Charles King
2 credits on HibingeTV
American actor and singer, born in 1889. A vaudeville and Broadway performer who moved into early sound films, he is best known for starring in The Broadway Melody (1929) and for dubbing the singing voice of Conrad Nagel in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. His film career was brief, mostly confined to the first rush of musicals at the turn of the sound era.
Acted In
Western
A Johnny Mack Brown western from Supreme Pictures, one of the smallest of the poverty-row studios. Brown plays Billy Donovan, a drifter who rides into a valley looking for the man who murdered his sister and hires on at the Halloran ranch, where a masked night rider the locals call the Phantom has been picking off anyone who gets too close to a stolen fortune. Directed by S. Roy Luby, who cut his teeth editing B-westerns before moving into the director's chair. The phantom-rider gimmick gives it a whiff of the era's "weird western" cycle — more mystery than shootout. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.
Western
Desert Phantom
1936 - as Henchman Dan
Musical, Romance
The first sound film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, and MGM's first all-talking musical. Two sisters from the vaudeville act the Mahoney Sisters, Hank and Queenie, arrive in New York chasing a spot in a Broadway revue. Hank's sweetheart, the songwriter Eddie Kearns, promises them a break, but the plot turns on the oldest showbiz story there is: the man falls for the wrong sister. Bessie Love's performance as the self-sacrificing Hank earned an Oscar nomination. The film is creaky by modern standards, but its success proved that audiences would sit through a feature of synchronized song and dialogue, and it set off the Hollywood musical gold rush that defined the early sound era. Published in 1929, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2025.
Musical · Romance · Drama
The Broadway Melody
1929 - as Eddie Kearns