The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Stars and Supporting Players

  • Penny Singleton

    Mariana Dorothy McNulty (1908-2003) found fame at a very young age. As ‘Little Dorothy’, she sang in silent picture houses, then toured in vaudeville as part of the Kiddie Kabaret.

    Later in life she became a labour activist, twice elected resident of the American Guild of Variety Artists and, in 1967, leading a successful month-long strike by performers at the Radio City Music Hall.

    In between all this was an acting career irrevocably associated with the Blondie and Dagwood films produced by Columbia. She and Arthur Lake appeared in all 28 pictures between 1938 and 1950. 

    Earlier in her career, when she was still known as Dorothy McNulty, she performed the first screen version of ‘The Varsity Drag’ in Good News, and immediately afterward had a featured role in Love in the Rough.

  • Frank McGlynn

    Frank McGlynn (1866-1951) played Abraham Lincoln in at least twelve feature films and shorts. And in the Sonja Henie musical Second Fiddle, and in a picture called Are We Civilized?, he played actors playing Abraham Lincoln. It was always useful in Hollywood to have a speciality.

    McGlynn had trained for the bar, but took up acting in 1896, playing supporting roles with a variety of stock companies. He appeared in a short film as early as 1910, and played Lincoln for the first time in 1915. This led to him being cast in the lead in the Broadway production of Abraham Lincoln (1918).

    McGlynn amassed over 140 screen credits, three of which were MGM musicals. After the featured role of Professor Kenyon in Good News, he appeared without credit in Broadway Melody of 1938 and Girl of the Golden West.

  • Billy Taft

    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 Jackson

    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. 

  • Lola Lane

    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.

  • Gus Shy

    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.

  • Stanley Smith

    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

    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.

  • 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.

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