Earl Leslie Rengstorff Askam (1891-1940) was an opera singer and stage and film actor, who achieved cult immortality by playing Officer Torch in Flash Gordon (1936). He also played in a dozen low-budget westerns.
Askam was the Pirate at the zeppelin ball in Madam Satan. As was most often the case, he appeared uncredited in The Great Ziegfeld.
Albert Maroica Blasius Franz Maria, Ritter Conti von Cedassamare (1887-1967) came from Austrian aristocracy and was born and raised in an area that is now in Italy.
After serving in the First World War, Conti emigrated to America in 1919. He worked in a series of manual jobs, then responded to an advertisement by Erich Von Stroheim, who was seeking an Austrian military officer to act as technical adviser on The Merry-Go-Round (1923). He was given a part in the film, and this launched his career as an actor who would make well over 100 films.
Conti worked on several other Von Stroheim pictures, and otherwise played character roles, frequently continental and often military, as in Morocco (1930) and The Black Cat (1934). He was often uncredited.
Conti played the Empire Officer in Madam Satan and appeared without credit in The Night is Young.
Martha Sleeper (1910-83) reversed the usual actor’s journey of her day by starting out in films and transitioning to Broadway.
Sleeper made her first film appearance in 1923, aged 12. She was spotted by Hal Roach, who signed her to appear in comedy sorts. She appeared in a number of early films directed by Leo McCarey.
Aged 17, Sleeper was selected as a WAMPAS Baby Star, and played the lead in half-a-dozen pictures in 1928-29 for a minor studio. She was then signed by MGM and played many supporting roles. Two of these were as Fish Girl in Madam Satan and an uncredited appearance in Hollywood Party.
Sleeper was unhappy with the work she was doing, and began seeking roles in local stage productions. In 1936, she effectively retired from screen acting and moved with her husband to New York, where she worked for ten years both on and off Broadway. She also began designing jewellery.
Sleeper made one last film in 1945, The Bells of St Mary’s, as a favour to Leo McCarey. In 1949, she relocated to Puerto Rico, where she began designing clothes, running her own business for twenty years.
Ynez Seabury (1907-73) made her screen debut at the age of 4 in D W Griffith’s The Miser’s Heart (1911). She went on to make many other films for Griffith, as well as making her first stage appearance in 1912.
Seabury took a break from films in 1914, returning in 1923 to play a Native American for the first, but not the last, time. This aspect of her work reportedly led to her becoming close to members of the Hopi tribe.
Ynez Seabury worked sporadically in films through to 1949, usually in uncredited roles. She worked several times for Cecil B DeMille, and her last appearance was in his Samson and Delilah (1949).
She appeared in two Metro musicals, Madam Satan and The Girl of the Golden West (playing Wowkle, a Native American character).
One puzzle stands out in Seabury’s IMDb entry. She is said to have played a little girl in The Sign of the Cross (1932), but she would have been about 25 at the time.
Victor Hugo de Bierre (1886-1943) was an American citizen by virtue of the fact that he was born three hours after his French parents entered the country. He had worked as a bank clerk and begun training to be a lawyer when he decided to give it all up and take to the stage.
Having worked as a comedian and dancer, Brooke was appearing in No, No Nanette when Hal Roach signed him in 1925 to work in comedy shorts. He transitioned to features in 1928 with Howard Hawks’s Fazil, and made the move into talking pictures without any problems.
Brooke appeared in six MGM musicals, beginning with Madam Satan. He was uncredited in New Moon and The Merry Widow, then played the dentist in Here Comes the Band. He was uncredited again in the Wizard of Oz and I Married an Angel.
Brooke took his own life in 1943, and the press at the time claimed he had been depressed about unemployment, not having worked since making Little Old New York. IMDb lists eleven appearances following this, including I Married an Angel, so the reports of inactivity may have been exaggerated.
British stage actor Boyd Irwin (1880-1957) made his first films in Australia, starting in 1915. By 1920, he was working in Hollywood for pioneer filmmaker Bessie Barriscale.
Irwin worked throughout the 1920s, notably playing Rochefort in Douglas Fairbanks’s The Three Musketeers (1921).
By the 1930s, his screen roles had diminished, though he was featured as the Zeppelin captain in Madam Satan. He also appeared, without credit, as the Swedish Ambassador in A Lady’s Morals. Irwin’s later appearances were all uncredited.
Edward A Prinz (1901-67) was the younger and lesser-known brother of LeRoy Prinz and, like his brother, was a dancer and choreographer.
The most high-profile film Prinz worked on, though without credit, was Gone with the Wind (1939). He was credited as a dancer on Madam Satan, performing in the ‘Low Down’ number with Lillian Roth. And on Dancing Lady, he was credited with directing the dance ensembles.
Danish-born actor Elsa Petersen (1897-1974) made only 28 films in Hollywood between 1922 and 1957.
Her debut was playing Reginald Denny’s love interest in one of his Leather Pushers shorts. It was then eight years till her sophomore appearance in Madam Satan. She was with Denny once again, but this time playing his maid. Petersen sings in this prominent supporting role, but all of her subsequent film appearances were uncredited.
Albert King (1903-43) was a child prodigy, giving concert performances on the piano at a very young age. He later became a singing instructor and performed in vaudeville.
As a songwriter, normally in partnership with Elsie Janis, King produced songs for a number of early sound musicals, including MGM’s Madam Satan and Reckless.
King also made an appearance in Madam Satan as Herman, Lillian Roth’s pianist.
RADA-trained Roland Young (1897-1953) acted on the British stage before working extensively on Broadway.
Young served with the US Army during the latter part of the First World War, then made his screen debut playing Watson to John Barrymore’s Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock Holmes (1922). He signed a contract with MGM in 1929, and was again opposite Barrymore in his first sound film, The Unholy Night (1929). Young was rarely top billed, but was a very effective character actor.
Young appeared in three musicals in quick succession in the early 30s: Madam Satan (hosting the crazed zeppelin party), New Moon (as a tramp) and The Prodigal (as a Russian Count).
After 1932, Young worked freelance, returning to Metro to play Uriah Heep in David Copperfield (1935). He was nominated for an Oscar for playing Topper (1937), a role he returned to in two sequels. The size of his roles was less during the 1940s, but he was always a reliable supporting player. He also performed on television in the early 50s.
