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Appendix C. Cast and Crew List with Mini-Biographies
- University of Missouri Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
205 appendix c Cast and Crew List with Mini-Biographies The following list is compiled from several sources, including the Internet Movie Database and the assistant director’s reports.1 Putting all sources together, it appears that a total of 109 people were noted as having worked on making The Pirate, not counting extras who played the roles of soldiers, audience members, or citizens in “crowd” scenes. Four of the people on this compiled list were principal actors, including Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Gladys Cooper, and Walter Slezak, who constituted only 3.7 percent of the total. Another group of thirteen supporting actors represented 11.9 percent. The bit players and dancers who had a line to speak amounted to eleven people, or 10.1 percent, while bit players and dancers with no lines totaled thirty-one people, or 28.4 percent. Finally, fifty backstage people, including crew members, writers, the producer and director, as well as the various departmental directors, constituted 45.9 percent of the people who brought The Pirate to life. A number of people involved in the making of this movie remain obscure, with very little information about their lives available today. For eight of them, or 7.3 percent of the list, literally no information was found. In contrast, there are several people on the following list whose contributions to The Pirate wound up on the cutting room floor; therefore, they do not appear in the release print of the film, but they do get some credit in this Appendix. The Cast and Crew of The Pirate Lola Albright (friend of Manuela): Born July 20, 1925, in Akron, Ohio. Albright worked as a model and in a radio station in Akron before 206 • Appendix C moving to California in the mid-1940s. She appeared in Champion (1949) with Kirk Douglas and, after a few more movie roles through 1951, went on to a successful career in television, becoming a regular in series such as Peter Gunn (1958–1961) and Peyton Place (1964). The Pirate was only her second film, and it appears she was added late in the production as one of Manuela’s friends because, unlike the rest of the friends, she has no on-screen credit. Lester Allen (Uncle Capucho): Born November 17, 1891, in Utica, New York, and died November 6, 1949, in Hollywood. He performed in vaudeville, in the circus, and in burlesque theaters before appearing in his first film, Pusher-in-the-Face, in 1929. As mentioned in Chapter 4, Garland wore Allen’s clown costume from a Broadway show for the “Be a Clown” reprise. The show, Rufus LeMaire’s Affairs, played at the Majestic Theatre in New York for fifty-six performances from March 28 to sometime in May 1927, and Allen performed in five different roles in this revue. Soon after The Pirate was released, Minnelli and Garland attended a costume party hosted by Groucho Marx and dressed in replicas of the clown suits worn in the reprise of “Be a Clown.” Garland, of course, wore the replica of Allen’s clown suit that she had performed in, while Minnelli wore a replica of Kelly’s suit.2 Allen was killed when hit by a car driven by a twenty-five-year-old driver while crossing Ventura Boulevard, only a year after the release of The Pirate. His last film, Love That Brute, was released the next year, 1950. Marie Allison (“Niña” girl): Allison appeared in only four films; The Pirate was her first and Two Tickets to Broadway (1951) was her last. Robert Alton (co-director for dance): Born Robert Alton Hart, January 28, 1906, in Bennington, Vermont, and died June 12, 1957, in Los Angeles. Alton studied ballet in New York and worked as a choreographer on Broadway before choreographing his first film in 1936. He directed films and stage shows throughout a long career , winning a Tony Award for Best Choreography for his work on the 1952 production of Pal Joey. His credits list twenty-three movies as choreographer (from 1933 to 1955, including some of the most important film musicals of the Freed Unit), two as producer (1955–1956), two as director (1947 and 1950), and one as actor (in an adaptation of Fulda’s original play Two-Faced Woman, 1941). Anne Beck (“Niña” girl and dancer): Beck began her seven-film career as a dancer in Living in a Big Way (1947), starring Gene Kelly. The Pirate was her third...