Juanita Magda Pike (1913-54) became a Goldwyn Girl at the age of 18 and made her screen debut in the Eddie Cantor hit Palmy Days (1931). Immediately after this, she played a chorus girl in MGM’s Flying High.
Pike made a couple of dozen pictures during the 1930s and 40s, including appearing as a maid in Lubitsch’s The Merry Widow. She also played a secretary in The Great Dictator (1940).
Nita Pike’s life ended tragically when she committed suicide two days after the death of her husband.
Thomas McGuire (1873-1954) was a British stage actor who made his way to Hollywood and, in his forties, began a thirty year career comprising over 180 films.
McGuire’s most enduring performances from the silent era was J J King, the heroine’s father, in Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill Jr (1928).
Strangely, given his background in the theatre, the quality of McGuire’s roles declined in the sound era, where he was generally uncredited. He was in four of Preston Sturge’s later films.
Tom McGuire appeared in six MGM musical, starting with Flying High, then A Night at the Opera, San Francisco, Two Girls on Broadway, Thousands Cheer and Two Girls and a Sailor.
Herberta Amo Ingraham (1909-83) was, as her full name suggests, the daughter of the celebrated composer Herbert Ingraham, who clearly had planned for a son.
Ingraham became a night club dancer after leaving school and, after one short, made her feature debut with an uncredited role in Dorothy Arzner’s The Wild Party (1929). She never did obtain a credit, but worked steadily in bit parts throughout the 1930s, mostly at Warner Bros. She was in Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) and two more in that series. She also played one of the bridesmaids in Merrily We Go to Hell (1932).
Ingraham only made one MGM musical, Flying High. Her final screen appearance was in 1942, in Mitchell Leisen’s Green-Eyed Woman.
Mary Halsey (1913-89) also worked under the name Mary Jane Halsey, but, in over forty feature films, she never achieved a credit.
On the positive side, she was not, unlike many of her peers, restricted solely to playing chorus girls. She was a nurse in The Falcon’s Brother, and featured prominently in Cat People (both 1942), as the receptionist who hears the scream in the swimming pool.
Having said that, Halsey appeared in six Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals, and was a chorus girl in all of them. They were Flying High, Dancing Lady, The Merry Widow (technically a Maxim’s girl), Broadway Melody of 1936 and The Great Ziegfeld. The outlier was her last musical for the studio, Rosalie.
Halsey worked for the Red Cross during the Second World War.
Gloria K Cook (1914-85) was born in Los Angeles, so at least she did not have to travel far in pursuit of a Hollywood career.
She got an early break playing a little girl in Chaplin’s The Kid (1921). There was then a break until 1929, when, aged 15, she started playing on-screen chorus girls, including in MGM’s Flying High. It must have helped that she had received some dance training from MGM alumnus Ernest Belcher.
Faythe continued to play chorus girls and dancers throughout the 1930s. Her final appearance seems to have been in 1945.
Ruth Eddings (1908-95) was a bit-part player working in Hollywood from 1926. She was in more than thirty films, but never obtained a credit.
In 1931, Eddings was one of the many chorus girls in Flying High. Her final film was Jacques Tourneur’s Experiment Perilous (1944).
Some sources suggest that she continued acting, largely on radio, under her married name, following her marriage to actor William Tannen.
Janet Currie (1909-34) was a beauty pageant winner who had just started attempting a career in Hollywood when she died, aged 24, from complications following an operation.
Currie made just two screen appearances: in MGM’s Flying High and Meet the Baron (1933), a Three Stooges feature.
Canadian James Peter Durkin (1876-1934) worked in regional theatres in the United States before making his Broadway debut in 1906.
Durkin worked in silent cinema in the period 1913-16, though mostly as a director, often on films starring his then-wife, Maude Fealy. His career as a screen actor began properly in 1930, frequently in uncredited roles.
In 1931, Durking appeared as a detective in Flying High.
Mildred Lucile Dixon (1910-85) was in many a chorus line on screen, and often stood out owing to her distinctive bobbed hair.
Always uncredited, Dixon was in some substantial pictures, including 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade and Duck Soup (all 1933).
She was in a couple of dozen films, including Metro’s Flying High.
Mary Ella Dees (1911-2004) is perhaps best known for her most macabre job. Jean Harlow, who had befriended Dees after she played a bit in Red-Headed Woman (1932), died in 1937 during the production of Saratoga. Dees was hired to stand in for Harlow, in floppy hats and viewed obscurely, during the few scenes that remained to be shot.
Mary Dees was uncredited in about 22 films all told, including two MGM musicals, Flying High and Born to Dance, playing a chorus girl in both. Her film career ended in 1946, but she continued to act on the stage well into her seventies.
Dees’s obituary quotes her channeling Norma Desmond: “We were stars. Today actors look like any other jerk on the street”. Calling herself a star might be stretching it, but she’s otherwise not wrong.
