The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Tag: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

  • Theodore Kosloff

    Fyodor Mikhailovich Kozlov ((1882-1956) was a Russian ballet dancer who, from 1901, toured with the Diaghilev company.

    After touring internationally for some years, Kosloff settled in the United States in 1912, staging ballets in New York and providing choreography for Broadway musicals. 

    In 1917, Agnes DeMille encouraged her uncle Cecil to use Kosloff’s talents in one of his films. He made his  acting debut in The Woman God Forgot (1917), and combined a film career with stage acting and ballet. He also opened a school of dance.Meanwhile, his private life became increasingly chaotic and, at times violent, as he maintained relationships with multiple women, some of them underage.

    Kosloff acted in films throughout the 1920s, usually in ‘Latin lover’ roles, and mostly for DeMille. He more or less stopped acting after the introduction of sound, his last significant appearance being as Electricity in the ‘Ballet Mécanique’ in Madam Satan, to which it is also believe he contributed choreography (LeRoy Prinz being the credited dance director). His final screen appearance was as a dance instructor in Stage Door (1937).

    Kosloff continued to work as a dance director, and his final contribution to cinema was work on DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956). 

  • Ynez Seabury

    Ynez Seabury (1907-73) made her screen debut at the age of 4 in D W Griffith’s The Miser’s Heart (1911). She went on to make many other films for Griffith, as well as making her first stage appearance in 1912.

    Seabury took a break from films in 1914, returning in 1923 to play a Native American for the first, but not the last, time. This aspect of her work reportedly led to her becoming close to members of the Hopi tribe.

    Ynez Seabury worked sporadically in films through to 1949, usually in uncredited roles. She worked several times for Cecil B DeMille, and her last appearance was in his Samson and Delilah (1949).

    She appeared in two Metro musicals, Madam Satan and The Girl of the Golden West (playing Wowkle, a Native American character).

    One puzzle stands out in Seabury’s IMDb entry. She is said to have played a little girl in The Sign of the Cross (1932), but she would have been about 25 at the time.

  • Tyler Brooke

    Victor Hugo de Bierre (1886-1943) was an American citizen by virtue of the fact that he was born three hours after his French parents entered the country. He had worked as a bank clerk and begun training to be a lawyer when he decided to give it all up and take to the stage. 

    Having worked as a comedian and dancer, Brooke was appearing in No, No Nanette when Hal Roach signed him in 1925 to work in comedy shorts. He transitioned to features in 1928 with Howard Hawks’s Fazil, and made the move into talking pictures without any problems.

    Brooke appeared in six MGM musicals, beginning with Madam Satan. He was uncredited in New Moon and The Merry Widow, then played the dentist in Here Comes the Band. He was uncredited again in the Wizard of Oz and I Married an Angel. 

    Brooke took his own life in 1943, and the press at the time claimed he had been depressed about unemployment, not having worked since making Little Old New York. IMDb lists eleven appearances following this, including I Married an Angel, so the reports of inactivity may have been exaggerated.

  • Boyd Irwin

    British stage actor Boyd Irwin (1880-1957) made his first films in Australia, starting in 1915. By 1920, he was working in Hollywood for pioneer filmmaker Bessie Barriscale.

    Irwin worked throughout the 1920s, notably playing Rochefort in Douglas Fairbanks’s The Three Musketeers (1921).

    By the 1930s, his screen roles had diminished, though he was featured as the Zeppelin captain in Madam Satan. He also appeared, without credit, as the Swedish Ambassador in A Lady’s Morals. Irwin’s later appearances were all uncredited. 

  • Eddie Prinz

    Edward A Prinz (1901-67) was the younger and lesser-known brother of LeRoy Prinz and, like his brother, was a dancer and choreographer.

    The most high-profile film Prinz worked on, though without credit, was Gone with the Wind (1939). He was credited as a dancer on Madam Satan, performing in the ‘Low Down’ number with Lillian Roth. And on Dancing Lady, he was credited with directing the dance ensembles.

