The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Tag: MGM musical

  • Bob Kortman

    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.

  • Clifford Bruce

    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 Humphrey

    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.

  • Wylie Watson

    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 Burton

    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.

  • John J Richardson

    Harold Jack Joseph Richardson (1888-1942) was a British-born actor who appears to have travelled to the United States at the same time as Charles Chaplin and Stan Laurel, as part of the Fred Karno troupe. He made 160+ appearances in Hollywood films, starting with his debut as Goulash the lion tamer in Roaring Lions and Wedding Bells (1917). 

    Most of Richardson’s roles were uncredited, including that in MGM’s It’s a Great Life.

    Richardson’s wife Mabel, who appeared in a couple of pictures before becoming a makeup artist, is reputed to be the longest-living Hollywood performer, having died in 2001 at the age of 110.

  • George Periolat

    George E Periolat (1874-1940) was a Broadway who made his first film in New York in 1909, for the Vitagraph Company, but later moved to Hollywood. He was a busy character actor, playing, amongst other roles, the Governor in Douglas Fairbanks’s The Mark of Zorro and Mary Pickford’s father in the Lubitsch-directed Rosita (1923).

    Most of Periolat’s appearances in sound picture were uncredited, including his Mr Weill in It’s a Good Life. 

  • Lee Shumway

    Leonard Charles Shumway (1884-1954) appeared in over 450 films in his forty-year career, with the earliest-known title being 1913’s The Snake, where he was Leon C Shumway. In his final film he played a bartender in Calamity Jane (1953). He had previous stage experience.

    Shumway’s roles fluctuated between credited and uncredited, with one of the former being as the Coach in So This Is College. 

  • USC Trojan Marching Band

    The University of Southern California’s Trojan Marching Band (1918- ) has made many media appearances since its formation at the end of the First World War., including two musicals. In 1969, it featured prominently in Twentieth Century-Fox’s Hello Dolly and, forty years earlier, marched in the big football game at the end of So This Is College. 

  • Gene Stone

    Eugene Meszaros (1892-1947) was a Hungarian actor who, it may be assumed, moved to the United States at a young age, since he acted with an American accent.

    Stone made his first film in 1927, at a relatively advanced age (around 35), suggesting he may have come from the stage. He started out with featured roles, but his role in So This Is College seems to have done little for his career, as he was uncredited thereafter. 

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