The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Performers

  • Broadway to Hollywood

    The Cast

    Alice BradyLulu Hackett
    Frank MorganTed Hackett
    Jackie CooperTed Hackett Jr. as a Child
    Russell HardieTed Hackett Jr.
    Madge EvansAnne Ainsley
    Mickey RooneyTed Hackett III as a Child
    Eddie QuillanTed Hackett III
    Jimmy DuranteJimmy
    Fay TempletonHerself
    Edited from The March of Time (1930)
    May RobsonVeteran Actress
    Albertina Rasch DancersThemselves
    Edited from The March of Time (1930)
    Tad AlexanderCousin David (uncredited)
    Edward BrophyJoe Mannion (uncredited)
    Ruth ChanningWanda (uncredited)
    William Collier Sr.Himself in archive footage (uncredited)
    Marie DresslerHerself in archive footage (uncredited)
    Louis MannHimself in archive footage (uncredited)
    Claire Du BreyAunt Clara (uncredited)
    Nelson EddyJohn Sylvester (uncredited)
    Sidney BraceyMan in Balcony (uncredited)
    Barney FaganEdited from The March of Time (uncredited)
    Josephine SabelEdited from The March of Time (uncredited)
    DeWolf HopperEdited from The March of Time (uncredited)
    Joe WeberEdited from The March of Time (uncredited)
    Lew FieldsEdited from The March of Time (uncredited)
    Robert GreigDiamond Jim Brady (uncredited)
    Tenen HoltzBooking Agent (uncredited)
    Curly HowardFritz the Clown (uncredited)
    Moe HowardOtto the Clown (uncredited)
    Frank JenksCall Boy (uncredited)
    Jean HowardGrace (uncredited)
    Muriel Evans1st flirty blonde chorus girl (uncredited)
    Isabelle Keith2nd flirty blonde chorus girl (uncredited)
    Miriam MarlinChorus girl (uncredited)
    Edwin MaxwellRockwell (uncredited)
    Alexander PollardButler (uncredited)
    Helen ParrishCousin (uncredited)
    Edward Peil SrStage Manager (uncredited)
    Una MerkelFlirt in audience (uncredited)
    Charles RiceHimself (uncredited)
    Fred CadyHimself (uncredited)
    Tom Nawn and CompanyPerformers (uncredited)
    Bobby SomersTed Hackett III as a Baby (uncredited)
    Forrest TaylorConway (uncredited)
    Sherry HallAssistant on film set (uncredited)
    Leo WhiteJoe Weber (uncredited)
    Billy SullivanUndetermined Role (uncredited)
    Eddie FosterUndetermined Role (uncredited)

  • Charley Rogers

    Charles Rogers (1887-1956) is generally known as Charley and, like his namesake Charlie Chaplin and his close friend Stan Laurel, he started out working in British music halls, before emigrating to the United States in 1912.

    In the same year, Rogers played the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist, one of the earliest multi-reel features, produced by a New York studio. He continued to work in the East Coast film industry for several years, before finally making his way to Hollywood. 

    In 1927, Rogers appeared uncredited in Love ‘em and Feed ‘em, and stayed at the Hal Roach Studios for many years, quickly moving into writing and directing.

    Rogers has been described as, in creative terms, second only to Stan Laurel on the Roach lot, and he worked on a number of Laurel and Hardy’s best shorts and features. These included, as a gag writer, We Faw Down, Two Tars (both 1928), Hog Wild and Laughing Gravy (both 1930). Rogers contributed the original stories and screenplays for Block-Heads (1938), A Chump at Oxford and Saps at Sea (both 1940). 

    Rogers directed or co-directed, and also contributed to the writing of, three of Laurel and Hardy’s operettas: The Devil’s Brother, Babes in Toyland (in which he also played Simple Simon) and The Bohemian Girl. He also wrote gags for Swiss Miss. 

    Away from Laurel and Hardy, Rogers played Josef Goebbels in the studio’s bizarre wartime semi-feature That Nazty Nuisance (1943). One of his last jobs was an uncredited appearance in Chaplin’s Limelight (1952). 

  • Brooks Benedict

    Following military service in the First World War, Harold J Mann (1896-1968) worked in various jobs in Hollywood before making his acting debut in William Wellman’s Cupid’s Fireman (1923).He chose a name that matched his lounge lizard appearance.

    Benedict went on to appear in over 350 films. Initially, he had featured roles, such as the College Cad in Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman (1925), but by the sound era he was mostly playing uncredited bit parts. 

    Benedict was credited in What Price Hollywood? (1932), and also appeared in Sons of the Desert (1933), The Thin Man (1934), In Old Chicago (1938), Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Letter (1940), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Now, Voyager (1942), Phantom Lady (1944), The Killers (1946), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Out of the Past (1947) and Strangers on a Train (1951).

    Brooks Benedict acted in five Metro musicals, starting with The Devil’s Brother. He went on to appear in Sweethearts, Lady Be Good, Du Barry was a Lady and Holiday in Mexico.

  • Frank Terry

    Frank Ernest Edwards (1871-1948) had a long career touring the world as a stage actor before becoming a jack-of-all-trades in Hollywood.

    From 1917, Terry worked at the Hal Roach Studios as a gag writer, story contributor, scenarist, assistant director, director and actor. He worked regularly, and in many of these capacities, with Laurel and Hardy, appearing as Hives the butler in Me and My Pal (1933). In the same year he had a bit part in The Devil’s Brother.

