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If the MGM musical has any cultural cachet today, it is usually attached to a handful of Hollywood stars–Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly–or a similarly small number of iconic films: Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and An American in Paris (1951), perhaps Meet Me in St Louis (1944).
But ‘the MGM musical’ actually encompasses 215 individual pictures, mostly produced at MGM’s Culver City studio between 1929 and 1972. Many of these films are now forgotten, even by committed film buffs.
Montana Moon (1930) is no Meet Me in St Louis and Malcolm St Clair was certainly no Vincente Minnelli, yet it is an important film for at least two reasons. Its location work challenges the misconception that On the Town (1949) was the first musical to include footage shot outside the studio. And, like all the other films discussed here, it contributed to the evolution of MGM’s unique style of musical; Singin’ in the Rain did not spring unheralded from Gene Kelly’s muscular loins.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer entered the world of feature-length musicals first and to great effect: The Broadway Melody (1929) pushed across the edges of what was believed achievable with the new talkies and won the Oscar for best picture for its trouble.
After this strong start, MGM’s musicals were largely eclipsed in the 1930s by Astaire and Rogers at RKO and Busby Berkeley’s backstage extravaganzas at Warners. Even so, the studio managed to secure a second best picture Oscar for The Great Ziegfeld (1936), the last awarded to a musical until West Side Story in 1960.
In the 1940s, MGM became established as the pre-eminent studio for musicals, peaking with the Technicolor pictures from the Arthur Freed unit in the early fifties.
As the studio system went into decline, so did MGM’s musicals, with the 1960s dominated by Elvis Presley vehicles.
The purpose of this website is to paint a rounded picture of the MGM musical tradition, good and bad. It is predominantly factual, bringing together information about each picture and a detailed synopsis. There will also be a smattering of opinion.
