Information is scarce about the actor Billy Taft (1908-95). His film career appears to have lasted from 1929 to 1940, and to have consisted of around fourteen credits. Two of these were MGM musicals: Good News and Swiss Miss.
Billy Taft’s most enduring performance was probably duetting with Ruby Keeler in the ‘Sittin’ on the Backyard Fence’ number in Footlight Parade (1933).
Thomas E Jackson (1886-1967) had a thirty-year career on the stage before even setting foot in Hollywood. He went west in 1929 to act in the film of Broadway (1927), in which he had played a cop.
This was the start of a long screen career, in which cynical cops were a recurring theme. He was Sergeant Flaherty in Little Caesar (1931), an unnamed detective in Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) and a lieutenant in Dead End (1937). But was an assistant district attorney when he was gunned down by Clark Gable in Manhattan Melodrama (1934), watched by John Dillinger immediately before he suffered the same fate.
In a very long list of credits, Thomas Jackson played in only one MGM musical, as the Coach in the original Good News.
Dorothy Mullican (1906-81) was one of the four Lane sisters, and the one who chose the most exotic stage name (the others were Rosemary, Priscilla and, running Lola a close second, Leota).
Three of the sisters (Leota was allegedly rejected by director Michael Curtiz), had their breakthrough in Four Daughters (1938) and its sequels, but only Priscilla went on to a successful career.
Lola Lane had previously played a series of supporting roles, one of which was Pat in Good News.
Augustus Scheu (1893-1945) was a song-and-dance man in vaudeville and on Broadway, noted as an ‘eccentric’ dancer like Ray Bolger and Buddy Ebsen.
Shy made his Broadway debut in 1915 and worked regularly throughout the 1920s. His biggest show was Good News (1927), in which he played Bobbie. He and the leading lady, Mary Lawlor, recreated their roles in the 1930 film version.
Unlike Lawlor, Shy stuck around in Hollywood, and featured in two further Metro musicals: A Lady’s Morals and New Moon. He had been in the original production of The New Moon (1927), but playing a different role.
Gus Shy also worked as a dialogue director on a number of films before retiring from acting to become a Hollywood agent.
Joseph Stanley Smith (1903-74) started acting in stock theatre as a juvenile and worked steadily before making his first screen appearance in 1929. He was part of the influx of stage actors following the introduction of sound.
Smith worked mostly for Paramount, including playing the lead opposite Clara Bow in Love Among the Millionaires (1930). Immediately afterwards, he went to MGM to perform the same function for Mary Lawlor in Good News.
It was reported in 1932 that Smith was supplementing acting as the conductor of his own orchestra
By the end of his film career in 1943, Smith was taking small parts, often uncredited.
Mary Lawlor (1907-77) was a musical comedy star who made her Broadway debut in 1922.
Lawlor created the role of Connie in Good News (1927), and travelled to Hollywood to play the character in MGM’s first film version.
After making one further film, a non-musical drama, Lawlor married Lyn ‘Broadway’ Lary, a major league baseball star, and retired from acting.
The Cast
| Mary Lawlor | Connie Lane |
| Stanley Smith | Tom Marlowe |
| Bessie Love | Babe O’Day |
| Cliff Edwards | ‘Pooch’ Kearney |
| Gus Shy | Bobbie |
| Lola Lane | Pat |
| Thomas Jackson | Coach |
| Delmer Daves | Beef |
| Billy Taft | Freshman |
| Frank McGlynn | Professor Kenyon |
| Penny Singleton | Flo (as Dorothy McNulty) |
| Helyn Virgil | Girl |
| Vera Marshe | Girl |
| Abe Lyman | Abe Lyman (and his Band) |
| Buster Crabbe | Student (uncredited) |
| Ann Dvorak | Student (uncredited) |
| Harry Earles | Small Person in Trash Basket (uncredited) |
| Al Norman | Eccentric Dancer (uncredited) |
| Dave O’Brien | Student (uncredited) |
| Kane Richmond | Student (uncredited) |
| Ann Sothern | Student (uncredited) |
Composer Paul Lambkovitz (1888-1953) was born either in Poland or Russia, and trained at the Petrograd Conservatory before working as both a conductor and cantor. He emigrated to America in 1922.
Lamkoff was qualified by both his professions to work as a vocal coach and choral arranger for the ‘Kol Nidre’ sequence of The Jazz Singer (1927), roles he also carried out for the 1952 remake.
He then had a sporadic career in the film industry, working as composer, orchestrator and vocal coach on a dozen or so pictures. These included Call of the Flesh, Here Comes the Band, A Night at the Opera, Rose-Marie and San Francisco. Alongside this he pursued his work as a cantor and expert on Jewish music.
The Cast
| Ramon Novarro | Juan de Dios |
| Dorothy Jordan | Maria Consuelo Vargas |
| Ernest Torrence | Esteban |
| Nance O’Neil | Mother Superior |
| Renée Adorée | Lola |
| Mathilde Comont | La Rumbarita |
| Russell Hopton | Captain Enrique Vargas |
| Sidney D’Albrook | Police Officer (uncredited) |
| Julia Griffith | Dowager Empress Opera Spectator (uncredited) |
| Fred Hueston | Opera Spectator (uncredited) |
| Lillian Lawrence | Nun (uncredited) |
| Lillian Leighton | Shawl Vendor (uncredited) |
| Adolph Milar | Police Officer (uncredited) |
| Rolfe Sedan | Actor in Opera (uncredited) |
| Leo White | Impressario’s Assistant (uncredited) |
| Frank Yaconelli | Fruit Vendor (uncredited) |
No one would claim that Italian-born Francesco Yaconelli (1898-1965) had a distinguished film career, yet after his death a Senate resolution described him as “devoting a lifetime to unselfish service and entertainment to people all over the world”.
Yaconelli could most often be seen in cheap westerns, frequently as a Mexican, and sometimes playing the accordion, at which he was proficient. In the mid-twenties he and his brother set up their own studio, for which he both produced and directed a handful of pictures before it was wiped out by the Depression.
Yaconelli had served in a US aero squadron during the First World War. In the Second World War, he worked as a USO tour director, also performing his vaudeville act. He did the same during the Korean War. It was these activities that secured the citation from the Senate.
Yaconelli was in four 1930s MGM musicals: Call of the Flesh, A Lady’s Morals, A Night at the Opera and The Firefly.
