The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Stars and Supporting Players

  • Lillian Roth

    Lillian Rutstein (1910-80) was a talented and charismatic performer who is probably, and unjustly, most remembered today for the alcoholism that was at the centre of the biopic I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955), in which she was played by Susan Hayward.

    Roth made her debut on Broadway at the age of seven. After working in vaudeville in an act with her sister, she was back on Broadway. Roth lied about her age and, at 13, was cast in Artists and Models, a show famous for its nudity.

    Roth’s stage career went into abeyance after Ernst Lubitsch cast her in a prominent role in The Love Parade (1930), teaming her with Lupino Lane. In the same year, she played Trixie in MGM’s Madam Satan. Roth expanded her range in 1933 in Barbara Stanwyck’s prison drama Ladies They Talk About. 

    Roth’s career went into decline owing to her alcoholism, but was revived by the film of her 1954 autobiography and she worked steadily, playing on Broadway and in touring shows and concerts. She made her last film in 1979.

  • Reginald Denny

    A screen career that begins in 1915 at Famous Players-Lasky under the direction of Edwin S Porter, and ends playing Commodore Schmidlapp in the 1966 Batman picture, can be called a career. And such was the life of Reginald Leigh Dugmore (1891-1967).

    Denny started out as a stage actor in the United Kingdom, travelling to America and elsewhere on theatrical tours. It has been suggested he may have appeared on screen as early as 1911, but no titles have been suggested. He played the leads in many silent films, including in Leather Pushers, a series of boxing shorts made in 1922-23. The makers of the series had a liking for punning titles like The Taming of the Shrewd (1922) and Barnaby’s Grudge (1923).

    Denny transitioned to character roles in the 1930s, though he was the romantic lead in his two MGM musicals, Madam Satan and A Lady’s Morals. Later on, he played Algy in several Bulldog Drummond pictures, giving a more low-key performance than Claude Allister. He was also Maxim’s estate manager and friend in Rebecca (1940).

    Reginald Denny was an aeroplane gunner during the First World War, and had a lifelong interest in aviation. This included not only flying full-size planes (he worked as a stunt pilot on at least one occasion), but also models. He designed a remote-controlled ‘drone’ which was used by the US Army in the Second World War, and also established Reginald Denny’s Hobby Shop on Hollywood Boulevard (where Marilyn Monroe worked as a teenager).

  • Kay Johnson

    Catherine Townsend Johnson (1904-75) studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and starred in many Broadway productions, predominantly serious dramas, throughout the 1920s.

    Following her marriage to director John Cromwell, Johnson moved to Los Angeles in 1928. She was brought to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by Cecil B DeMille, who had himself only just moved to the studio, to star in Dynamite (1929), his first sound picture.

    Johnson went on to make regular film appearances, including as the title character in DeMille’s Madam Satan, but only made 23 in total, most of them in the pre-code era. She also continued to appear on the stage, returning to Broadway in 1947 in the original production of State of the Union.

    Johnson worked less in the 40s and 50s, devoting time to raising her sons, one of whom was the actor James Cromwell.

  • Earl ‘Snakehips’ Tucker

    Earl Tucker (1906-37) was a popular dancer who took his name from the eccentric style of dancing he performed at, among other top venues, the Cotton Club.

    Tucker did not invent the dance style, as is often claimed, but he was certainly its leading practitioner in the early 20th century. It involved the ability to sway from the hips rhythmically, creating the impression of a snake’s movements. A Black folk dance style, it was one of many aspects of Black culture purloined by Elvis Presley.

    Tucker died very young and only appeared in a couple of musical shorts and, most significantly, performing the first solo dance in an MGM musical, uncredited as a bellboy in Love in the Rough. He is also believed to have filmed a routine for the uncompleted The March of Time.

  • Edwards Davis

    Cader Edwards Davis (1867?-1936) was an ordained minister who enjoyed the showmanship of pulpit oratory so much that he gave up the church and became an actor. (Although arrests for drunkenness and associating with loose characters may have been contributing factors.)

    Davis wrote and performed in both vaudeville sketches and full-length plays. He wrote a tragedy which one newspaper described as “simply gross”, but which he performed around one thousand times.

    Davis worked on Broadway and was respected enough by his colleagues to be elected president of the National Vaudeville Artists Association in 1919.

