The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Performers

  • Gino Corrado

    Italian-born Gino Corrado Liserani (1893-1982) had the occasional featured role during the silent period, such as Aramis in Douglas Fairbanks’s The Iron Mask (1929). He also made appearances in Intolerance (1916) and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927). In talking pictures, however, Corrado rarely strayed beyond restaurants and cafés, playing uncredited diners, chefs and no fewer than 86 waiters. He even served at table in Rick’s Café Américain in Casablanca (1942).

    Corrado appeared in fifteen Metro musicals, starting with a credited role in Lord Byron of Broadway. He was then uncredited as a waiter in The Merry Widow, followed by A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, Broadway Melody of 1938, New Moon, Bitter Sweet (a waiter), I Married an Angel, I Dood It (another waiter), Yolanda and the Thief (yet another waiter), Two Sisters from Boston (credited as Ossifish), Holiday in Mexico, Fiesta, Words and Music (a final waiter) and An American in Paris.

    After retiring from acting, Corrado opened a restaurant.

  • Jack Byron

    Byron Moses Cheek (1895-1991) began his film career with a featured role in Fixed By George (1920), but spent the next thirty-five years mostly in uncredited parts. His final appearance was as a photographer at the start of This Island Earth (1955).

    Byron played five uncredited roles in Metro musicals, in Lord Byron of Broadway, Madam Satan, Hollywood Party, Du Barry Was a Lady and Swing Fever.

  • Marion Shilling

    Marion Helen Schilling (1910-2004) was arguably the cinema’s first Scream Queen. With a technique she developed playing onstage with Bela Lugosi in Dracula, she utilized her scream both in her own performances and as a scream-double for other stars.

    Shilling’s screen career only involved seven years of her very long life, and was mostly spent in second features, including many low-budget westerns.

    The love interest in Lord Byron of Broadway, being both an ‘A’ picture and a musical, was an outlier in Shilling’s career.

  • Ethelind Terry

    Ethelind Terry (1899-1984) made her name on Broadway in the 1920s, most notably as the eponymous heroine of Rio Rita in the original 1927 production.

    In 1930 Terry was cast as the vampish Ardis in Lord Byron of Broadway. The film was not a success and she made only one other film appearance, in a 1937 Tex Ritter western.

  • Charles Kaley

    Charles Kaley (1902-65) was a popular singer and band leader who was unexpectedly–perhaps inexplicably–cast in the lead role in Lord Byron of Broadway. The film provided him with a successful recording of ‘Should I?,’ but Kaley’s acting career progressed no further than a handful of appearances in Poverty Row shorts and features.

  • Polly Ann Young

    Like Sally Blane, Polly Ann Young (1908-97) was the less-successful sister of Loretta Young. She acted in around 40 films, mostly in uncredited parts.

    Young’s three Metro musicals were made in a cluster in 1930: They Learned About Women, Children of Pleasure and Love in the Rough.

  • George H Reed

    George Henry Reed (1866-1952) got a strong start in films when he played Jim in the 1920 version of Huckleberry Finn. But the opportunities for Black actors were few at that time and, apart from his appearance as Aaron in the all-Black Green Pastures (1936), Reed was thereafter restricted to a very narrow range of small parts.

    The restrictions and stereotyping faced by Black performers are demonstrated in Reed’s three 1930 Metro musicals, They Learned About Women, Montana Moon and Love in the Rough. He played a train porter in all three of them. 

  • Lee Phelps

    Napoleon Bonaparte Kubuck (1893-1953) notched up over 660 film and TV appearances, most of them uncredited.

    Phelps was in twenty MGM musicals: They Learned About Women, The Florodora Girl, A Lady’s Morals, Flying High, Dancing Lady, Reckless, A Night at the Opera, Rose-Marie, The Bohemian Girl, The Great Ziegfeld, Sweethearts, Balalaika, Little Nellie Kelly, Born to Sing (a rare onscreen credit), Music for Millions, Anchors Aweigh, The Harvey Girls, Till the Clouds Roll By, Take Me Out to the Ball Game and That Midnight Kiss. 

  • John Kelly

    John F Kelly (1901-47) was an actor whose film appearances fluctuated between small featured roles and walk ons. For instance, he went from playing an uncredited henchman in Everybody’s Doing It to being the not-so-bright Elmer in Bringing Up Baby (both 1938).

    Kelly’s MGM musical appearances were all uncredited: They Learned About Women, San Francisco and Born to Dance.

  • Rosalind Byrne

    Louise Brooks lookalike Rosalind Loretta Mooney (1904-1989) had worked as an extra on hundreds of silent films, when she was given her first small role in Flaming Youth (1923). Unfortunately, her career did not flourish and she never progressed beyond bit parts. 

    Byrne’s final two appearances before retiring in 1930 were in They Learned About Women and Children of Pleasure. 

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