In old Hollywood, actors would sometimes show up in one or two pictures, then disappear, leaving behind no clue as to how they came to stand briefly in the spotlight. One such was Ruth Metzger (dates unknown).
IMDb states that she appeared in Honky Tonk (1929), a Sophie Tucker musical, and in The Rogue Song. No specific character is named in either case.
Presumably someone had a basis for inputting this information, but it is difficult to be certain that Ruth Metzger actually existed.
James Horatio Bradbury Jr (1894-1936) was the son of two actors and made his stage debut while still a child.
After serving in the First World War, Bradbury settled in Hollywood, where he maintained a steady career as a character actor and supporting player. In the silent era, he combined higher-quality pictures such as Harold Lloyd’s Speedy (1928) with many low-budget westerns.
After the introduction of sound, Bradbury played one of the bandits in The Rogue Song, but the general quality of his parts declined and he eventually took his own life, self-immolating in a failed attempt at suicide by gas.
William Burr McIntosh (1862-1942) was a man of many parts: writer, publisher, photographer, entrepreneur. And silent film actor.
McIntosh had already achieved success publishing The Burr McIntosh Monthly, an early example of the pinup magazine, when he turned to screen acting. He starred in a series of 14 two-reel shorts playing J Rufus Wallingford, a con man.
The high point of McIntosh’s acting career was his performance as Lillian Gish’s cruel father in D W Griffith’s Way Down East (1920).
McIntosh’s sole outing in an MGM musical was as Count Peter in the lost film, The Rogue Song.
Katherine Duffy (1872-1943) emigrated to America from Ireland as a child, and began a stage career in 1890.
It is claimed in some sources that she made her screen debut in 1902, but no film is named nor evidence provided. More certain is that she made shorts for the New York Kalem Company in 1910. Later, she worked in Florida, partnered with a young Oliver Hardy.
Price relocated to Hollywood in 1917 and found regular character work at a variety of studios. In 1926 she played the matriarch of the Kelly family in The Cohens and the Kellys, the first in a popular series of seven ethnic comedies.
Kate Price is thought to have made around 300 shorts and features, one of which was MGM’s The Rogue Song, in which she played the maidservant Petrovna.
Edward Martindel (1876-1955) was a Broadway actor and singer who started making films in 1915. His early pictures were made in New York, but he seems to have relocated to Hollywood in around 1920.
Martindel was always a supporting player, though generally in credited roles. One of the exceptions was his appearance as Mr Thayer in Children of Pleasure.
IMDb states that an actor named Billy May appeared uncredited in Free and Easy, and suggests that the Billy May in question is Edward William May Jr (1916-2004), a jazz trumpeter who found his greatest success as a composer and orchestrator. Billy May worked with some of the top orchestras of the Big Band era, including Glenn Miller’s. He also arranged songs for, amongst others, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee and Bobby Darin. In addition, May worked with humourist Stan Freberg on many of his comedy records.
However, this particular Billy May would only have been aged 14 at the time, and unlikely to be the performer in the MGM picture, whose identify remains a mystery.
Theodore Lorch (1873-1947) translated stage experience into a 170-film career as a character. His appearance as Chingachgook in an early version of The Last of the Mohicans (1920) did not foreshadow his many later appearances in shorts starring the Three Stooges.
Lorch made appearances uncredited in Free and Easy and Reckless.
Plummer Hull Harmon (1886-1958) appeared in about 170 films, many of them comedies starring Hollywood’s greatest comedians: Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy, Harry Langdon.
Harmon was in three of Buster Keaton’s early films under his MGM contract, including the musical Free and Easy.
Harmon’s film career came to an abrupt halt in 1935 when he was sentenced to a term in Folsom Prison for stealing a horse. His final appearance was as a police officer in Modern Times (1936).
David Burton (1877-1963) was born in what is now Ukraine, though his original name and details of how he ended up in America are obscure.
Burton was a theatre director who went out to Hollywood at the introduction of sound to work with Nick Grinde, directing the actors in The Bishop Murder Case (1929).
Burton directed another sixteen pictures, for various studios. He never directed an MGM musical, but he did make an appearance as himself in the Hollywood-set Free and Easy, auditioning women to beat up Buster Keaton.
George D Morrison (1890-1973) was a star of silent westerns who had actually worked as a cowboy in his youth. He was working as an engine fireman when he started undertaking stunt work for the Essanay Studio in around 1910.
Morrison moved to Hollywood and became an early western star, now almost forgotten. With the introduction of sound, his parts became mostly uncredited, and he also returned to stunt work. He appeared as a cowboy in Montana Moon.
After retiring in 1935, Morrison maintained the western theme by becoming a rancher and sometime deputy sheriff in Colorado.
