William Russell Hardie (1904-73) was a stage actor who made occasional appearances in films. He featured in a couple of dozen Broadway productions, including playing the lead in the original staging of The Criminal Code (1929), later filmed by Howard Hawks. He also starred in the premiere of The Primrose Path (1940).
Hardie featured prominently in two 1933 MGM musicals, acting alongside Alice Brady in both of them. In Broadway to Hollywood he played Brady’s son, while in Stage Mother he was her husband, dying both tragically and early in the picture.
In 1958, Hardie played Lt. Byrnes, head of the 87th Precinct in the film of Ed McBain’s Cop Hater.
John Cooper (1922-2011) was a rare child actor who managed to extend early success into a long and successful life and career. Cooper made his screen debut aged six, though he had been carried around as an extra before that, and appeared for a couple of years as one of Hal Roach’s ‘Little Rascals’.
Under contract to Roach, Cooper was loaned to Paramount to star in Skippy (1931), under the direction of his uncle, Norman Taurog. In the same year he supported Wallace Beery’s Oscar-winning turn in The Champ.
Cooper worked regularly throughout his teenage years, notably as the second male lead in Fritz Lang’s The Return of Frank James (1940), also finding time to have an affair with Joan Crawford. His films as an adult in the 1940s were not of great note, and he took time out to serve in the navy. By 1949 he had started working regularly in television. In 1954 he made his first foray into television direction, going on to work on a wide variety of comedy and drama series, and winning two Primetime Emmys. From 1959, he was also working as a producer.
Cooper continued to act, and is well-known for playing Perry White in the Christopher Reeves Superman pictures. He finally retired in 1989.
Jackie Cooper made appearances in two MGM musicals: as a child in Broadway to Hollywood, and as a teenager in Ziegfeld Girl, as Lana Turner’s brother and Judy Garland’s beau.
Francis Phillip Wuppermann (1890-1949) was the Wizard of Oz. It was his most famous role, the one that has gained him immortality. But it was not his only role: he made about a hundred films altogether, including thirteen other MGM musicals.
A graduate of Cornell University (he studied business administration), Morgan made his start in acting in the theatre, in a Broadway production of Mr Wu in 1914. His screen debut came two years later, a supporting role in a Vitagraph picture. He was a journeyman player in both media until the late 1920s, when he appeared on stage in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1927). Three years later he created the title role in the comedy Topaze.
In the cinema, a highlight was co-starring as Bunny in John Barrymore’s Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman (1917). He was always based in New York, and apparently told his friend Ralph Bellamy he was selling out by going to Hollywood. Six months later, Morgan was there himself and, after returning East for two Broadway productions, became a fixture in the film capital. He was under contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for the rest of his life, though he was loaned out in 1933 for Hallelujah, I’m a Bum.
Morgan had a few leading roles, for example in The Affairs of Cellini (1934), which earned him an Oscar nomination. More often, he worked as a character actor, always bringing added value to whatever picture he was in. Particular highlight was Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner (1940), as the tragi-comic Mr Matuschek, and his role in Borzage’s anti-Nazi The Mortal Storm (1940).
Morgan was a very good actor, and did also star in a number of pictures, perhaps most notably James Whale’s The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933). In an entertaining minor MGM film from 1943, A Stranger in Town , he starred as a Supreme Court Justice trying to have a duck-hunting vacation in a small town.
The musicals in which Morgan appeared, beside The Wizard of Oz, were Broadway to Hollywood (playing the lead), The Cat and the Fiddle, Naughty Marietta, The Great Ziegfeld, Rosalie, Sweethearts, Broadway Serenade, Balalaika, Broadway Melody of 1940, Hullabaloo (another lead), Thousands Cheer, Yolanda and the Thief and Summer Holiday. This means he worked with Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Mickey Rooney and Kathryn Grayson: most of the musical performers whose stars glittered in the MGM firmament.
Frank Morgan, despite his usually cheery persona on and off screen, had a serious problem with alcohol, believed to have been triggered by the murder of the brother with whom he was closest. He was a functioning alcoholic, but the impact on his general health was almost certainly a contributing factor to his death from heart failure at the age of 59, just after he had started shooting Annie Get Your Gun.
Mary Rose Brady (1892-1939) will have found it relatively easy to break into the New York film industry, given that her first picture, As Ye Sow (1914) was made by William A Brady Productions, her father’s company. She had previously acted on stage, including in a Broadway production with which her father was associated. She continued to work in the theatre during her film career, including a leading role in the 1931 premiere of Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra.
Brady acted in films until 1923, then concentrated on the stage until travelling to Hollywood in 1933. After one supporting role at MGM, she starred in two musicals, playing very different kinds of stage mother: Broadway to Hollywood and Stage Mother.
Alice Brady’s most beloved role is probably as Carole Lombard’s batty mother in My Man Godfrey (1936), which earned her a nomination for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. She won in the category the following year, for her part in In Old Chicago (1938), this time as Tyrone Power’s mother, responsible for starting the cataclysmic fire.
Brady’s final role was as yet another mother, the noble Abigail Clay in John Ford’s Young Mr Lincoln (1939).
