by Hal Erickson
biography
Agreeable leading man Kenneth Thompson entered films in 1927 as a contractee of Cecil B. De Mille's Producers Distributing Corporation. Thompson was one of the stars of PDC's ethereal "mood Western" White Gold, and was briefly seen as Lazarus in De Mille's The King of Kings (1927). He made his talkie debut in 1929, playing wealthy Jack Warriner in the pioneering MGM musical Broadway Melody (1929). His subsequent roles -- notably MT-3 in the futuristic musicomedy Just Imagine (1930) and Vance in Harold Lloyd's Movie Crazy (1932) -- tended to be variations of his Broadway Melody characterization. Kenneth Thomson was one of the founders and charter members of the Screen Actors Guild.
