Hazel Craven (dates unknown) was a chorus girl who, in a brief Hollywood career, played a series of…chorus girls.
She started out with a credited part in Lord Byron of Broadway, dancing alongside Rita Flynn. Thereafter, Craven was uncredited, though in a string of prestigious pictures (The Kid from Spain [1932, 42nd Street, Footlight Parade and Duck Soup [all 1933]). She apparently played a bit part in one Rainy Afternoon (1936), and there the trail seems to end.
Edith Flynn (1905-73) was briefly Micky Flynn when performing on the stage in musical comedies, before settling on the “ritzier” Rita at the start of her film career.
Flynn was generally cast in supporting roles, though she was a featured player, as a character with her own name, in a series of short comedies known Hollywood Girls, directed by Roscoe Arbuckle in 1931-32.
A little earlier, Flynn appeared briefly in Lord Byron of Broadway, as one of the women inexplicably attracted to Charles Kaley.
In a chorus girl cliché, Flynn retired from acting in 1933 after marrying a millionaire.
Carl Roup (1915-2002) had a long career with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, briefly as a child actor, and then in various production capacities.
Roup was discovered and cast in his first film, The Red Mill (1925), by Marion Davies, who saw him selling newspapers on the studio lot. She paid for his education at a military school, leading Lon Chaney to nickname him ‘Major’.
Roup made a number of other appearances in silent pictures, and played a young baseball fan in They Learned About Women.
Roupe later became a script clerk, including on A Day at the Races and At the Circus. In 1946, he started working as a second assistant director on Till the Clouds Roll By, and also carried out that role on On an Island With You, Easter Parade, The Kissing Bandit, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, Pagan Love Song, Show Boat, Lili, Dangerous When Wet, Rose Marie, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Jupiter’s Darling, Silk Stockings and Billy Rose’s Jumbo.
The Los Angeles Times obituary described Roup as “as much a part of MGM as Leo the Lion”.
Michael Joseph Donlin (1878-1933) was a Major League baseball player, nicknamed Turkey Mike, who is generally held to have frittered away his enormous talent. A chaotic lifestyle was exacerbated by an ill-conceived ambition to become an actor. He abandoned baseball in 1906 to perform in a Broadway play with a baseball theme.
After an ill-fated attempt to return to the game, Donlin sought a Hollywood career. He made around 70 films, often uncredited and generally without interest, though he did become an early member of John Ford’s stock company, making half a dozen pictures with him.
Donlin’s bit as a baseball player in They Learned About Women would not have stretched his talents.
Edward T Gribbon (1890-1965) started making comedy shorts in around 1917, doing a lot of work for Mack Sennett. He progressed to supporting roles in many features. Later in his career he did a lot of uncredited work, but was a regular in the Joe Palooka series, and showed up as a storm trooper in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940).
Gribbon played Coach Brennan in They Learned About Women.
Robert F Kortman (1887-1967) made around 300 screen appearances in a career lasting the best part of fifty years. The majority of his films were westerns, and was a favoured opponent of William S Hart.
The majority of Kortman’s roles were uncredited, but he was in a number of outstanding films, including: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927); The Criminal Code (1931), playing the convict barber who shaves the governor; Beau Geste (1939); The Big Clock (1948); Ace in the Hole (1951); Rancho Notorious (1952); and his last picture, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1961).
Kortman was also the forest ranger pursuing Laurel and Hardy in one of their early appearances together, Duck Soup (1927).
Along the way, Kortman made an appearance as one of Ramon Novarro’s fellow Bonapartists in Devil-May-Care.
The AFI Catalog lists Devil-May-Care, made in 1929, as the final credit of the Canadian stage and film actor Clifford Bruce, who died in 1919. On balance, it seems unlikely that it is the same man.
The Clifford Bruce who played Gaston the butler in the MGM film seems to have no other credited or uncredited roles, at least under that name. So far, he remains a mystery.
William Jonathan Humphrey (1863-1942) was an actor and director, from 1908 and 1910 respectively. He made around 140 appearances and directed about 80 pictures, with much of his early work being for the Vitagraph Company. He had a lengthy contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from the mid-twenties.
Humphrey made his screen debut playing Napoleon Bonaparte, a role he returned to at least eight times, including in MGM’s Devil-May-Care.
Scottish actor John Wylie Robertson (1889-1966) has a secure place in cinema history thanks to his playing of Mr Memory in Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (1935), the character who holds the secret to the film’s MacGuffin.
Watson’s whole career was in the British stage and film industries. He was in a host of notable pictures, including Jamaica Inn (1939), Tawny Pipit (1944), Waterloo Road (1945), Brighton Rock (1948) and Whisky Galore! (1949). He emigrated to Australia in 1952 and his final role was in The Sundowners (1960).
All of which makes it puzzling that online sources cite him as playing an uncredited bit in It’s a Great Life. Wylie Watson is an unusual name, so it is difficult to see him being confused with another actor. But it is even more difficult to understand why he would be in Hollywood in 1929, playing uncredited in a Duncan Sisters’ flop.
Clarence Forrest Burton (1882-1933) started working as a child in a family vaudeville act. By his 20s he was acting in plays and musicals, and moved into screen acting in 1912, making regular appearances in Cecil B DeMille pictures. His final role was in DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross (1932). It was noted in the press at the time of his death that he had previously died more than 100 times in films.
Burton played, uncredited, the cop who chases the Duncan Sisters at the start of MGM’s It’s a Great Life, and was also in They Learned About Women.
