Composer Paul Lambkovitz (1888-1953) was born either in Poland or Russia, and trained at the Petrograd Conservatory before working as both a conductor and cantor. He emigrated to America in 1922.
Lamkoff was qualified by both his professions to work as a vocal coach and choral arranger for the ‘Kol Nidre’ sequence of The Jazz Singer (1927), roles he also carried out for the 1952 remake.
He then had a sporadic career in the film industry, working as composer, orchestrator and vocal coach on a dozen or so pictures. These included Call of the Flesh, Here Comes the Band, A Night at the Opera, Rose-Marie and San Francisco. Alongside this he pursued his work as a cantor and expert on Jewish music.
Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin ((1894-1979) was one of the most celebrated Hollywood composers of all time. He was nominated for Oscars 22 times, and won on four occasions: The High and the Mighty (1954), High Noon (winning for both Best Score and Best Song), and The Old Man and the Sea (1958).
Tiomkin’s contributions to MGM’s musicals were easrly in his career and more modest. He wrote ballet music for Devil-May-Care and The Rogue Song, in both of which the choreography was by Tiomkin’s wife, Albertina Rasch. He also collaborated with Raymond B Egan on the song ‘Blue Daughter of Heaven’ for Lord Byron of Broadway.
Herbert Pope Stothart (1885-1949) is a composer whose name is less familiar today than, say, Dimitri Tiomkin or Max Steiner, but in Hollywood’s golden age he was ranked alongside them for his work at MGM.
Stothart had a successful career writing stage musicals, most notably Rose-Marie, but was invited to join Metro in 1929. He signed a contract and stayed there for the rest of his life.
Scores by Stothart were prominent in some of the studio’s most important pictures of the 1930s and 40s. These included Queen Christina (1933), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Camille (1936), The Good Earth (1937), Pride and Prejudice (1940), Mrs Miniver (1942), They Were Expendable (1945) and The Yearling (1946). In all, Stothart wrote over 100 scores.
Stothart worked on many of MGM’s musicals. He and Clifford Grey wrote the songs for Devil-May-Care and contributed numbers to Montana Moon, The Rogue Song, In Gay Madrid, The Florodora Girl, Call of the Flesh, New Moon and Madam Satan.
He worked with other lyricists on A Lady’s Morals, The Cuban Love Song, Here Comes the Band, Maytime, The Firefly (composing ‘The Donkey Serenade’), Broadway Serenade, Balalaika, The Chocolate Soldier and I Married an Angel.
Stothart was the musical director on some of these films and also on The Cat and the Fiddle, Lubitsch’s The Merry Widow, The Night is Young, Naughty Marietta, Reckless, San Francisco, Rosalie, The Girl of the Golden West, Sweethearts, The Wizard of Oz (picking up an Oscar), New Moon, Bitter Sweet, Rio Rita, Thousands Cheer, Ziegfeld Girl, Cairo, Thousands Cheer, Kismet, The Unfinished Dance. Musical direction usually involved writing incidental music.
And, of course, Metro produced two versions of Stothart’s greatest stage success, Rose-Marie, and he worked on the first version.
Ernst Hersh Klapholz (1881?-1965) was a composer and musical arranger, and also business partner of Arthur Lange. His sole MGM musical was as one of the arrangers on The Hollywood Revue of 1929.
Raymond John Heindorf (1908-1980) was a composer and musical arranger who worked on The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and soon after moved tothe music department at Warner Bros, where he spent most of his long career.
A Jazz aficionado, Heindorf was known for his willingness to use Black musicians in what was largely a segregated industry.