    Outside the Roach studio, Terry played one of the hunters who find the Monster in the blind man’s cottage in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

    IMDb claims he played a bailiff in Old Mother Riley in Paris (1938), though it is unclear why he would have been in England.

    Frank Terry’s most notorious contribution to film history is as the man who handed Harold Lloyd the stage bomb that took off several of his fingers. Terry was also injured in the incident. 

    Frank Terry retired from show business and became a Christian missionary. 

  • George Miller

    The IMDb entry for George Miller (1903-??) raises more questions than it answers.

    It gives him seven credits, with a 1930 debut in a ‘B’ western’. It then shows four appearances with Laurel and Hardy, including in the musical The Devil’s Brother. 

    It then claims he played the Reeve in the historical sequence at the beginning of Powell and Pressburger’s A Canterbury Tale (1944), suggesting a relocation to the UK. 

    Finally, IMDb says he played Kasim Baba in a 1953 BBC production, Chu Chin Chow – On Ice, a version of the 1916 musical on an ice rink.

    Make of that what you will. 

  • Jack Hill

    Lawrence Young Hill (1887-1963) made his uncredited screen debut in Shiver and Shake (1922), the first of many appearances for the Hal Roach Studios, where he also worked as an occasional stunt performer.

    Hill was a regular in Laurel and Hardy pictures right from the beginning, working as an extra in their first screen pairing, Putting Pants on Philip (1927). In Two Tars (1928) he knocked Stan over with a mattress, while in Below Zero (1930) he helped throw the pair out of the restaurant. In Bonnie Scotland (1935), Hill had three different roles.

    Inevitably, Jack Hill made appearances in three of MGM’s Laurel and Hardy musicals: The Devil’s Brother, The Bohemian Girl and Swiss Miss.

  • Arthur Stone

    Arthur Taylor Goetze (1883-1940) was only making films for about twelve years, but still managed to notch up around 80 appearances. Prior to that, he had worked in vaudeville and, most recently, as a makeup artist. He was married to Dorothy Westmore, from the famous Hollywood makeup dynasty.

    Working for Hal Roach, Stone had a passing similarity to Harry Langdon, and played a similarly child-like character. He then moved into playing character roles in First National features. By the end of the silent era, he was playing co-starring roles alongside actors such as Coleen Moore and Jean Hersholt.

    The coming of sound saw Stone move into smaller character roles, often in westerns, until he was hired by Mack Sennett to make a series of comedy shorts. In his final years, he moved between down-the-bill character roles, for example in Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935) and uncredited bits. He can be seen as one of the lynch mob in Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936), providing a little comic relief.

    Stone appeared without credit in one MGM/Hal Roach musical, The Devil’s Brother.

  • Dick Gilbert

    Richard Gilbert (1889-1960), popularly known as ‘Fighting Dick’, started out as a boxer in 1907. He had some success, but was also described as a “punching bag” when facing superior opponents. Online claims that he once beat Jack Dempsey appear to have no substance. 

    After retiring from the ring, Gilbert found steady work as a heavy in silent comedies, frequently working for the Hal Roach Studios. He was usually uncredited, but did secure the occasional substantial role, for example in the western The Man from the West (1926). 

    Gilbert featured in many Laurel and Hardy shorts, and also in two of their feature-length musicals, The Devil’s Brother and The Bohemian Girl. 

  • Francis Ford

    Francis Joseph Feeney (1881-1953) was a Hollywood pioneer, producer and director of scores of pictures, who is now remembered only for the bit parts he played in the films of his younger brother, John Ford. Ironically, it was Francis who gave his brother his introduction to film making.

    Francis left the Feeney home as a teenager and was for years unheard of by his family. After drifting around in a variety of jobs, he began working in the New York film industry, and eventually moved to Texas, and, finally, Hollywood, where he directed and appeared in westerns for Thomas Ince.

    In 1913 he signed with Universal, and began making serials starring Grace Cunard. After regaining contact with his family, he invited his brother John to Hollywood and gave him a job. Later, John Ford would claim his brother was the only director he ever learned from.

    Francis Ford’s career declined as John’s ascended, and by the late 1920s he was working as a character actor. He appeared , usually without credit, in many films of note, as well as those of his brother, including Frankenstein (1931), The Plainsman (1936), They Died with Their Boots On (1941), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and Hangover Square (1945). For John Ford, he usually played old men and/or drunkards.

    Ford was in two MGM musicals: The Devil’s Brother and The Girl of the Golden West. 

  • Edith Fellows

    Edith Marilyn Fellows (1923-2011) was five when she made her first film, a Charley Chase comedy short. Over the next 65 years she notched up a modest 80-odd appearances on the big screen and television. She also began working on the stage in the 1940s, appearing a number of times on Broadway.

    Fellows had already made twenty films by the time she was 13, most memorably alongside W C Fields in Mrs Wiggins of the Cabbage Patch (1935). Later, she was Polly Pepper in Columbia’s Five Little Peppers series. She managed to continue working after her years as a child actor were over, but mostly for Poverty Row studios. 

    Financial exploitation by her family, prescription drugs and alcohol all interfered with her career, as did serious stage fright. But she soldiered on, eventually playing herself in Dreams Deferred, a play based on her life and experiences. This led to more television work, including the role of Edith Head in a biopic about Grace Kelly.

    Fellows had made appearances with Hal Roach’s ‘Little Rascals’, and also used her in the musical The Devil’s Brother.

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