Like a number of other performers, Diana Verne (19??-??) was a member of the chorus line in The Broadway Melody and nothing else is known about her.
Category: Performers
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Diana Verne
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Marshall Ruth
Marshall Ruth (1898-1953) was an actor who worked steadily in films for twenty years, almost always uncredited. His size and shape made him a natural choice when 20th-Century-Fox were looking for someone to play Roscoe Arbuckle in Hollywood Cavalcade (1939).
In The Broadway Melody, Ruth played the impresario Zanfield’s assistant.
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Alice Pitman
Alice Pitman (19??-??) appeared as a member of the chorus line in The Broadway Melody. Nothing else is known about her.
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Charlotte Merriam
Charlotte Merriam (1903-72) started out as a screen actor playing in silent shorts, but graduated to features. Perhaps her most important role was the lead in The Brass Bottle (1923), which was directed by Maurice Tourneur. She also had an important part in the first screen version of Captain Blood (1923).
Merriam transitioned into sound pictures, where she memorably played the negligent mother in Night Nurse (1931). Less memorably, she made an uncredited appearance in The Broadway Melody, playing a flapper.
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Betty Arthur
Elizabeth Kathryn Leopold (1910-2005) was a dancer who was, apparently, discovered at a young age by prima ballerina and dessert inspirer Anna Pavlova.
She made a handful of screen appearances in the late twenties,and her low point as a dancer may well have been in the chorus line of The Broadway Melody.
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Edward Dillon
Edward Dillon (187?-1933) appeared on at least 340 films, most of them in the silent era, from 1908 onwards. He worked under D W Griffith and played leads opposite Mary Pickford. He also directed around 140 films, including a 1915 version of Don Quixote.
In sound pictures, Dillon was usually uncredited. This includes The Broadway Melody, which starred Bessie Love, whom Dillon had directed in A Daughter of the Poor (1917).
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J Emmett Beck
J Emmett Beck (19??-45) is an actor with just three citations in the AFI register.
One of these, and the last one, is Babe Hatrick in The Broadway Melody.
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Ann Sothern
Harriette Arlene Lake (1909-2001) was described as “the greatest comedienne” by Lucille Ball, who was probably a good judge.
In a career of almost sixty years, Ann Sothern was successful on stage, film, television and radio. In Hollywood, she moved from studio to studio before settling at MGM, where she was cast as Maisie Ravier in Maisie (1939). The film’s success gave a boost to her moderately successful career, as well as resulting in nine sequels and a radio series.
When she stopped getting lead roles, Southern moved predominantly to television. But her last great big screen performance, in The Whales of August (1987) earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Ann Sothern was in seven Metro musicals. Early on, she made blink-and-you’ll-miss-them appearances in Good News and Madam Satan. Ten years later, she was back with the lead in Lady Be Good (Eleanor Powell’s top billing being contractual rather than deserved). She next took the title role in Panama Hattie, then played herself in Thousands Cheer. She was Broadway star Joyce Harmon in Words and Music, and finished off playing Jane Powell’s mother in Nancy Goes to Rio.
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Kane Richmond
In the manner of one of Hollywood’s own stories, Frederick William Bowditch (1906-73) was working as a film booker when he was persuaded to audition for the moving pictures.
After a number of uncredited appearances, including as a student in Good News, Richmond won the lead in The Leather Pushers (1922), a boxing series at Universal. According to Richmond, he ended up fighting two or three hundred rounds for the camera, breaking his nose (twice) a hand and an ankle.
Richmond notched up over 100 credits before retiring from the screen, including working alongside the Gipper in Knute Rockne, All American (1940).
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Dave O’Brien
For someone who died aged 57, David Poole Fronabarger (1912-69) produced an astonishing body of work; he must have been one of the hardest-working people in Hollywood. He appeared in around 240 feature films and shorts. He contributed to at least 50 screenplays and won an Emmy in 1961 for writing for The Red Skelton Show. And he directed about 65 shorts. He even did some stunt work at the beginning of his career.
O’Brien is probably best known as the lead performer in many Pete Smith Specialties, the series of comedy shorts produced by Pete Smith for MGM from 1935 to 1955. He also directed some of them as David Barclay. The acting in the Pete Smith films was always silent, with Smith himself providing narration. O’Brien was one of the last great adepts at silent cinema, with a particular skill at falls.
Dave O’Brien was in five Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals. In the 1930s he was uncredited in Good News, Madam Satan, Flying High and Student Tour. Two decades later he was Ralph the stage manager in Kiss Me Kate.
