Una Merkel

Posted on by Tony CrawleyCategories:Actors

  1. Verree Teasdale,  Skyscraper Souls, 1931.   Robert Young, Madge Evans, Una Merkel directed by Harry Beaumont. That’s how MGM announced announced the high-rise Grand Hotel, which wound up with Warren William, Maureen O’Sullivan, Verree Teasdale helmed, well enough, by Edgar Selwyn.  

  2. Zasu Pitts, The Gay Bride, 1934.   Merkel beat Isabel Jewell to Mirabelle and was, finally, upstaged by a wise-cracking Pitts in the film that had already lost a Red Dustreunion of  Clark Gable and Jean Harlow; they became Chester Morris and Carole Lombard – who wed Gable in 1939.

  3. Jean Dixon, Swing High, Swing Low, 1936.   This was Paramount’s version of the 1927-1928 Broadway hit, Burleqsue.  In April 1936, Oscar Hammerstein II completed an early musical treatment called Hot Trumpet, with roles reserved for  Una Merkel, Lynne Overman and Rita Rio (aka Dona Draker).

  4. Penny Singleton, Blondie, 1938.         Moving Chic Young’s comic-strip to movies was not easy. Una was second choice after Gloria Blondell (Joan’s sister) and before Shirley Deane’s illness handed Dagwood’s wife to, well, long story… The leading lady in Sea Racketeers, 1937, was known as Toots. But two guys kept calling her Blondie. She was played by Dorothy NcNulty, who became Penny Singleton, who became Blondie Bumstead in 28 films over 12 years. The comic-strip, now by Dean Young and John Marshall, remains alive and well today.
  5. Billie Burke, The Wizard of Oz, 1938.
  6. Lee Patrick, Saturday’s Children, 1940.     Una, whose career went from  being Lilian Gish’s stand-in during The Wind, 1928, to wrestling Marlene Dietrich in Destry Rides Again, 1939  – became too ill to continue playing Florrie Sands.   Saturday’s child is the one working hard for a living
  7. Virgina Gregg, Psycho, 1959.      For the (uncredited) voice of Mrs Norma Bates, herself, Alfred Hitchcock listened to Merkel (whose career began in 1928 as Lilian Gish’s stand-in during The Wind), Paul Jasmin (close pal of the film’s star Anthony Perkins), Margaret Hamilton (The Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz), Helen Hayes (First Lady of the American Theatre). And two former Lady Macbeths: Maurice Evans’ Dame Judith and Orson Welles’ Jeannette Nolan.

 Birth year: 1903Death year: 1986Other name: Casting Calls:  7