  • Elsa Petersen

    Danish-born actor Elsa Petersen (1897-1974) made only 28 films in Hollywood between 1922 and 1957.

    Her debut was playing Reginald Denny’s love interest in one of his Leather Pushers shorts. It was then eight years till her sophomore appearance in Madam Satan. She was with Denny once again, but this time playing his maid. Petersen sings in this prominent supporting role, but all of her subsequent film appearances were uncredited.

  • Jack King

    Albert King (1903-43) was a child prodigy, giving concert performances on the piano at a very young age. He later became a singing instructor and performed in vaudeville.

    As a songwriter, normally in partnership with Elsie Janis, King produced songs for a number of early sound musicals, including MGM’s Madam Satan and Reckless.

    King also made an appearance in Madam Satan as Herman, Lillian Roth’s pianist.

  • Roland Young

    RADA-trained Roland Young (1897-1953) acted on the British stage before working extensively on Broadway. 

    Young served with the US Army during the latter part of the First World War, then made his screen debut playing Watson to John Barrymore’s Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock Holmes (1922). He signed a contract with MGM in 1929, and was again opposite Barrymore in his first sound film, The Unholy Night (1929). Young was rarely top billed, but was a very effective character actor.

    Young appeared in three musicals in quick succession in the early 30s: Madam Satan (hosting the crazed zeppelin party), New Moon (as a tramp) and The Prodigal (as a Russian Count).

    After 1932, Young worked freelance, returning to Metro to play Uriah Heep in David Copperfield (1935). He was nominated for an Oscar for playing Topper (1937), a role he returned to in two sequels. The size of his roles was less during the 1940s, but he was always a reliable supporting player. He also performed on television in the early 50s. 

  • Lillian Roth

    Lillian Rutstein (1910-80) was a talented and charismatic performer who is probably, and unjustly, most remembered today for the alcoholism that was at the centre of the biopic I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955), in which she was played by Susan Hayward.

    Roth made her debut on Broadway at the age of seven. After working in vaudeville in an act with her sister, she was back on Broadway. Roth lied about her age and, at 13, was cast in Artists and Models, a show famous for its nudity.

    Roth’s stage career went into abeyance after Ernst Lubitsch cast her in a prominent role in The Love Parade (1930), teaming her with Lupino Lane. In the same year, she played Trixie in MGM’s Madam Satan. Roth expanded her range in 1933 in Barbara Stanwyck’s prison drama Ladies They Talk About. 

    Roth’s career went into decline owing to her alcoholism, but was revived by the film of her 1954 autobiography and she worked steadily, playing on Broadway and in touring shows and concerts. She made her last film in 1979.

  • Reginald Denny

    A screen career that begins in 1915 at Famous Players-Lasky under the direction of Edwin S Porter, and ends playing Commodore Schmidlapp in the 1966 Batman picture, can be called a career. And such was the life of Reginald Leigh Dugmore (1891-1967).

    Denny started out as a stage actor in the United Kingdom, travelling to America and elsewhere on theatrical tours. It has been suggested he may have appeared on screen as early as 1911, but no titles have been suggested. He played the leads in many silent films, including in Leather Pushers, a series of boxing shorts made in 1922-23. The makers of the series had a liking for punning titles like The Taming of the Shrewd (1922) and Barnaby’s Grudge (1923).

    Denny transitioned to character roles in the 1930s, though he was the romantic lead in his two MGM musicals, Madam Satan and A Lady’s Morals. Later on, he played Algy in several Bulldog Drummond pictures, giving a more low-key performance than Claude Allister. He was also Maxim’s estate manager and friend in Rebecca (1940).

    Reginald Denny was an aeroplane gunner during the First World War, and had a lifelong interest in aviation. This included not only flying full-size planes (he worked as a stunt pilot on at least one occasion), but also models. He designed a remote-controlled ‘drone’ which was used by the US Army in the Second World War, and also established Reginald Denny’s Hobby Shop on Hollywood Boulevard (where Marilyn Monroe worked as a teenager).

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