The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Performers

  • George Le Guere

    There are various claims about the real name and dates of actor George Le Guere. IMDb states he was George Mullally (1887-1947). Wikipedia opts for George Le Guere Mullally (1881-1947). A website devoted to Thanhauser Production, a New York company for whom he made one of his early films, agrees with IMDb’s dates, but says his birth name was Francis Jellinack.

    It is certain that George Le Guere worked steadily on Broadway from 1906 to 1934, in both new plays and revivals. He was persona non grata for a while, after walking off stage in mid-performance in 1913, and it was during this period that he made his first films, presumably driven on screen by the need to eat. Le Guere appeared in six features in 1915, for a variety of New York studios, and continued to work in the medium even after his Broadway career restarted. In 1917, he played Adam Moore in a series of seven films based around the seven deadly sins.

    Le Guere’s final appearances, working in Hollywood in the early 30s, were uncredited, the final one being in MGM’s The Cat and the Fiddle.

  • Henry Kolker

    The dates of Joseph Henry Kolker are either 1870-1947 or 1874-1947 (definitely not, as he claimed himself, 1884). He was born either in Germany or Massachusetts. 

    What we do know is that he was a professional actor by 1895, and worked extensively on Broadway from 1904. By 1914, he was both acting in and directing moving pictures in New York. He directed eighteen films in total, and wrote one of them, The Third Generation (1920).

    In a thirty-three year film career (including a six-year break from 1919), Koler appeared in over 160 features, usually in credited character roles. 

    In Baby Face (1933), Kolker was a banker seduced by Barbara Stanwyck in her ascent to the top. He played the family doctor in Imitation of Life (1934), and was Melvyn Douglas’s controlling father in Theodora Goes Wild (1936). As Friar Laurence, he provided the sleeping potion to Norma Shearer’s Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (1937), and he played the crooked politician in DeMille’s Union Pacific (1939).

    Kolker’s final appearances were in Edgar G Ulmer’s Bluebeard (1944) and, after a break, in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947).

    Henry Kolker was in four MGM musicals: uncredited in The Cat and the Fiddle and Reckless, and credited in Here Comes the Band and Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry.

  • Robert Graves

    Robert Graves Jr (1888-1954) was a stage actor who made his Broadway debut while in his mid-twenties.

    Graves made his feature film debut in 1925, and went on to make almost sixty features, plus many shorts. He was a character actor, and made appearances in Blonde Venus (1932), Dante’s Inferno (1935), The Whole Town’s Talking (1935) and Mad Love (1935).

    He appeared in two MGM musicals, uncredited both times. They were The Cat and the Fiddle and Naughty Marietta. 

  • Arthur Hoyt

    Arthur Thomas Hoyt (1874-1953) was a prolific character actor, acting in almost 250 feature films and well over 100 shorts.

    Hoyt made the first of several appearances on Broadway in 1905, and by 1914 was making short films for companies based in New York. He made his feature debut for Bluebird Photoplays in 1916.

    Hoyt had credited supporting roles in Rex Ingam’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) and in The Lost World (1925), which was directed by his brother Harry. 

    In the sound era, Hoyt features in two iconic prison pictures, The Criminal Code (1931) and 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932). He was the motor court manager in It Happened One Night (1934), and appeared in Magnificent Obsession (1936).

    In the 1940s, Hoyt was a central member of the Preston Sturges stock company, appearing in all nine of the director’s films from The Great McGinty (1940) to The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947). The latter was his final film.

    Arthur Hoyt acted for MGM in four musicals: The Cat and the Fiddle, Student Tour, Hullabaloo and Babes on Broadway. All four appearances were uncredited.

  • Grace Hayle

    Grace Flora Heller (1888-1963) was a prominent actor in provincial theatre, notably Philadelphia, and also worked on Broadway in 1918 and 1946.

    Hayle started working in films while in her mid-forties, developing a niche as dignified ladies in more than 120 pictures. Early appearances, usually uncredited, included Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Baby Face (1933), Theodora Goes Wild (1936) and Topper (1937).

    She was a customer at The Shop Around the Corner (1940) and, in the same year, played her most well-remembered role, as Madame Napaloni in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940). Hayle’s final screen appearance was in the Elvis Presley vehicle Loving You (1957).

