Harry Franklin Price (1886-1964) was a stage actor who made uncredited appearances in around 300 pictures, including scores of low-budget westerns.
Price was in two MGM musicals: Children of Pleasure and A Night at the Opera.
Tag: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
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William H O’Brien
William H O’Brien (1891-1981) made his first film in Australia in 1918, and in a Hollywood career lasting over fifty years he appeared in around 650 films, almost always without credit. These included Scarface (1931), The Thin Man (1934), Rebecca (1940), Citizen Kane (1941), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Ace in the Hole (1951), High Noon (1952), Some Like It Hot (1959) and, finally, Bedknobs and Brooksticks (1971).
With a filmography that long, it is little wonder O’Brien was in thirteen Metro musicals across a 36-year period, starting with Children of Pleasure in 1930 and ending with Made in Paris in 1966. In between came New Moon, A Night at the Opera, San Francisco, Nobody’s Baby, The Firefly, Two Girls on Broadway, Thousands Cheer, Two Sisters from Boston, The Glass Slipper, It’s Always Fair Weather and Merry Andrew.
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Maude Turner Gordon
Maude Turner (1868-1940) was a stage actor, dramatist and occasional producer who made her first film appearance in 1915.
Turner Gordon became typecast as ladies of wealth and dignity, as indicated by the playing of dowagers in two of her MGM musicals, Children of Pleasure and Sweethearts. In between, she played affluent Mrs Caraway in The Florodora Girl.
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Jay Eaton
Jay Eaton (1899-1970) had a featured role in his first picture, Her First Elopement (1920), directed by Sam Wood. He went on to act in upwards of 240 films, working for some of Hollywood’s greatest directors, but mostly making small, uncredited appearances.
Nine of these were in MGM musicals, starting with Children of Pleasure, followed by Stage Mother, Hollywood Party and A Night at the Opera (reunited him with Sam Wood). Eaton was in The Great Ziegfeld, Broadway Serenade, Ship Ahoy, Swing Fever and Easy to Wed.
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Carrie Daumery
Belgian stage actor Carrie Daumery (1863-1938) starred in a couple of French films in 1908, but began her film career in earnest with a featured part in The Conquering Power (1921), an adaptation of Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet.
Daumery continued as a prominent supporting player throughout the 1920s, sometimes credited as Madame Daumery. The advent of sound saw her reduced to playing mostly uncredited bit parts. She made appearances in three Metro musicals: Children of Pleasure, New Moon and The Merry Widow. The last of these reunited Daumery with Ernst Lubitsch, for whom she had played the Countess of Berwick in Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925).
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Sidney Bracey
Sidney Bracy [sic] (1877-1942) was a stage actor in his native Australia before moving to America and commencing his film career in 1909. Later in life he tended to be cast as authority figures and servants, including upwards of 54 butlers and a variety of valets and chauffeurs.
Four of Bracey’s MGM musical appearances were as butlers: Children of Pleasure, A Lady’s Morals, Hollywood Party and San Francisco. He also showed up uncredited in Broadway to Hollywood, The Firefly and Rosalie.
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Lee Kohlmar
German-born Lee Kohlmar (1873-1946) started out in live theatre and made his screen debut in 1915. He worked throughout the silent period, occasionally as director.
Most of Kohlmar’s sound roles were uncredited, and these included Children of Pleasure and, his final film, The Big Store.
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Helen Johnson (Judith Wood)
Helen Johnson (1906-2002) had a very brief career in leading roles, followed by a slow decline under the name Judith Wood, culminating in an uncredited appearance in The Asphalt Jungle (1950).
In the early 30s, Johnson appeared in a number of ‘A’ features, most notably as the feckless Pat Thayer in Children of Pleasure.
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Wynne Gibson
Winifred Elaine Gibson (1898-1987) was an actor who starred in films without ever really becoming a film star. She had performed in vaudeville, burlesque and musical comedies before featuring in Nothing But the Truth (1929). The following year she was given the female lead in Children of Pleasure.
Thereafter, Gibson mostly appeared in ‘B’ pictures; Richard Barrios calls her “one of the best tough blondes in Depression cinema”. In the 1950s, as she moved into television work, she and her partner, Beverley Roberts, were heavily involved in the development of theatrical trade unionism in New York.
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Free and Easy
Opinion
There are things to enjoy in Free and Easy, but it is a film whose final shot is heartbreaking, and not for the hoaky reasons intended by the filmmakers. Buster Keaton’s character, Elmer Butts, has failed to get the girl he loves. Dressed in a ridiculous uniform and in Pagliacciesque clown makeup, Keaton gazes off-camera at Anita Page with a look of utter despondency, then raises his eyes to heaven. It is probably the most downbeat ending ever given to a musical, and that includes West Side Story (1961 and 2021).
A tragic Buster Keaton is just wrong It has been suggested that Keaton is looking, not at his co-star, but at his life as one of the preeminent filmmakers in Hollywood (or anywhere else) disappearing in front of his eyes. It is as though the full implications of what he has given up by signing a contract with MGM is becoming clear for the first time in front of our eyes. Symbolically, Keaton loses the girl for the first time in his career, just as he has lost his independence and potential for creativity.
Free and Easy was Keaton’s first talking picture, and the first since his earliest days when he had played no real part in its development. The opening titles claim the film as A Buster Keaton Production, but this would seem to have meant little in practice. The film was directed by Edward Sedgwick, a friend of Keaton’s and another comedy specialist who failed to find a settled place at Hollywood’s most successful studio.
Keaton turns in a professional performance, but he is not playing a Buster Keaton character: in his own films he was never a loser. The finale suggests that Metro were under the impression they had signed Chaplin or Harry Langdon. Left to his own devices, Keaton would probably have made a successful transition to sound: his baritone voice is effective both speaking and singing, and would not have impeded his gag-based comedy.
Ma Plunkett (Trixie Friganza) and Elmer (Buster Keaton) perform ‘Oh King, Oh Queen’ The biggest revelation in Free and Easy is Trixie Friganza as the stage mother from hell, Ma Plunkett. Friganza had been a vaudeville star for many years and the film captures some of the talent that made her stage career such a success.
Anita Page and Robert Montgomery (who does get the girl) stand around looking attractive, and the film features cameos by a number of MGM luminaries. One of the more interesting aspects of Free and Easy is the glimpse it gives of the Metro studio during the transition to sound.