Ever since Laurel and Hardy’s last-minute insertion into The Rogue Song, Hal Roach had wanted to put them into a feature-length operetta. He chose Fra Diavolo, a one-hundred-year old work by Daniel Auber; the film was known by that title outside the United States.
Stanlio (Stan Laurel) listens as Ollio (Oliver Hardy) explains why they have nothing to fear from Fra Diavolo
The Devil’s Brother (a meaningless title) is essentially an editing together of two separate films. Hal Roach directed the musical and dramatic sequences, using Hap Depew as cinematographer, while Charley Rogers (and Stan Laurel) directed the comedy sequences, photographed by Art Lloyd. This ended up proving that Roach was a better producer than he was director: the parts attributed to Rogers were highly praised, while those for which Roach was responsible were not. In fact, previews led to the excision of a significant amount of the non-comedic footage.
This was an untypical Laurel and Hardy picture (historical setting, no bowler hats) and the pair were hesitant about making it. But it turned out to be one of their favourites amongst their films, as well as the most commercially successful. It features some classic Laurel and Hardy routines, including the introduction of ‘Kneesy-Earsy-Nosy’, the frustratingly difficult coordination game that Stan made look so easy.
Lady Pamela (Thelma Todd) is pleased that the Marquis de San Marco has arrived at the inn
There is a third excellent performance in The Devil’s Brother, with Thelma Todd being given a rare opportunity to show her range. She plays Lady Pamela, an English aristocrat, and actually sounds more convincing than British-born James Finlayson, playing her husband. Todd is almost unrecognizable as the fast-talking working girl she played in most of her films.
Dennis King, as might be expected, carries off the musical sequences with aplomb, though it cannot be said he is totally convincing as a ruthless cutthroat. He holds his own in his scenes with Stan and Ollie, though he later admitted to finding their improvisations very challenging. Lucile Brown is an effective ingenue and handles her one song capably (and fetchingly, since she is in lingerie). But Arthur Pierson’s Lorenzo demonstrates why he gave up acting to move behind the camera.
Stanlio demonstrates Kneesy-Earsy-Nosey
A feature musical with the MGM imprimatur, The Devil’s Brother clearly has a larger budget than was normal for Hal Roach productions. This is demonstrated by the number of actors and extras on screen, and by Dolly Tree’s costumes.
Leroy Bernard Shield (1893-1962) started playing the piano at a dance academy aged 10, and was a professional concert pianist at 12. Later, he was a regimental band leader during his military service.
In 1923, Shield became a staff musician for a company that went on to form part of RCA. In 1929, RCA provided the Hal Roach Studios with the technology for the transition to sound, and Shield travelled to Hollywood to assist with the process. This included working with performers during their initial voice tests.
While there, Shield composed incidental music that was used in Roach’s Our Gang and Laurel and Hardy shorts. The pieces were used in many of their pictures, and are often misattributed to Marvin Hatley, who composed ‘Dance of the Cuckoos’.
Shield only received two onscreen credits, for the feature musical The Devil’s Brother and Our Relations (1936). He made one screen appearance, as a band leader in Let’s Do Things (1931), the first of the Thelma Todd and ZaSu Pitts series.
In later life, Shield worked extensively in radio, toured with Toscanini, and wrote classical compositions.
James Francis Greene (1899-1935) was a sound recording engineer at the Hal Roach Studios, responsible for the sound on some of Laurel and Hardy’s most beloved pictures, including The Music Box (1932, with location recording required on those steps), County Hospital (1932), Towed in a Hole (1932) and Busy Bodies (1935).
He was also the sound recording engineer on the duo’s first operetta, The Devil’s Brother (1935).
Greene’s career was tragically cut short when he experienced an insulin shock which the police took to be drunkenness. He was thrown in a cell and died when no treatment was given.
British-born Dorothy Marian Isbell (1899-1962) was something of a Renaissance woman, successful in a variety of roles, including as an illustrator, actor and, most notably, as a costume designer.
As a teenager, Tree’s love of the theatre prompted her to start designing posters. This became a professional opportunity in 1917 when she was employed to produce posters and programmes for a well-known impresario. She also produced comic illustrations for newspapers and periodicals.
Between 1915 and 1918, Tree starred in around eight British films, including Hindle Wakes (1918), the first version of Stanley Houghton’s 1912 play.
Designing costumes for stage and screen began in the early 1920s, and she also designed for the Folies Bergère. Tree emigrated to the United States in 1926 and worked on Broadway, including designing for pre-Hollywood Mae West. By this time, her designs were having an impact on the wider fashion scene of the Jazz Age.
Tree’s Hollywood career began in 1929, first at Fox, and then eleven years at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Pictures she worked on included The Thin Man (1934), David Copperfield (1935), Libeled Lady (1936) and Fury (1936) and The Good Earth (1937).
Dolly Tree designed costumes for fifteen MGM musicals: The Devil’s Brother, The Night is Young, Here Comes the Band, A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, Rosalie, Listen Darling, Tce Follies of 1939, Babes in Arms, Let Freedom Ring, At the Circus, Strike Up the Band, Little Nellie Kelly and Go West.
Tree’s career effectively ended in 1942, when divorce led to a drink problem.Her reputation has long rested in the shadows created by Adrian and Orry-Kelly, but there is now a growing awareness of her importance as a designer.