    Grace Hayle was in seven MGM musicals, starting with The Cat and the Fiddle. Online resources always claim she played a character named Lettuce, but I find it difficult to believe she was not actually Lettice. Her subsequent appearances were in The Great Ziegfeld, Maytime, Sweethearts, Ship Ahoy, I Married and Angel and Athena.

  • Billy Dooley

    William Dooley (1893-1938) was working in vaudeville, latterly with his wife, Frances Lee, when producer hired him in 1925 to star in comedy shorts. It has been pointed out that Dooley’s onscreen persona owed a lot to the physical appearances of Larry Semon and Harry Langdon: child-like verging on mentally impaired. Dooley’s USP was that he was invariably playing a sailor.

    After 1932, Dooley played generally uncredited supporting roles in around thirty features, including The Cat’s-Paw (1933), Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936) and Anything Goes (1936).

    Dooley appeared without credit in four MGM musicals, starting with The Cat and the Fiddle. He had a showy few seconds as Jeanette MacDonald’s drunken ‘brother’ in Naughty Marietta, and followed this with Here Comes the Band and A Day at the Races, 

  • Armand Kaliz

    The confusion surrounding the birth year of Armand David Kalisz (1887?-1941)–1882 and 1883 are often cited– was in all likelihood created by Kaliz himself. Press reports of his death stated he was only 49, suggesting he maintained secrecy and subterfuge around his age. The most likely year seems to be 1887, which would have made him 53.

    Armand Kaliz was Polish, but emigrated to the United States in 1907. He became a vaudeville performer and, from 1910, worked with his wife, the singer Amelia Stone, in both dramatic and comic sketches. They both also had Broadway experience.

    Kaliz appeared in at least eighty feature films from 1918 onwards, generally in credited roles, though this tailed off later in his career. Pictures of note included: The Temptress (1926), Greta Garbo’s second American film; Michael Curtiz’s epic Noah’s Ark (1928); Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929); Little Caesar (1932); Flying Down to Rio (1933); A Star is Born (1937); Ninotchka (1939); and Down Argentine Way (1940).

    Kaliz played the King in the show-within-a-show in MGM’s The Cat and the Fiddle, and followed this with uncredited appearances in Ice Follies of 1939, Bitter Sweet and Ziegfeld Girl. 

  • Otto Fries

    Otto Hugo Fries (1887-1938) had a background in travelling medicine shows and vaudeville when he started making comedy shorts for Hal Roach in 1916.

    His first feature, Free and Easy, came in 1921. This was the first of over seventy appearances in features, though he made more than 100 shorts across his career, including many filmed in German. 

    Notable pictures featuring Fries include Mauritz Stiller’s Hotel Imperial (1927), John Ford’s Riley the Cop (1928), the Marx Brothers’ Monkey Business (1932), Anna Karenina (1935), Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938) and The Mad Miss Manton (1938).

    Fries appeared uncredited in five MGM musicals, beginning with The Cat and the Fiddle, followed by The Merry Widow, Here Comes the Band, A Night at the Opera and Born to Dance. 

  • Frank Adams

    Frank Adams (dates unknown) is another of those actors who passed briefly through Hollywood, made a few films on the way, and then disappeared, leaving no trace to follow.

    IMDb claims he appeared uncredited in ten features, of which the AFI confirms only three, one of which is MGM’s The Cat and the Fiddle. They agree that he plays a musician.

  • Leonid Kinskey

    Leonid Nikolaevich Kinskii (1903-98) started out working as a theatrical mime in Czarist Russia. He left the country in 1921 and acted on stage in various countries until arriving in the United States in 1924.

    After further stage work, and working on a film in 1926 where he did not make the final cut, Kinskey finally made it to the screen with an uncredited appearance in Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise (1932). He went on to become one of the most instantly-recognizable character actors in Hollywood.

    Pictures featuring Kinskey include Duck Soup (1933), The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), Algiers (1938), The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939), Ball of Fire (1942) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1956).

    Kinskey is best remembered as Sascha the “crazy Russian” bartender in Casablanca (1942) and was the last-surviving member of its leading cast.

    During the Second World War, Kinskey worked with the US government to help select American films to be shown in the Soviet Union. Later in life, he worked extensively on television.

    Kinskey acted in eight MGM musicals: The Cat and the Fiddle, Hollywood Party, The Merry Widow, Maytime, The Great Waltz, I Married an Angel, Presenting Lily Mars and Nancy Goes to Rio.

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