    Edwards Davis made about 70 film appearances from 1915 to 1936, always in character parts. In 1926, he was third-billed to Harry Langdon and Joan Crawford in Tramp, Tramp, Tramp.

    Davis’s parts in the 1930s were mostly uncredited, including in Love in the Rough and as Henry VIII in Madam Satan.

  • Catherine Moylan

    The International Pageant of Pulchritude was held annually in Galveston, Texas from 1920 to 1931, and took upon itself the responsibility for choosing ‘the Beauty Queen of the Universe’. Or Miss Universe, for short.

    The winner in 1926 was Catherine May Moylan (1904-69), and this led to her being invited to be part of the Ziegfeld Follies of 1927, and then to a role in the original stage production of Whoopee! in 1928.

    Moylan made half a dozen brief film appearances before returning to obscurity. One of these was a credited role in Love in the Rough.

  • Allan Lane

    Readers of a certain (advanced) age will recall the voice, though not the stage name, of Harry Leonard Albershardt (1909-73) as that of the talking horse in Mr Ed (1961-66).

    Before that, he had spent many years on top of horse in dozens of ‘B’ westerns, including 39 pictures in which he played Sheriff (or Marshal, or Lieutenant) Rocky Lane. He also gave flesh to the comic strip character Red Ryder in seven films.

    Lane had made his debut in a leading man role for Fox in 1929, but his career quickly foundered, which led to him doing small parts in Love in the Rough and Madam Satan. Fortunately, a career in oaters lay ahead.

  • Harry Burns

    Some confusion surrounds Harry Burns, who played the gardener in Love in the Rough.

    IMDb asserts confidently that he was born in 1887, died in 1948, and in between was married to actor Dorothy Vernon. It says he was an actor who made 15 films between 1915 and 1920, took a ten-year break, then made another 39 appearances between Love in the Rough and 1948, two of which were in Music for Millions and It Happened in Brooklyn. IMDb also claims Burns was the father of Bobby Vernon, even though Bobby was only ten years younger, but we will not go there.

    According to the AFI Catalog, Harry Burns acted in a couple of pictures in 1923-24, but was mainly a director at that time, notably of a series of films starring Joe Martin the Chimp (no space here, but Joe is worth looking up).

    As a further complication, the New York Times reported, in 1939 (not 1948), the death of “Harry Burns, former film director for William Fox and other early film producers and one-time publisher of Filmograph”. It notes that, at the time of his death, he had been working as an extra and was a champion for better treatment for extra players, and that his widow was Dorothy Vernon.

    Which leads to a second IMDb entry, for director Harry Burns (1882-1939), also married to Dorothy Vernon.

    It seems pretty clear that there were two men called Harry Burns making films in the same period and, probably the 1887-1948 version who made appearances in two MGM musicals. The silent pictures attributed to him by IMDb must belong to the 1882-1939 Harry Burns (especially given that one of them starred the aforesaid Joe Martin the Chimp.

    He was also the one married to Dorothy Vernon. He may well have been the father of Bobby Vernon, but, if so, was a father at the age of 15.

    Harry Burns, Director

  • Tyrell Davis

    British actor Harry Davis (1902-70) performed in the West End and on Broadway before making his first film for Pathe Exchange, shortly after the company’s restructuring by Joseph Kennedy.

    Davis’s screen career only lasted ten years, but he squeezed in 38 films, one of which was Love in the Rough.

    It has been suggested that Davis’s portrayal of a dance instructor in George Cukor’s Our Betters (1933) established the Hollywood template for the flamboyant gay man. 

  • Anita Louise

    Anita Louise Fremault (1915-70) was one of those rare child performers who went on to an adult career in acting and exhibited no major trauma.

    Louise made her debut on Broadway aged seven, making her first film appearance in the same year for an east coast company.

    By the mid-thirties, Anita Louise was playing leading roles, perhaps most notably as Titania in Max Reinhardt’s star-studded version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935). She was generally the second female lead in the bigger pictures, supporting stars like Olivia de Havilland and Norma Shearer. Her final big screen role was in Joseph H Lewis’s evocatively-titled Retreat, Hell! (1952), but she continued working one-and-off on television until 1970.

    In The Florodora Girl, Anita Louise, aged 15, played the hero’s younger sister.

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