John A Deery (1892-1965) worked as an articled clerk in Australia before serving in the First World War. It is unclear when he took up acting, but he was definitely working in Hollywood by 1929, when he played the protagonist’s butler in Disraeli, starring George Arliss.
The AFI Catalogue restricts Deery to 25 films up to 1952, but IMDb suggests hundreds of uncredited appearances as background characters. His pictures included Hell’s Angels (1930), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Down Argentine Way (1940), To Be or Not To Be (1942), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) and All About Eve (1950).
Deery performed uncredited bits in eighteen MGM musicals: Hollywood Party, Bitter Sweet, Two Girls and a Sailor, Meet the People, Ziegfeld Follies, Two Sisters from Boston, Holiday in Mexico, Easter Parade, In the Good Old Summertime, The Toast of New Orleans, Rich, Young and Pretty, The Band Wagon, Rhapsody, Athena, Hit the Deck, I’ll Cry Tomorrow, Meet Me in Las Vegas and The Opposite Sex.
