Andrew Jackson Baxley (1884-1950) appeared in a handful of excellent films during his career as a character actor, including two with Orson Welles (The Magnificent Amberson in 1942 and The Lady from Shanghai in 1947). But there, as in most of his other pictures, he was uncredited.
Baxley was in eight Metro musicals: Free and Easy, The Florodora Girl, Dancing Lady, The Great Ziegfeld, San Francisco, Strike Up the Band, Thrill of a Romance and Summer Holiday.
William Morenus (1864-1944) ran away from home, aged 11, to join the theatre. He interrupted his successful stage career forty years later, in 1915, to make a few silent shorts (his first role was playing himself in Fatty and the Broadway Stars), but his film career really started in 1929 with the introduction of sound.
Collier played himself again in Free and Easy, as the MC at the premiere. For a hattrick, he was seen as William Collier Sr once again in Broadway to Hollywood. His non-musical roles offered more variety.
Edgar Dearing (1893-1974) is a familiar face from supporting roles in well over 300 films. He usually portrayed figures of authority, including literally dozens of police officers, a large number of whom were on motorcycles.
His most famous motorcycle cop was in Laurel and Hardy’s Two Tars (1928), in which his vehicle is crushed by a steamroller.
Dearing featured in eleven Metro musicals, with his most notable (and credited) appearance being in the first, Free and Easy. He plays the studio gate guard who pursues Buster Keaton across the soundstages of Culver City.
The other musicals were Here Comes the Band (though Dearing’s scenes were deleted), Rose-Marie, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, Everybody Sing, Listen Darling, Honolulu, Broadway Melody of 1940, Go West, The Big Store and Grounds for Marriage
Frederick Liedtke (1874-1948) was a vaudeville performer and actor, and worked in theatrical management before directing his first film in 1916. A successful collaboration with Douglas Fairbanks, combined with directing Rudolph Valentino in Blood and Sand (1922), gave MGM the confidence to choose Niblo as a safe, if uninspired, replacement for Charles Brabin, who had allowed Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ to spend its $1.25 million budget in two months on unusable footage.
Fred Niblo never directed a musical, but he did act in one. In Hollywood-set Free and Easy he played himself, a director struggling to get Buster Keaton’s character to memorize, and say correctly, his one line of dialogue.
Actor, poet, suffragist and body-positive activist Delia O’Callaghan (1870-1955) had been a star in vaudeville for many years before making her first film appearance in 1923. She had a featured role in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928), but her best part was probably Ma Plunkett in Free and Easy, which allowed her to demonstrate some of the comedic and musical skills she had honed on the stage.
The weirdest item in Friganza’s filmography is How to Undress in Front of Your Husband (1937), an ‘educational’ short in which she and Elaine Barrymore demonstrate the right and wrong ways for a woman to get ready for bed. Friganza was 67 at the time, but still game.
Cast
| Buster Keaton | Elmer Butts |
| Anita Page | Elvira Plunkett |
| Trixie Friganza | Ma Plunkett |
| Robert Montgomery | Larry Mitchell |
| Fred Niblo | Himself |
| Edgar Dearing | Studio Gate Guard |
| Gwen Lee | Herself, in Bedroom Scene |
| John Miljan | Himself, in Bedroom Scene |
| Lionel Barrymore | Himself |
| William Haines | Himself |
| William Collier Sr. | William Collier Sr. – Master of Ceremonies at Premiere |
| Dorothy Sebastian | Herself, in Cave Scene |
| Karl Dane | Himself, in Cave Scene |
| David Burton | Himself |
| Jack Baxley | Train Conductor (uncredited) |
| Edward Brophy | Benny – The Stage Manager (uncredited) |
| Richard Carle | Eunuch Crowning Elmer (uncredited) |
| Louise Carver | Big German Woman (uncredited) |
| Emile Chautard | Undetermined Role (uncredited) |
| Jackie Coogan | Himself (uncredited) |
| Cecil B. DeMille | Himself (uncredited) |
| Drew Demorest | Larry’s Valet (uncredited) |
| Ann Dvorak | Chorine (uncredited) |
| Joseph Farnham | Himself (uncredited) |
| Pat Harmon | Doorman at Premiere (uncredited) |
| Lottice Howell | Vocalist in ‘It Must Be You’ Number (uncredited) |
| Arthur Lange | Orchestral Conductor (uncredited) |
| Theodore Lorch | Dynamite Scene Director (uncredited) |
| Billy May | Actor (uncredited) |
| Doris McMahon | Singer and Dancer in the ‘Free and Easy’ number (uncredited) |
British-born Phil Dunham (1885-1972) made his first screen appearance in 1914 and was in over 260 films. He had a parallel career as a screenwriter and worked on some of the ‘race’ pictures that featured all-Black casts. These included The Duke is Tops (1938), in which Lena Horne made her debut, and Gang Smashers (1938), which featured MGM alumna Nina Mae McKinney.
Dunham had uncredited roles in six Metro musicals, beginning with Montana Moon. The others were It Happened in Brooklyn, The Unfinished Dance, Annie Get Your Gun, Singin’ in the Rain and Easy to Love.
Gwendolyn Witter (1914-2018) played bits in three MGM musicals (Montana Moon, Children of Pleasure and Madam Satan) before moving on to more substantial roles at Paramount, often paired with Bing Crosby,
Carlisle retired in 1943 and lived for another 75 years.
Stella Dorothy Sebaston (1904-57) was a chorus girl who became a stage and then screen actor, securing a five-year contract at Metro. She appeared with Joan Crawford and Johnny Mack Brown in Our Dancing Daughters (1928), and supported them again in Montana Moon, playing Crawford’s sister.
Sebastian appeared in one other MGM musical, Free and Easy, with her friend Buster Keaton. Her contract ended and her career declined through minor studios, ending in playing bit parts.
John Brown (1904-74) was a college football star whose good looks secured him a screen test and a five-year contract with MGM. He played opposite Joan Crawford in Our Dancing Daughters (1928), but his thick Alabama accent meant he was never going to be cast as a city sophisticate after the introduction of sound. Brown’s accent was suitable, however, for the cowboy he played when reteamed with Crawford in Montana Moon.
Brown’s career suffered a double blow in 1931 when he was replaced by the rising Clark Gable in Laughing Sinners, and then failed to secure the lead in Tarzan the Ape Man. His MGM contract ended and Brown spent the rest of his, very successful and prolific, career in Poverty Row westerns, frequently playing characters called ‘Johnny Mack Brown’.
