William Dooley (1893-1938) was working in vaudeville, latterly with his wife, Frances Lee, when producer hired him in 1925 to star in comedy shorts. It has been pointed out that Dooley’s onscreen persona owed a lot to the physical appearances of Larry Semon and Harry Langdon: child-like verging on mentally impaired. Dooley’s USP was that he was invariably playing a sailor.
After 1932, Dooley played generally uncredited supporting roles in around thirty features, including The Cat’s-Paw (1933), Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936) and Anything Goes (1936).
Dooley appeared without credit in four MGM musicals, starting with The Cat and the Fiddle. He had a showy few seconds as Jeanette MacDonald’s drunken ‘brother’ in Naughty Marietta, and followed this with Here Comes the Band and A Day at the Races,
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