Everett McGarrity (1908-93) was discovered by King Vidor studying music at a conservatory in Chicago while the director was on a nationwide search for Black actors to appear in Hallelujah.
McGarrity gives a strong performance, but never made another film.
Fanny Belle Johnson(1869-1950) began working with her pianist-husband as a comic reciter, usually in dialect, from the 1890s.
DeKnight did some legitimate theatre work, usually cast in ‘Mammy’ roles, and it was this that led King Vidor to choose her to play the mother in Hallelujah.
She made one further, uncredited, film appearance, then returned with her husband to their previous touring act.
June Pursell (1902-??) was a radio singer and recording artist dubbed “the girl with the ballad voice”.
Pursell (whose name was frequently mispelled) appeared in two feature films, one of which was The Hollywood Revue of 1929. She performed ‘Low Down Rhythm’ and subsequently released the number as a recording.
Russian-born Nathalie Schmit (1905-88) trained as a dancer at the Paris Opéra and, from 1924, was in a dancing partnership with Gene Myrio. They worked as headline dancers in London and New York, demonstrating a very acrobatic form of adagio dancing.
After that act broke up, Nattova toured the vaudeville circuit with other male dancers, marrying one of them along the way. One of their routines involved a giant flower pot: “Flying through space, she executed an arabesque on an azalea, a pirouette on a poppy and a toe-hold on a tulip. Nattova showed ‘great grace in movement’”.
It was this iteration (miscredited as Natova and Company) that appeared in The Hollywood Revue of 1929.
The Brock sisters–Eunice (1901-93), Josephine (1902-99) and Kathleen (1904-88)–became the singing Brox Sisters as children, and were touring the vaudeville circuit when barely in their teens.
By the early twenties they were singing in Broadway revues, and recorded a number of songs which they debuted for their friend Irving Berlin, notably ‘Everybody Step’. They performed in The Cocoanuts (1925) with the Marx Brothers and were featured performers with Eddie Cantor in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1927.
The Brox Sisters’ first screen appearances were in some of the very earliest Vitaphone shorts made by Warner Bros. Photoplay wrote at the time: “Low voices register most successfully on the Vitaphone, so the performance of the Brox sisters, with their mezzo-soprano and contralto, is flawless.”
Later, they sang a couple of numbers, including ‘Singin’ in the Rain’, in The Hollywood Revue of 1929.
The Brox Sisters became radio stars, but disbanded after Josephine (known professionally as Bobbe) got married. They reunited once, in 1939, for a radio tribute to Irving Berlin.
Harriette Arlene Lake (1909-2001) was described as “the greatest comedienne” by Lucille Ball, who was probably a good judge.
In a career of almost sixty years, Ann Sothern was successful on stage, film, television and radio. In Hollywood, she moved from studio to studio before settling at MGM, where she was cast as Maisie Ravier in Maisie (1939). The film’s success gave a boost to her moderately successful career, as well as resulting in nine sequels and a radio series.
When she stopped getting lead roles, Southern moved predominantly to television. But her last great big screen performance, in The Whales of August (1987) earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Ann Sothern was in seven Metro musicals. Early on, she made blink-and-you’ll-miss-them appearances in Good News and Madam Satan. Ten years later, she was back with the lead in Lady Be Good (Eleanor Powell’s top billing being contractual rather than deserved). She next took the title role in Panama Hattie, then played herself in Thousands Cheer. She was Broadway star Joyce Harmon in Words and Music, and finished off playing Jane Powell’s mother in Nancy Goes to Rio.
For someone who died aged 57, David Poole Fronabarger (1912-69) produced an astonishing body of work; he must have been one of the hardest-working people in Hollywood. He appeared in around 240 feature films and shorts. He contributed to at least 50 screenplays and won an Emmy in 1961 for writing for The Red Skelton Show. And he directed about 65 shorts. He even did some stunt work at the beginning of his career.
O’Brien is probably best known as the lead performer in many Pete Smith Specialties, the series of comedy shorts produced by Pete Smith for MGM from 1935 to 1955. He also directed some of them as David Barclay. The acting in the Pete Smith films was always silent, with Smith himself providing narration. O’Brien was one of the last great adepts at silent cinema, with a particular skill at falls.
Dave O’Brien was in five Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals. In the 1930s he was uncredited in Good News, Madam Satan, Flying High and Student Tour. Two decades later he was Ralph the stage manager in Kiss Me Kate.
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 (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.
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).
