Biography: Bob Bailey
He only shared one scene with Laurel & Hardy, but he made it count.
Mantan Moreland was one of the funniest comedians in show business. He could do wonders with unimaginative scripts that called for frightened servants or stooges. Mantan rose above the usual stereotypes with hilarious improvisations and first-rate performances. His trademark bulging eyes, cackling laugh, fidgety gestures, and aggrieved, stream-of-consciousness remarks were often the most entertaining things in any given movie.
Moreland was born on September 3, 1902 in Monroe, Louisiana. (His given name was Manton, which he used professionally on occasion, before the more comical misspelling “Mantan” stuck.) While in his teens, Moreland joined a show-business troupe and spent the next two decades on stage. His first movie appearance was a walk-on in the all-black-cast film version of The Green Pastures (1936). Moreland himself listed a 1938 Grand National release, the Franklyn Warner production Frontier Scout, as his first screen credit.
Mantan Moreland became a familiar face on Hollywood’s “Poverty Row,” working in low-budget features for independent producers. Moreland was especially busy at Monogram Pictures, where he played Frankie Darro’s buddy in Darro’s tough-kid melodramas and frat-house comedies. One of the films, Up in the Air, featured one of Mantan Moreland’s signature comedy sketches: Frankie and Mantan conducting an entire conversation in incomplete sentences! This routine required precise timing, and Frankie Darro proved himself a worthy foil for Mantan.
Moreland’s spontaneous antics in these and other Monogram offerings were noted by other studios, and by the early forties he was busily freelancing in major and minor productions. One of his whirlwind assignments was Laurel & Hardy's A-Haunting We Will Go, in which he plays a waiter amused by Stan and Ollie paying their check. The three comics improvised something for the camera, and then Moreland rushed immediately to another 20th Century-Fox set!
When Moreland wasn’t working within the mainstream Hollywood studio system, "indie" producers Jed Buell or Ted Toddy hired him. (Buell had supervised B-Westerns for Stan Laurel Productions in the late thirties.) Mantan Moreland had starring roles in Buell's and Toddy's ultra-cheap, all-black-cast comedies and revues of the 1940s (Professor Creeps, Mantan Runs for Mayor, Tall, Tan, and Terrific, etc.). These features were very successful in their market, and were sometimes offered as “novelty” films for suburban theaters. Mantan had quite a following and often made personal appearances across America.
Moreland's Monograms were always well received in ethnic neighborhoods, where the theater managers usually billed Mantan Moreland as the star attraction. It's easy to see why: Monogram gave him featured roles instead of quick cameos. Monogram’s casual methods worked to Moreland’s advantage; he could ad-lib freely and the director usually left it in. In 1944 he joined the “Charlie Chan” crew, and appeared in all but two entries of the Monogram series. He is best remembered for his portrayal of “Birmingham Brown,” the detective’s cheerful but easily rattled chauffeur/assistant (“Mis-ser Chan! Good gracious me!”). Moreland added some memorable comedy to the often gimmick-laden mysteries. On two occasions (The Scarlet Clue and Dark Alibi), Mantan’s nightclub straight man, Ben Carter, was on hand for some exceptional comedy relief, doing the incomplete-sentence routine throughout each film.
After the “Charlie Chan” series lapsed in 1949, Moreland concentrated on stage work. In Rhythm and Blues Review (1955) and Rockin’ the Blues (1956), which were compilations of made-for-TV musical shorts with all-black entertainers, Moreland was hired to appear in new footage complementing the musical performances. Out came the incomplete-sentence bit, as effective as ever, and Mantan’s partner was future TV comic Nipsey Russell.
In the 1960s Mantan Moreland became an unwilling victim of political correctness, as his broad, scared-reaction comedy fell out of fashion. His only large role during this period was in the 1964 Lon Chaney thriller Spider Baby, which had a surprise cameo by Mantan as a delivery man who warily approaches a mysterious house and (offscreen) becomes a murder victim. Comedian/producer Carl Reiner used Moreland’s familiar face in two features, Enter Laughing (1967) and The Comic (1969). Mantan finished his movie career as he had started it — doing cameo roles in quickies.
