Eddie Conners (dates unknown) is listed in most sources as a singer who appeared in Hallelujah, but no further information is available.
Tag: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
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Eddie Conners
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Evelyn Pope Burwell
Evelyn Pope Burwell (1904-74) graduated with a degree in music from New York University, which had been one of the first American universities to admit Black students. After graduation, she worked in the chorus line at the Cotton Club, and was pianist and tutor for the dancing Berry Brothers.
Burwell first joined the cast of Hallelujah as one of the Dixie Jubilee Singers, but was singled out by King Vidor, who nicknamed her ‘Hot Shot’.
She only made a couple of other uncredited film appearances.
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Stymie Beard
Matthew Beard Jr (1925-81) began appearing in Hollywood films when he was a baby, and was something of a veteran when he played an unnamed child in Hallelujah.
The following year Beard (or more probably his parents) signed a five year contract with Hal Roach to appear in the Our Gang series. Wearing a bowler hat given him by Stan Laurel, Beard played a character called Stymie, which he eventually adopted as his professional name.
As he got older, Beard appeared in a range of Hollywood and independent ‘race’ films, but eventually the parts started to dry up. He spent many years on his uppers, using drugs and spending time in jail. But he cleaned himself up during the 1960s and developed a second career in television, in series such as Stanford and Son (1972-77) and Maude (1972-78). In 1978 he appeared, with his trademark bowler hat, in The Buddy Holly Story.
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Dixie Jubilee Singers
The singing group the Dixie Jubilee Singers appeared in two feature films, both in 1929. One was Universal’s near-silent version of Show Boat, where they sang in an added two-reel sound prologue alongside performers from the original Broadway show.
There other film was Hallelujah, in which they joined Daniel Haynes in singing Irving Berlin’s ‘Waiting at the End of the Road’.
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Everett McGarrity
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.
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Fanny Belle DeKnight
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.
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Good News (1930)
Good News is the archetypal college musical with the outcome of a football game at its heart. There were many such in the early 1930s, including MGM’s own So This Is College, but Good News was the one based on a big Broadway hit. Indeed, it is the first MGM musical to be unequivocally based on a stage show; earlier efforts such as The Rogue Song bore little resemblance to their alleged theatrical progenitors.
Beef (Delmer Daves), Bobbie (Gus Shy), Babe (Bessie Love) and a 1920s jalopy The studio brought out a couple of the original production stars to recreate their roles, but it would have been better if they had looked elsewhere. Mary Lawlor, as heroine Connie, is totally lacking in showbiz pizzazz, her whole performance as drab and uninteresting as Connie’s life is meant to be at the start of the picture.
Gus Shy as Bobbie, on the other hand, takes pizzazz to the level of irritation, indulging in far too much overly-theatrical schtick. He is most bearable when teamed with the always-reliable Bessie Love, making the last of her four MGM musicals.
Bessie Love’s dancing has come a long way since The Broadway Melody as she and Gus Shy declare ‘Gee, I’d Like to Make You Happy’ For once, no histrionics are required from Love and she makes the most of her comedy role as the vampish Babe, always appearing to be making up her dialogue as she goes along. She also has an excellent dance number with Shy, ‘Gee, But I’d Like to Make You Happy’.
Stanley Smith replaced the previously-announced Charles Kaley as Tom Marlowe. He is not as wooden as Kaley would have been, but is otherwise dull. The break-out star of Good News is Dorothy McNulty (later known as Penny Singleton), who gives everything to ‘The Varsity Drag’ and ‘Good News’. The former, in particular, represents a new high for MGM in the staging of showstopper numbers, with its athletic dancing and use of animation and special effects.
Flo (Dorothy McNulty) is down on her heels and up on her toes, doing the Varsity Drag Good News suffered at the time from being released as the public was becoming bored with musicals, and several songs were filmed but not included in the final cut: fifteen songs were announced, but only eight made it.
Sadly, we can no longer view Good News in its entirety as the last reel is missing. But I think we all know that a happy ending with a final clinch are inevitable.
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June Pursell
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.
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Eddie Nugent
Edward J Nugent (1904-95) was a boy singer, then vaudeville performer, who went looking for work in Hollywood in the late 1920s. He was fortunate enough to get a credited role in his first film, The Man in Hobbles (1928).
He had a featured part in Our Dancing Daughters (1928), and a prominent one in the Ramon Novarro vehicle The Flying Fleet (1929).
Then, strangely, he crops up as an uncredited chorus boy in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. There is at least a possibility that this is misattributed, since Nugent was back to being third-billed in The Girl in the Show (1929).
In 1939, Nugent went to New York to appear in a play and decided to stay in the East, settling in New England. He concentrated on the stage and radio, and in the 1950s moved into television directing.
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Myrtle McLaughlin
Myrtle McLaughlin (c1908-??) made a few appearances in films in the late 1920s. She is usually mentioned in reference to The General (1929), but it should be noted that this was a Benny Rubin short, not the Buster Keaton masterpiece of a few years earlier.
McLaughlin made an uncredited appearance in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, on the receiving end of Charles King’s rendition of ‘Orange Blossom Time’.
