irish-born Edwin Maxwell (1886-1948) emigrated to America as a child and made his first stage appearance aged seven. This led to a long career in the theatre and on screen. He made one silent film, but began to concentrate on films in 1929. He never abandoned the stage, however, and toured the country in the 1940s in the road show version of Life With Father.

    Maxwell was a character actor, often credited, sometimes not. Some of his most notable roles included: the Chief of Detectives in Scarface (1932), the chief villain in Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), the first Secretary of War in Duck Soup (1933), corrupt Will Vickery in Fury (1936), John T Stuart in Young Mr Lincoln (1939), the jeweller in Ninotchka (1939) and the inept state psychiatrist in His Girl Friday (1940).

    Edwin Maxwell appeared in four Metro musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Hollywood Party, The Great Ziegfeld and the 1940 version of New Moon, his only credited role.

  • Miriam Marlin

    Not a lot of information is available about Miriam Marlin (1905-89), whose brief Hollywood career (1933-37) mostly involved playing chorus girls. It seems reasonable to assume that she had some experience in that area before appearing in pictures.

    Marlin was a chorus girl in all three of her uncredited appearances in MGM musicals, Broadway to Hollywood, Stage Mother and Dancing Lady.

  • Louis Mann

    Louis Mann (1865-1931) was a theatre actor and director, and occasional film actor, who made his first appearance on a stage aged three.

    Mann was a popular Broadway star from the mid-1990s, specializing in comedy and musicals. He also toured widely. In 1914, Variety reported that he had been signed by Jesse Lasky to film two of his stage hits, All on Account of Eliza and Elevating a Husband, but there seems no evidence that these were ever made. Both plays were written by Mann’s wife, Clara Lipman, who was also a prominent supporter of the women’s suffrage movement. It was probably this that led to Mann’s involvement with Your Girl and Mine: A Woman Suffrage Play (1914, a propaganda work made by the movement.

    Mann’s one full-fledged film appearance was in MGM’s The Sins of the Children (1930), on which his wife was a contributing writer.

    In the same year, Mann contributed to the Old Timer sequence of The March of Time. After the film was abandoned, some of his footage was used in Broadway to Hollywood, which was made after Mann’s death 

  • Isabelle Keith

    Isabelle Keep (1898-1975) was a small-part player who made almost sixty films between 1919 and 1937. She is probably best-known today for playing Mrs Laurel in Perfect Day (1929) and Mrs Hardy in Be Big! (1931).

    Keith appeared briefly in a few major pictures–John Ford’s Riley the Cop (1928), Mata Hari (1931), Anna Karenina (1935)–but can mostly be seen in programmers.

    She was uncredited in three Metro musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Dancing Lady and Reckless.

  • Muriel Evans

    Muriel Adele Evanson (1910-2000) was spotted in Hollywood aged 16 and given her first part in Mademoiselle Modiste (2926). While still at school, she worked for years in bit parts and did some acting for stock companies. 

    In 1929, Evans played the female lead in Joyland, a Lupino Lane comedy short. After a short break from acting to get married and divorced, she worked for MGM and Hal Roach, including a role in Laurel and Hardy’s Pack Up Your Troubles (1932).

    From then on, Evans’s career was a combination of small, often uncredited, appearances in ‘A’ pictures such as Queen Christina (1933) and Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and, much more frequently, leading roles in’B’ westerns. She was a regular leading lady for Buck Jones and for John Wayne during his wilderness years.

    By 1940, Evans had more or less retired from screen acting, though she did continue to do radio work. Much later, she worked as a nurse at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital, where she also lived out her final years.

    Muriel Evans was in three MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Dancing Lady and Hollywood Party.

  • Jean Howard

    Ernestine Hill (1910-2000), like many others, was a model and beauty contest competitor who ended up becoming a Goldwyn Girl. She made her first screen appearance in Eddie Cantor’s Whoopee! (1930).

    After a few uncredited roles, including in MGM’s Broadway to Hollywood and Dancing Lady in 1933, Howard achieved a handful of credits, notably in Edmund Goulding’s 1943 comedy, Claudia. But she does not seem to have taken her career very seriously, and spent much of her time taking photographs.

    Howard only made about a dozen pictures, but also published two volumes of photographs, including one which captured a world tour she undertook with her close friend Cole Porter. 

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