Author John Gloske notes that Moreland, late in life, teamed with straight man Roosevelt Livingood for a stage act that toured Army camps in Vietnam. In 1970, on the eve of one tour, Moreland had to back out due to illness, and recruited his old friend Frankie Darro to fill in for him.
Mantan Moreland died on September 28, 1973, at the age of 71. A comedy LP of his nightclub act, including some good-natured earthy humor and his trademark "incomplete sentence" bit, was issued posthumously in 1975: "A Tribute to the Man(tan)." The album cover featured a photo of Mantan Moreland — as Birmingham.
Copyright © 2011 by
Scott MacGillivray.
Minna Gombell (pronounced “GOM-ble”) wasn’t the typical “Hollywood actress.” She was direct while others were coy; she looked hard-boiled while others looked glamorous. But she kept working while others faded from the movie scene. One of her very few leading roles was in the 1938 Laurel & Hardy feature Block-Heads; otherwise she forsook leads in favor of character roles.
Born on May 28, 1893 in Baltimore, Maryland, and educated at a Baltimore finishing school, she became interested in dramatics and joined a professional troupe upon graduation. For the next several years she played leading roles in Midwestern productions, and in 1919 she made her debut on Broadway. Her New York stage shows included “Jimmie’s Women,” “Nancy’s Private Affair,” and the biggest hit, “The Great Power.” When the latter was adapted for the screen as an all-talking feature, made in New York and released by M-G-M in 1929, Minna Gombell repeated her stage role. (The actress herself listed the 1931 feature Doctors’ Wives as her movie debut. This was actually her first Hollywood production.)
Most of her roles called for mature, worldly types who cast a jaded eye upon the events unfolding around her. So it’s not surprising that she appears in several “problem” melodramas of the early thirties, including Bad Girl, Careless Lady, Hello Sister, Wild Boys of the Road, and What Price Innocence? Her most famous screen appearance from this period is in M-G-M’s The Thin Man, where she plays an opportunistic society leader (and murder suspect). She repeated this role in a “Lux Radio Theatre” broadcast in 1936.
The Thin Man established Minna Gombell as a solid character actress, and from then on she worked steadily, on a freelance basis, in major-studio product. She landed at the Hal Roach studio in 1938, cast as “Mrs. Hardy” in Block-Heads. This was hardly a prestigious credit, but the Laurel & Hardy films of this period often cast legitimate “straight” actors in supporting roles (instead of the broad caricatures seen in the earlier L & H comedies). Minna Gombell’s work in Block-Heads displays her comedy timing and her skill with dialogue.
After Block-Heads it was back to supporting roles, and she gamely took on a wide range of assignments in pictures big and small. The bigger ones included Second Fiddle (as a no-nonsense newspaperwoman), The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and High Sierra. The lesser ones included Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost, Penthouse Rhythm, and The Town Went Wild. A curious hybrid of the “A” and “B” forms was Destiny, a 1944 programmer expanded from Flesh and Fantasy out-takes. Minna Gombell appears in the new footage (as a greedy, two-faced roadhouse operator), before Gloria Jean becomes the focal point in the Flesh and Fantasy material.
Minna Gombell’s last film was I'll See You in My Dreams, released in late 1951. She passed away in 1973, at the age of 80.
Minna Gombell was the last in a long line of actresses to take the role of “Mrs. Oliver Hardy,” and her single appearance with Laurel & Hardy remains a memorable one.
Copyright © 2011 by
Scott MacGillivray.
Laurel & Hardy movies were often proving grounds for new talent. Many familiar actors of the thirties and forties started out with Stan and Ollie. One of 20th Century-Fox's promising starlets, Sheila Ryan, was showcased in two Laurel & Hardy features.
