Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract players

Vera-Ellen

Vera-Ellen (born Vera-Ellen Rohe; February 16, 1921 – August 30, 1981) was an American dancer and actress. She is remembered for her solo performances as well as her work with partners Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Danny Kaye, and Donald O'Connor. She is best known for her starring roles in On the Town (1949) with Gene Kelly and White Christmas (1954) with Danny Kaye.

June_Preston

June Preston (December 29, 1928 – May 11, 2022) was an American child actress in the 1930s and early 1940s, who began her film career at RKO Pictures, with a minor role as Mrs. Blewett's daughter in the 1934 film Anne of Green Gables.
As a child star, she was promoted with heavy marketing and merchandising, including a clothing line, to position her as a child star rival to Shirley Temple.Preston appeared in film shorts of Meglin Kiddies and Our Gang and had small cameos in feature films It Happened One Night, Christmas in July and Strawberry Blonde.Preston performed as a soprano singer in the United States and in recitals in Latin America and Europe.

Betta_St._John

Betta St. John (born Betty Jean Striegler, November 26, 1929 – June 23, 2023) was an American actress, singer, and dancer who worked on Broadway, the West End, and in Hollywood films. She started her career aged 10 as a child actress in uncredited movie parts in her native USA. As an adult actress her first starring role was in the MGM film Dream Wife opposite Cary Grant in 1953. In 1954 she starred with Victor Mature in Dangerous Mission. Later residing in England she appeared in starring roles in British films including High Tide at Noon, two Tarzan films, and the horror features Corridors of Blood with Boris Karloff and Horror Hotel with Christopher Lee.
She was an inductee into the Hawthorne Hall of Fame in 2019.

Eleanor_Keaton

Eleanor Ruth Keaton (July 29, 1918 – October 19, 1998) was an American dancer and variety show performer. She was an MGM contract dancer in her teens and became the third wife of silent-film comedian Buster Keaton at the age of 21. She is credited with rehabilitating her husband's life and career. The two performed at the Cirque Medrano in Paris and on European tours in the 1950s; she also performed with him on The Buster Keaton Show in the early 1950s. After his death in 1966, she helped ensure Keaton's legacy by giving many interviews to biographers, film historians, and journalists, sharing details from his personal life and career, and also attended film festivals and celebrations honoring Keaton. In her later years, she bred champion St. Bernard dogs, was a gag consultant for Hollywood filmmakers, and was an invited speaker at silent-film screenings.

Jacqueline_White

Jacqueline Jane White (born November 27, 1922) is an American former actress, who had a brief career in Hollywood as a leading lady in motion pictures during the early and post-WW2 years from 1942 until 1952, with starring and playing smaller roles in around 25 feature films.
White, at the age of 17, signed on a film contract at MGM and subsequently with RKO, where she found her greatest success and is perhaps best remembered for her roles in films Crossfire (1947), Banjo (1947) , Mystery in Mexico (1948) and The Narrow Margin (1952). She is one of the last surviving actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Jayne_Meadows

Jayne Meadows (born Jane Cotter; September 27, 1919 – April 26, 2015) was an American stage, film and television actress, as well as an author and lecturer. She was nominated for three Emmy Awards during her career and was the elder sister of actress and memoirist Audrey Meadows as well as the wife of original Tonight Show host Steve Allen.

Ann_Richards_(actress)

Shirley Ann Richards (13 December 1917 – 25 August 2006) was an Australian actress and author who achieved notability in a series of 1930s Australian films for Ken G. Hall before moving to the United States, where she continued her career as a film actress, mainly as a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer starlet. Her best known performances were in It Isn't Done (1937), Dad and Dave Come to Town (1938), An American Romance (1944), and Sorry, Wrong Number (1948). In the 1930s, she was the only Australian actor under a long-term contract to a film studio, Cinesound Productions. She subsequently became a lecturer and poet.

Jean_Porter

Bennie Jean Porter (December 8, 1922 – January 13, 2018) was an American film and television actress. She was notable for her roles in The Youngest Profession (1943), Bathing Beauty (1944), Abbott and Costello in Hollywood (1945), Till the End of Time (1946), Cry Danger (1951), and The Left Hand of God (1955).
Porter was married to Edward Dmytryk, who was one of the Hollywood Ten, the most prominent blacklisted group in the film industry during the McCarthy era.