The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Performers

  • Cecilia Parker

    Cecilia Parker (1914-93) and her family emigrated from Canada to Los Angeles when she was a child, which was the gateway to her obtaining extra work and a place on a training course at Fox Studios.

    Aged 16, she appeared (literally) alongside her younger sister Linda, playing Siamese twins in A Lady’s Morals. She went on to play in three other MGM musicals: Naughty Marietta, Love Finds Andy Hardy and Seven Sweethearts.

    Cecilia Parker was in all but two of the Andy Hardy pictures, playing Andy’s sister, having previously appeared, as the love interest, in the series’s progenitor, Ah, Wilderness! (1935). 

    Parker more or less retired from acting in 1942, but returned for the failed Andy Hardy revival, Andy Hardy Comes Home (1958).

  • Alphonse Martell

    French-born Alphonse Martell (1890-1976) had a forty-year career as a character actor in Hollywood, making over 250 films and many television appearances.

    In 1933, Martell became a Poverty Row auteur when he wrote and directed Tarnished Youth (also known as Gigolettes of Paris). 

    Martell played a variety of parts, but his speciality was waiters, in which role he made at least 80 appearances, as well as cropping up many times as a maitre d’. 

    Alphonse acted in twelve Metro musicals across three decades. A Lady’s Morals was followed by Student Tour, A Night at the Opera, Everybody Sing, Broadway Melody of 1940, I Married an Angel, Bathing Beauty, The Barkeleys of Broadway, Rich, Young and Pretty, Show Boat, Lovely To Look At and I’ll Cry Tomorrow.

  • Agostino Borgato

    Agostino Borgato (1871-1939) was a theatre actor in Italy and the UK prior to emigrating to America in 1925. He had also appeared in a number of Italian films from 1910 onwards, and directed five in the period 1918-21.

    Borgato made his American screen debut in 1925, eventually appearing in around sixty films. After the introduction of sound, he played a variety of foreigners, though obviously with an emphasis on Italians. He was also cast in foreign-language versions of Hollywood films.

    Borgato acted in seven MGM musicals: A Lady’s Morals, The Cuban Love Song, Broadway Melody of 1936, Rose-Marie, Maytime, The Firefly and Swiss Miss.

  • Mavis Villiers

    Mavis Clare Cooney (1909-76) emigrated from Australia with her family when she was eleven. Soon afterwards, Mary Pickford gave her a small role in Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921).

    Villiers was in half a dozen films over the next ten years, culminating in A Lady’s Morals. She and her mother emigrated to the UK in 1933.

    Villiers worked extensively on the British stage and, later, on television. She also made occasional feature films, most notably as Katherine Hepburn’s companion in Suddenly Last Summer (1959) and as one of the blackmailers in Victim (1961).

  • Joan Standing

    Joan Standing (1903-79) was born into a British theatrical family and pursued a minor career in Hollywood as a supporting player. She made her debut in 1919 in The Loves of Letty, made by the Goldwyn Studios.

    Standing’s best-known role was unquestionably Nurse Briggs in Dracula (1931) where, under hypnosis, she gives the vampire access to the sleeping Mina.

    Joan Standing made one appearance in an MGM musical, as Louise in A Lady’s Morals.

  • Bodil Rosing

    Bodil Frederikke Hammerich (1877-1941) was a stage actor in her native Denmark who made several appearances on Broadway in the early twenties.

    Rosing had retired from the stage when she travelled to Hollywood with her daughter Tova, who had married actor Monte Blue. While there, she secured a small role in MGM’s Pretty Ladies (1925), beginning a career as a character actor that would run to around 80 appearances.

    Rosing was frequently cast in matronly roles, often as maids, cooks and housekeepers. Most memorably, she was the maid in Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927).

    Bodil Rosing appeared in two MGM musicals: as the innkeeper’s wife in A Lady’s Morals, and uncredited in an identical role in The Great Waltz.

  • Giovanni Martino

    Giovanni Martino (1884-19??) was an Italian operatic bass singer. He made his professional debut in 1907 and by 1919 was performing in New York at the Metropolitan Opera. By 1927, He had appeared in around 120 productions at the Met.

    In 1930, Martino was one of the many from the New York stage recruited by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, appearing with Grace Moore in A Lady’s Morals. 

    His career in films was short, though he did have a featured role in El presidio (1930), the Spanish-language version of The Big House (1930).

    For such a notable performer, it is strange that details of his later years seem unavailable.

  • Paul Porcasi

    Italian actor Paul Porcasi (1879-1946) was a stage performer, both in straight theatre and grand opera. He made a few silent films for East coast companies from 1917 onwards, but began his screen career in earnest when he travelled to Hollywood in 1929 to recreate the role of Nick Verdis in the adaptation of the eponymous Broadway hit, Broadway.

    Porcasi went on to accumulate 140 credits for character roles in just sixteen years. He was the apple vendor who catches Fay Wray stealing in King Kong (1933), and in Casablanca (1942) he played a fez-wearing local who provides the exposition explaining the character Ferrari.

    Most of Porcasi’s parts were Hollywood-exotic, though rarely as left-field as when he played Benito Mussolini in Star Spangled Rhythm (1942).

    Porcasi made appearances in four MGM musicals. A Lady’s Morals and its French-language remake were followed by three pictures starring Jeanette MacDonald, The Cat and the Fiddle, Rose-Marie and Maytime.

  • George F Marion

    George Francis Marion (1860-1945) was a notable stage actor who made forays in films from 1915 to 1935. He also directed and choreographed on the stage, and directed two films in 1916.

    Marion created the role of Chris in Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie (1921), and recreated the part in the 1930 film version starring Greta Garbo. In the same year, he appeared as the innkeeper in A Lady’s Morals.

    Marion’s son, George F Marion Jr, made what might be considered more significant contributions to the film musical when he co-wrote Love Me Tonight (1932) and The Gay Divorcee (1934).

  • Gilbert Emery

    Gilbert Emery Bensley Pottle (1875-1945) was a successful author and playwright (sometimes under the name Emery Pottle) both before and during his career as a screen character actor. At least one of his plays, The Hero (1921), has been revived in the 21st century.

    Following some stage acting, Emery made his first film, for Vitagraph, in 1921, but only appeared in one other silent film. From 1929 onwards, however, he accumulated around 80 credits.

    Emery only appeared in one MGM musical, A Lady’s Morals, but he also contributed to the screenplays of a number of pictures, one of which was The Cuban Love Song. 

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