Hazel Keener

                                                                    

The following is my Hazel Keener/Barbara Worth essay from the ROVI All Movie database. I submit the photo to show what Miss Keener appeared like in the later part of her screen career.

A former Miss Hollywood and a 1924 WAMPAS Baby Star, American actress Hazel Keener is remembered as the vamp in Buster Keaton's THE FRESHMAN (1925) and as cowboy star Fred Thomson's leading lady in six above-average Westerns released by FBO. A former member of the Pasadena Community Players, Keener doubled for leading lady Katherine MacDonald and appeared in Harry Langdon two-reelers under the name Barbara Worth. In an effort to escape B-Westerns, she returned to that moniker in the late 1920s, but without much success. When offers even for cheap Westerns dried up in the early 1930s, Keener turned to playing bit parts, essaying a variety of secretaries, nurses, telephone operators, and mothers in hundreds of films until the 1950s. She later became a lay minister with the Church of Religious Science.

Maurice Truitt (MGM)

Maurice Truitt turned up in juvenile bits in MGM's MEN OF BOYS TOWN and Columbia's NAVAL ACADEMY (both 1941). He was billed in neither. 

Jimmy Spencer (MGM)

A young MGM contract player 1941-1942, Jimmy Spencer reportedly hailed from New York City.

 

                                    

Gertie Green (THREE LITTLE PIGSKINS, 1934)

                        

  

GERTRUDE GREEN was yet another "dumb blonde" who played telephone operators in the 1930s, but unlike most of her sisters she is still very much with us today. Not in life, alas (the native New Yorker passed away age 74 in 1988), but as one of the three gang molls in the fourth THREE STOOGES comedy short for Columbia, THREE LITTLE PIGSKINS. Gertie is decidedly the dumbest of the three broads but you'd be forgiven if you didn't notice her; one of the others is none other than a very young Lucille Ball, who has a way with a line even this early in her lustrous career. For the record, the third moll, a brunette, is played by Phyllis Crane.

Sana Rayya (FLASH GORDON, 1936)

Remember when, in chapter 11 of FLASH GORDON, Princess Aura and the Mistress of the Sacred Tigron search for poor Dale Arden in the Tigron caves, ferocious beasts leading the way? Well, the Mistress of Tigron was enacted by one Sana Rayya who, despite her exotic name and appearance, apparently hailed from very down-home Springfield, KY. Sana came to films from the world of dance and was indeed a dancer in another cult classic, REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES (1936). Alas, that was the last we saw of Miss Rayya.

                                      

From my collection: Michael Loring

A Universal contract player in 1936-'37, Michael Loring supported Bela Lugosi (and nominal lead Ricardo Cortez) in Postal Inspector (1936). And very little else.

  

                                 

From my collection: Herbert Gunn/Gordon McDonald

California native Herbert Gunn (1921-1999), who also acted under the name of Gordon McDonald, was another newcomer playing service men in Hollywood WWII fare, including a preparedness short of a lightly different kind entitled, enterprisingly, SEX HYGIENE (1942). Later Gunn worked for the Mann cinema organization and ran a movie emporium in San Luis Obispo, CA.

                                     

   

From my collection: Dick Chandlee

From Montclair, NJ (born 1923), Dick Chandlee played "youths" in HENRY ALDRICH films at Paramount and EAST SIDE KIDS adventures for low budget Monogram. His final show biz appearance seems to have been as himself, PVFC Dick Chandlee in the Broadway wartime musical "WINGED VICTORY," which was filmed in Hollywood later that year by 20th Century-Fox but apparently without the participation of Mr Chandlee. 

As always, if anyone, a relative or indeed Mr Chandlee himself, has anything to add feel free to mail me.

    

                                   

From my collection: Agnes Franey

What little we know of Agnes, who hailed from Montana (1891-1975), is what we find on the back of this old cigarette trading card. She played bits in Al Jolson' THE SINGING FOOL (1928) and was one of the girls surrounding Texas Guinan's QUEEN OF THE NIGHTCLUBS (1929). The latter, incidentally, was the screen debut of tough guy star George Raft.