We continued with a heavy dose of new TIGers on Friday. It’s “only” seven, so I will do them in one batch.
Let’s start by playing fill in the blank. A train passenger is to YOUNG TOM EDISON as a ______________ is to THE WOMEN. Answer in a moment.
Blanche Payson (1881) was a very large woman, standing somewhere between 6’ and 6'4" according to different sources. She worked for both Sennett and Roach and often played the domineering wife to actors like Oliver Hardy and Ben Turpin. IMDb indicated that she was the NYPD’s first woman police officer, but I think that’s incorrect. According to the San Francisco Public Library, she was actually that city’s first policewoman, albeit a “special” one in 1915. To answer that fill in the blank, she was a MASSEUSE in THE WOMEN (1939). The photos show her as a policewoman as well as showing her great height.
Walter Kingsford (1881) came to Hollywood from the tradition of the formal London stage. As such, he often played noblemen and heads of state in period pieces and professional men in others. In the 1940s, he had a fairly regular gig as Dr. Carew in the Drs. Kildare/Gillespie series. In the 1950s, he continued to play doctors, scientists and military types on television. He appeared on ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS five times in two seasons. He played Malthus in TROUBLE FOR TWO (1936).
Florence Ryerson (1892) was an MGM screenwriter and probably best known as one of three credited screenwriters for THE WIZARD OF OZ. More than a dozen others are deemed to have added to that script. She received less collaboration when she wrote the script, with Milton Merlin, for HENRY GOES ARIZONA (1940). That film was the second of two MGM features that put Ginny in a cowboy hat. Ryerson’s screen credits wind down after that. I assume that she concentrated on the mystery novels and stageplays she wrote with her husband Colin Clements during the 1940s.
Kermit Maynard (1897) is known as “The Other Maynard” because his brother was western star Ken Maynard. Kermit started as a stuntman and a double for his brother, but moved on to have a character actor career of his own in westerns. When he retired in 1963, he had appeared in more than 350 film and television roles, almost all of them westerns. He played one of his specialties, a ranch hand, in HENRY GOES ARIZONA.
Wally Heglin (1904) was an MGM orchestrator. Starting in 1940, he had a hand in orchestration on most of Ginny’s films including two of the musicals, BORN TO SING (1942) and BEST FOOT FORWARD (1943). He would spend the next 15 years remaining as an orchestrator and then would move into being a copyist until he retired in 1970 after he worked on TORA! TORA! TORA! When I did a search for a photo of Mr. Heglin, this photo of Virginia and Ray McDonald from BORN TO SING is the FIRST result that came up. So I’m going with it.
Cinematographer Russell Metty (1906) worked with Virginia on two of her RKO films, THE SPELLBINDER (1939) and THE GREAT MAN VOTES (1939). He was considered to be one of the best, but his sole Oscar was for SPARTACUS, a film where he disagreed with director Stanley Kubrick’s vision for the film throughout. He received one other nomination for FLOWER DRUM SONG. I picked this photo of Metty with Ann Blyth because I like the chair.
Roland Dupree (1925) had a small role in THE YOUNGEST PROFESSION (1943) as Lana Turner’s mailroom boy (that doesn’t sound right, does it?). He also worked at Universal as a member of the dance group The Jivin’ Jacks and Jills. He later opened dance studios and Dupree Dance is still in existence even though Roland himself has now retired and moved to Hawaii.