Born Katherine Elizabeth McLaughlin in Topeka, Kansas on June 8, 1921, she graduated from Hollywood High School in 1938. That same year she worked for an experimental television station in Los Angeles.
She signed her first movie contract in 1940. Her speaking voice was a pleasant alto which enabled her to play both "good girl" and "bad girl" parts. During her first year at 20th Century-Fox, using "Sheila Ryan" as her professional name, she worked her way through the studio's "B" series: The Cisco Kid, Jane Withers, Michael Shayne, Charlie Chan, and finally Laurel & Hardy.
If you thought of yourself as a dramatic actor, being cast in a Laurel & Hardy comedy did not enhance your reputation. Stan Laurel's daughter Lois recalled a conversation she had in later years with Sheila Ryan: "Sheila said it was sort of a disgrace if you weren't doing anything and they just put you into a Laurel & Hardy comedy." It seems that Miss Ryan was "disgraced" twice, because after she played the ingenue role in Great Guns, she was recruited for another Laurel & Hardy feature, A-Haunting We Will Go, as a last-minute replacement for Brenda Joyce.
Sheila Ryan made welcome but undistinguished appearances in Fox "B" pictures for three years, Usually, if you were a performer who had racked up this much experience, one of two things happened: you received a well-publicized "push" to important "A" pictures — or you were overlooked. Fox began loaning Sheila Ryan out to other studios, a sure sign that her home studio wasn't plotting her career path carefully. (Her first loan-out was Song of Texas, a Roy Rogers western for the relatively unprestigious Republic Pictures.) By 1944, back at Fox, she was playing third fiddle to the studio's "personality" actresses, including Carmen Miranda, Alice Faye, and Vivian Blaine. In each film Sheila Ryan took a back seat to not one, but two leading women. Her last Fox film was Caribbean Mystery, which was co-written, incidentally, by Scott Darling and produced by William Girard, both of Laurel & Hardy's Bullfighters crew. Fox suspended "B" production and released Sheila Ryan (and Laurel & Hardy) from their contracts.
Sheila Ryan was established enough to secure roles elsewhere, although she never became a major star. Beginning in 1946 she made the rounds of the B-movie community, where her youthful (still in her twenties) good looks were seen to good advantage in romances, adventures, mysteries, and westerns. Her few comedies show her as a good-natured straight-woman; in addition to her work opposite Laurel & Hardy, she was cast in a quickie Three Stooges feature, Gold Raiders, filmed in 1950.
That same year, she appeared in Gene Autry's Columbia western Mule Train. Her co-star was Autry's comic sidekick, the crack-voiced Pat Buttram. Sheila Ryan literally found a home on the range when she and Pat Buttram were married. She worked in two more Autry features and retired from the screen, except for an isolated appearance in 1958.
During her retirement years Sheila Ryan was a frequent guest of Hollywood's Way Out West tent of the international Laurel & Hardy society. She passed away on November 4, 1975, at the age of 54.
Sheila Ryan's two Laurel & Hardy features show her to good advantage, and we applaud her appearances.
Copyright
©
2011 by Scott MacGillivray.
SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND
EXPANDED
Laurel & Hardy: From the Forties Forward
by Scott MacGillivray
Scott MacGillivray’s Laurel & Hardy: From the Forties Forward was the first book to fully chronicle the later careers of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, and everything that followed, from theatrical reissues to home videos. If you enjoyed the book the first time, you’ll like this new edition even more. The author has expanded the original text by more than 50 percent, to include new insights, new information, and new discoveries in Laurel & Hardy history, never before published. (Which Laurel & Hardy comedy of the 1940s was withheld from release for almost four years? Which “forties” movie was their all-time biggest hit? Which movie was almost shut down by federal intervention?) You’ll read much more about Stan and Ollie’s unrealized projects, including five more feature films, two TV series, and two Broadway shows. A must-read for Stan and Ollie’s fans everywhere, Laurel & Hardy: From the Forties Forward is better than ever!
