Helen Johnson (1906-2002) had a very brief career in leading roles, followed by a slow decline under the name Judith Wood, culminating in an uncredited appearance in The Asphalt Jungle (1950).
In the early 30s, Johnson appeared in a number of ‘A’ features, most notably as the feckless Pat Thayer in Children of Pleasure.
Winifred Elaine Gibson (1898-1987) was an actor who starred in films without ever really becoming a film star. She had performed in vaudeville, burlesque and musical comedies before featuring in Nothing But the Truth (1929). The following year she was given the female lead in Children of Pleasure.
Thereafter, Gibson mostly appeared in ‘B’ pictures; Richard Barrios calls her “one of the best tough blondes in Depression cinema”. In the 1950s, as she moved into television work, she and her partner, Beverley Roberts, were heavily involved in the development of theatrical trade unionism in New York.
Performers
| Lawrence Gray | Danny Regan |
| Wynne Gibson | Emma Gray |
| Judith Wood | Pat Thayer (as Helen Johnson) |
| Kenneth Thomson | Rod Peck (as Kenneth Thompson) |
| Lee Kohlmar | Bernie (as Lee Kolmar) |
| May Boley | Fanny Kaye |
| Benny Rubin | Andy Little |
| Jack Benny | Himself (uncredited) |
| Sidney Bracey | Miles – Butler (uncredited) |
| Eddie Bush | Member of Biltmore Trio – Party Vocalists (uncredited) |
| Rosalind Byrne | Girl at Party (uncredited) |
| Mary Carlisle | Secretary (uncredited) |
| Carrie Daumery | Dowager at Party (uncredited) |
| Drew Demorest | Song Writer (uncredited) |
| Ann Dvorak | Chorus Girl (uncredited) |
| Jay Eaton | Eddie Brown (uncredited) |
| Cliff Edwards | Himself (uncredited) |
| Paul Gibbons | Member of Biltmore Trio – Party Vocalists (uncredited) |
| Maude Turner Gordon | Dowager at Party (uncredited) |
| Edward Martindel | Mr. Thayer (uncredited) |
| Doris McMahon | Society Girl at Party (uncredited) |
| William H. O’Brien | Party Butler #2 (uncredited) |
| Hal Price | Song Writer (uncredited) |
| Herbert Prior | Jeweler (uncredited) |
| Bill Seckler | Member of Biltmore Trio – Party Vocalists (uncredited) |
| Polly Ann Young | Society Girl at Party (uncredited) |
Doris McMahon (1910-61) was a performer whose short, mostly precode, career could largely be described as scantily clad.
She was in three MGM musicals, Free and Easy, Children of Pleasure and Madam Satan.
Theodore Andrew Lorch (1873-1947) was a busy supporting player who notched up over 170 screen appearances, most of those in the sound era being uncredited. His adaptability is indicated by a sample of his work in 1934: an abortionist (The Road to Ruin), a ringmaster (A Modern Hero), an executioner (The Affairs of Cellini), a jury member (Two Heads on a Pillow) and a native fakir (Kid Millions).
Lorch found time to be in three Metro musicals: Free and Easy, A Lady’s Morals and Reckless.
Lottice Howell (1897-1982) was a versatile soprano who was happy in both opera and the vaudeville stage.
Howell signed a contract with MGM in 1929, but only appeared in a handful of films before returning to the stage. Two of these were the musicals Free and Easy and In Gay Madrid.
Cecil Blount DeMille (1881-1959) was one of the founders of Hollywood cinema. After a fairly successful career as a stage actor, and less success as a playwright, he helped to found the Jesse L Lasky Feature Play Company (later Paramount) in 1913. DeMille and a team of actors and technicians relocated from New York to Los Angeles and established the first studio in the Hollywood area. His first production was The Squawman (1914), a story he remade twice, in 1918 and 1931.
DeMille produced and directed films in Hollywood for the next forty-three years, ending with The Ten Commandments in 1956. Veering wildly between the prurient and the pious, his work was usually commercially successful, and The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) won one of the all-time most baffling Best Picture Oscars, beating The Quiet Man and High Noon; Singin’ in the Rain was not even nominated.
DeMille directed one of MGM’s strangest musicals, Madam Satan, in which he provided the voice coming from a radio. He also appeared, as himself, in Free and Easy.
John Leslie Coogan (1914-84) claimed his place in cinema history at a very young age when he played the eponymous character in Chaplin’s The Kid (1921). It is a performance for the ages, though the downside is that Coogan’s parents exploited his earnings, with subsequent legal action culminating in the California Child Actors Bill (the Coogan Act).
Unlike many other child actors who have immediate success, Coogan had other substantial parts while young, such as Oliver Twist (1922) and Tom Sawyer (1930), and also continued his career into adulthood. He found renewed fame in the sixties playing Uncle Fester in The Addams Family (1964-66). His final credit, as far removed as possible from The Kid, was in the 1983 slasher movie The Prey.
Jackie Coogan made two appearances in Metro musicals, and with the longest gap between of any performer. In 1930 he appeared as himself in the Hollywood-set Free and Easy. Thirty-five years later he played a cop in Girl Happy (1965), an Elvis Presley vehicle. Chaplin to Presley is a long journey.
Mary Louise Stieger (1869-1956) began her performing career singing grand opera, and made her first screen appearance in 1908, in a very abbreviated version of Macbeth (she played Lady Macbeth).
She worked more steadily in films from 1916 on, usually in minor roles in comedies, frequently uncredited. One of her credited appearances was as El Brendel’s mother-in-law in The Big Trail (1930).
In the same year she appeared in Free and Easy, without credit. Her one other musical at MGM was The Devil’s Brother.
Edward Santree Brophy (1895-1960) was one of the most recognizable character actors in Golden Age Hollywood, both physically and vocally. He made his first screen appearance in 1920, but mostly worked as a unit manager or assistant director during the twenties.
After standing in for an absent actor in Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman (1928) (on which he was working as unit manager), Brophy’s acting career took off, aided by several other supporting roles with Keaton. He specialized in cops, gangsters and sidekicks, notably Goldie Locke in the Falcon series. His distinctive New York accent also won him the voice role of Timothy Q Mouse in Disney’s Dumbo (1941).
Brophy made a couple of uncredited appearances in MGM musicals: with Keaton again, in Free and Easy, and in Broadway to Hollywood. He was then credited as Zeke, one of the settlers who tramp-tramp-tramps with Nelson Eddy in Naughty Marietta.
In keeping with Brophy’s Runyonesque personality, it is fitting that he is alleged to have died while watching a boxing match.
