I look at old movies with a very different eye than most. For example, I am always deeply interested in the set decoration and costuming and I know what I’m looking at.
But another little practice or pastime I exercise is that whenever I watch a movie made in the 1930s, I look for my cousin, particularly in party or nightclub scenes. Any scene in which people are dancing in fancy dress. You see, between 1930 and 1937 he was in almost 200 movies as an extra, generally in scenes like the ones I described, before he got his first named part. That is a heckuva long apprenticeship.
The movies he appeared in as an extra included Top Hat, Swing Time, The Great Ziegfield, A Star Is Born, Captains Courageous, and Saratoga, just to name a few. Going on from that to become a pretty big star in movies of the 40s and 50s as well as early television is kind of a remarkable development.
Sadly, I look very little like him although two of my siblings do a bit. I’m not tall, rangy, I don’t have reddish-blonde hair, and I don’t look nearly as good in a tux. Ah well, perhaps in another life.
Who was your cousin? My wife and I watch lots of old movies; we watched “The Big Heat” Friday night and “The Sniper” last night. Watched “The Lineup” last weekend. The old movies were far better than the new ones, in my mind.
I’ve mentioned him before. His stage name was “Dennis O’Keefe”. His birth name was “Edward James Flanagan”.
Movies you might have seen him in include The Fighting Seabees (second lead), Brewster’s Millions (lead)–remade in 1985 with Richard Pryor, T-Men (lead), and a sort of cult picture The Leopard Man (lead). He had his own anthology show on TV.
I don’t have a great deal of interest in movies made after the studio system collapsed.
“Raw Deal”? “T-Men” ? That was your cousin? We saw both those movies last year. They might have been on one of those sets that Sony and TCM put out; Kit Parker and Kino are also doing God’s work in preserving and making available these old movies. “Raw Deal” was really good; Raymond Burr had a great death scene. He made an excellent foil to your cousin and a superb mobster who did not have a heart of gold. People who pigeon-hole Burr as Parry Mason are making a huge mistake.
People must really enjoy those old movies; when we finish a set we put it in eBay, and it seldom lasts more than 24 hours before we sell it.
Yep. That’s the one. His father (also named Edward James Flanagan) was a headliner in vaudeville and made some movie shorts in the teens. My mom was in vaudeville essentially from birth. I have no idea how he managed to make ends meet prior to 1937. Extra work just didn’t pay that much. I suspect he was doing uncredited behind the camera work.
I only met him once and that was in Los Angeles. He was a tall, handsome man in late middle age. He and my mom and dad spent the afternoon drinking highballs and shooting the breeze around his pool.
His aunt, my beloved Aunt Annie, taught us to sing and dance. It was a talented family.
Can’t let this thread go by without crediting the great Fred McDougall. Most underappreciated Gunsmoke actor giving his life for his art.
https://www.metv.com/stories/one-man-appeared-in-nearly-200-gunsmoke-episodes-but-was-only-credited-once