The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Performers

  • Sidney D’Albrook

    Sidney D’Albrook (1886-1948) notched up over 170 film appearances. He started making shorts in 1914, but his first feature was The Gilded Cage (1916). (I draw the last-named film to attention only because it features a character called Lesbia the Goose Girl.) He also appeared as Ambrose, the brother-in-law, in Hal Roach’s series of shorts about the Spat family.

    When the silent period came to a close, most of D’Albrook’s appearances were uncredited. These included five Metro musicals: Call of the Flesh, A Night at the Opera, The Great Waltz, I Married an Angel and The Unfinished Dance.

  • Russell Hopton

    Harry Russell Hopton (1900-45) was an actor who managed to accumulate over 100 screen appearances in less than twenty years, though his parts had declined to mostly uncredited bits by the time he took his own life in 1945.

    Hopton was in two MGM musicals, most prominently as Dorothy Jordan’s brother in Call of the Flesh. Strangely, in the same year he appeared without credit in New Moon.

    Online sources also cite Russell Hopton as the director of two Poverty Row  ‘B’ films for Conn Pictures in 1936. He certainly did acting work for that studio, so it may well be the same person. If so, and given that he acted in ten films released in 1936, it was a busy year.  

  • Mathilde Comont

    Mathilde Comont (1886-1938) started working in French films for the Gaumont studio in 1908, later working for Max Linder.

    After moving to Hollywood, Comont found regular work, most notably playing the Prince [sic] of Persia in The Thief of Bagdad (1924). She notched up around sixty supporting roles for various studios, including two appearances in Metro musicals, Call of the Flesh and The Cuban Love Song.

  • Renée Adorée

    French actor Jeanne de la Fonte (1898-1933) began performing as a child when she joined her parents in their circus act. As a teenager, she toured as a dancer, making her first film in Australia while on tour there in 1918.

    Adorée arrived in America in 1919 and worked both in vaudeville and the legitimate stage, performing in musical comedies. In 1920 she starred in Raoul Walsh’s The Strongest, based on a novel by French politician Georges Clemenceau.

    A Hollywood star, Adorée appeared opposite John Gilbert in nine films, including The Big Parade (1925), and made four with Ramon Novarro. 

    In spite of her French accent, Adorée made a successful transition to talking pictures, but her career ended abruptly after she contracted tuberculosis. She was cast in Call of the Flesh at Ramon Novarro’s insistence, but was extremely ill throughout production. She died shortly afterwards at the tragically early age of 35. 

  • Ernest Torrence

    Ernest Torrance-Thomson (1878-1933) was born in Scotland and trained at the Royal College of Music, being a highly-gifted pianist and baritone singer. He toured with the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company until developing an untreatable problem with his vocal cords.

    Torrence emigrated to America in 1911 and worked successfully on the stage, including on Broadway. He made his first film in 1914, working steadily thereafter as a character actor, with occasional leads. He is most often seen today playing Buster Keaton’s father in Steamboat Bill Jr (1928).

    Torrence’s sole MGM musical was Call of the Flesh, in which he played the hero’s mentor.

  • Leo White

    Leo Herbert White (1873-1948) was born in Germany, raised in England and emigrated to America. His stage career had begun in the UK, but he made his first screen appearance in 1911.

    White worked as an actor and occasional director in silent comedy, including many collaborations with Charles Chaplin, with whom he worked for the last time on The Great Dictator (1940).

    By the end of his career White had contributed to almost 500 films, eight of which were MGM musicals (all uncredited). He started out in The Florodora Girl, followed by Call of the Flesh, The Devil’s Brother, Broadway to Hollywood, Stage Mother and The Cat and the Fiddle. He was one of the hirsute Russian aviators in A Night at the Opera, and bowed out with Broadway Melody of 1938.

  • Actors I

    Irving, Mary Jane

  • Mary Jane Irving

    Mary Jane Irving (1913-83) made over sixty screen appearances, despite retiring when she was 25. This was owing to the fact that she made her debut at the age of 3 and had a busy career as a child actor. In her twenties, she also worked as Janet Gaynor’s stand-in.

    Irving was 16 when she played Lawrence Gray’s sister in The Florodora Girl. A year or so later, she was one of the students in Student Tour.

  • Claud Allister

    British actor William Claud Michael Palmer (1888-1970) made a career largely out of playing what Bertie Wooster would have called a silly ass. He was the quintessential Algy in a number of Bulldog Drummond films, having first played the character in the West End. He also appeared as the surprisingly English Duke Otto von Liebenheim in Lubitsch’s Monte Carlo(193

    Immediately before working with Lubitsch, Allister was Lord Rumblesham, the unlikely friend of Lawrence Gray in The Florodora. He then waited twenty-three years for his second appearance in an MGM musical, as Paul in Kiss Me Kate.

  • Ilka Chase

    In a varied career, Ilka Chase (1905-72) acted on stage and screen, presented radio and television shows, and found time to write a novel, two volumes of autobiography and several travel books. 

    Chase’s film career was not prestigious in itself, but involved some high-quality films. For example, she played Bette Davis’s sister-in-law in Now Voyager (1942), the catalyst for the Davis character’s transformation.

    Ilka Chase’s only Metro musical was The Florodora Girl, playing Fanny, one of the central character’s cynical but loyal friends.

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