The Steppin Out thread was making me think of other examples of actors or actresses that have long gone uncredited and unidentified.
Another example I can think of is no one knew the name of the actor who plays the guy who introduces Ben Kenobi to Chewbacca in Mos Eisley. He didn’t get identified until 2016. Eleven years after he passed away (BTW his name was Frances Alfred Basil Tomlin which just by writing now makes me 20% British).
Any other examples of long unidentified actors?
Just this year,they identified the actress that played the human form of Gary Seven’s cat in Star Trek’s “Assignment Earth.” Her name is April Tatro.
The “Brides” of Dracula in Tod Browning’s 1931 Dracula went unidentified for a long time. Evan as recently as the 1990s there was some uncertainty – David J. Skal tried to pin down their identities for his book Hollywood Gothic, and wasn’t able to do so with complete confidence. But the current Wikipedia entry identifies them as Geraldine Dvorak, Cornelia Thaw, and Dorothy Tree. The last of these appears to be one of only two actors who appears in both Tod Browning’s English version and George Melford’s Spanish version shot on the same sets. (The other is John George, who has a small role, also uncredited, as a scientist)
The child actor/singer/dancer who played Jakie as a boy in the original The Jazz Singer.
The hapless radio engineer with the bushy hair in the “Our Gang” short “Mike Fright” (1934). Tommy Bond, who is in this short, and who would later play Alfalfa’s arch-nemesis “Butch” identified him as Bert Gordon, who had played a similar looking character, but no. In just the past couple of years, he was positively identified as a guy named Sid Walker, who didn’t really have much in the way of an acting career.
Also in ‘Our Gang,’ there were twins who appeared in the shorts “Football Romeo” and “Party Fever” (both 1938). They were not positively identified until 2014 as Harold and Jerry Shaw.
There used to be a story that the lead in the silent classic Nosferatu was an unknown actor who was given a fake name for the credits. “Max Schreck” means maximum fright in German. This story was well enough known that it formed the basis of a 2000 movie, Shadow of the Vampire, which portrayed the performer as a genuine vampire.
But the mundane reality is that Max Schreck, whose real name was Friedrich Maximilian Schreck, was a German actor who appeared in several other movies.
Most recently, Batman Returns.
(FtG’s rapid footsteps are heard trailing off in the distance.)
Film buffs have known about the real Max Schrek (his real name) for ages, and never believed such a silly story. Some people even cklaimed that there were no pictures of him without makeup, but David J. Skal included more than one such image in his books Hollywood Gothic and V is for Vampire. Four un-makeuped pictures pop up when you search for him on Google, and there are two on his Wikipedia page – Max Schreck - Wikipedia
I was aware of this. But it was a story that went around.
People nowadays forget how it could be difficult to track down the truth behind a rumor back in the days before Google and Wikipedia and Snopes (or the internet in general).
I guess this counts as “long identified,” since the show started about 10 years ago; there was a running joke on Glee about one of the cheerleaders always wearing a surgical neckbrace. The character did have a name (Jordan Stern, IIRC), but never had any lines, and was never credited - and I am pretty sure this was intentional.
I can’t find a *source for it now, but I could have sworn that the story of Max Schreck being a generic name was promulgated by none other than Forrest J. Ackerman. However, if I’m recalling correctly, I did not actually have a source where Forry himself had said it. Whatever I read 20 or so years ago was an article someone attributed the story to Forry.
(If you go looking for it, though, one of the hits you’ll get is my thread from almost 20 years ago where I first brought this up on this board.)
One of the Blofelds in the early James Bond films is unidentified, mainly because at the time before “You Only Live Twice” Blofeld was always portrayed with his face obscured and being overdubbed by another actor, so the physical actor was never actually credited.
It’s not a case where people ever previously wondered who the actor was, but it took a long time before Raymond Chandler’s (probable - there’s no proof) cameo in Double Indemnity was noticed.
In both From Russia, With Love and Thunderball, Anthony Dawson (who played Professor Dent in Doctor No) is now credited with the body, and Eric Pohlman with the voice.
^^And speaking of spy movies. . . In John Huston’s forgotten spy movie The Kremlin Letter (1970), one of the spies has a significant scene early in the first few minutes of the movie, and plays a pivotal role in the plot. Still unknown after all these years. On the other hand, German actor Steffen Zacharias is credited, and his scene lasts a few seconds, and you see only one side of his face. Not sure that he even has time to say anything.
I don’t know that this has been corroborated, but for many years, the identity of the blond Hitler Youth singer in “Cabaret” was unknown. I think the person supplying the vocals was known, but not the actor. He is now credited as “Oliver Collignon.” Maybe it’s legit, and maybe not.
I’m not sure how long this one was unidentified, but in Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein Glenn Strange, who was then playing the Frankenstein Monster, had a camera fall on his foot and break some bones. So for some scenes Lon Chaney, Jr. (who’d played the role in Ghost of Frankenstein, the first actor to take the part after Karloff) played the monster, so her got to play two iconic Universal monsters in the same film.
You guys might be interested in helping the Library of Congress identify people from images in their film, TV and music collection.
And, speaking of unidentified people in photographs, for many years, the ‘Bow Tie Man’ in the FDR’s Social Security signing was unknown, but was eventually ferreted out by none other than researcher extraordinaire SDMB member (the late) Walloon.