The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Discussion

  • Broadway to Hollywood

    Some Thoughts

    At the heart of Broadway to Hollywood are two solid performances: a very good one by Frank Morgan and an excellent one by Alice Brady, essaying the first of her two show business mothers for MGM. The film as a whole, however, is underwhelming, especially as a musical, and the reason for that lies in its status as a hybrid of backstage drama and archival footage.

    In 1929, producer Harry Rapf had an idea for a follow-up to his The Hollywood Revue of 1929. It was to be a lavish, three-part history of vaudeville. One section, the Old Timers, would showcase veteran vaudevillians, with the other parts presenting more contemporary performers. To that end, a range of great names from the past were filmed recreating past glories: Weber and Fields, Fay Templeton, Louis Mann, DeWolf Hopper, William Collier Sr, Josephine Sabel, Barney Fagan and Marie Dressler (the only one still in the public eye).

    Filming proceeded well into 1930 but, having spent $750,000, the picture was summarily abandoned without having achieved even a rough-cut. MGM, like the other studios, had become aware that the American public was falling out of love with musicals, especially revues, and decided not to throw good money after bad.

    Ted Jr (Jackie Cooper) and his mom, Lulu (Alice Brady)
    Ted Jr (Jackie Cooper) and his mom, Lulu (Alice Brady)

    There was a desire, however, to mitigate the loss by utilizing the March of Time footage elsewhere; which is where Broadway to Hollywood came in. MGM devised a multi-generational story about a vaudeville family, with a view to incorporating film shot for the abandoned project. This was not a bad idea in theory, but was badly let down by the execution.

    For a start, the onstage sequences do not match the style and look of the dramatic scenes. It is almost entirely lacking in even medium shots, so most of the time the performers are unidentifiable. Weber and Fields are understood to be inside a stage horse costume during one sequence, but it could have been anybody. Fleeting is a generous way to describe the appearances of others.

    Drunk Ted Jr is about to receive the 'help' of Fritz (Curly Howard) and Otto (Moe Howard)
    Drunk Ted Jr is about to receive the ‘help’ of Fritz (Curly Howard) and Otto (Moe Howard)

    Further dissonance is caused by the filmmakers decision to use shots of unnamed dancers as body doubles for the musical performances of actors like Russell Hardie and Madge Evans. Few MGM musicals, even from these early years, are so lacking in intimacy. Add in Moe and Curly Howard, almost unrecognizable as a disturbing pair of clowns, and you have the mess that is Broadway to Hollywood. And, if anyone was in doubt about where MGM stood on the matter, the people working in management in Hollywood are much kinder than those on Broadway.

  • The Devil’s Brother

    Some Thoughts

    Ever since Laurel and Hardy’s last-minute insertion into The Rogue Song, Hal Roach had wanted to put them into a feature-length operetta. He chose Fra Diavolo, a one-hundred-year old work by Daniel Auber; the film was known by that title outside the United States.

    Stanlio (Stan Laurel) listens as Ollio (Oliver Hardy) explains why they have nothing to fear from Fra Diavolo
    Stanlio (Stan Laurel) listens as Ollio (Oliver Hardy) explains why they have nothing to fear from Fra Diavolo

    The Devil’s Brother (a meaningless title) is essentially an editing together of two separate films. Hal Roach directed the musical and dramatic sequences, using Hap Depew as cinematographer, while Charley Rogers (and Stan Laurel) directed the comedy sequences, photographed by Art Lloyd. This ended up proving that Roach was a better producer than he was director: the parts attributed to Rogers were highly praised, while those for which Roach was responsible were not. In fact, previews led to the excision of a significant amount of the non-comedic footage.

    This was an untypical Laurel and Hardy picture (historical setting, no bowler hats) and the pair were hesitant about making it. But it turned out to be one of their favourites amongst their films, as well as the most commercially successful. It features some classic Laurel and Hardy routines, including the introduction of ‘Kneesy-Earsy-Nosy’, the frustratingly difficult coordination game that Stan made look so easy.

    Lady Pamela (Thelma Todd) is pleased that the Marquis de San Marco has arrived at the inn
    Lady Pamela (Thelma Todd) is pleased that the Marquis de San Marco has arrived at the inn

    There is a third excellent performance in The Devil’s Brother, with Thelma Todd being given a rare opportunity to show her range. She plays Lady Pamela, an English aristocrat, and actually sounds more convincing than British-born James Finlayson, playing her husband. Todd is almost unrecognizable as the fast-talking working girl she played in most of her films.

    Dennis King, as might be expected, carries off the musical sequences with aplomb, though it cannot be said he is totally convincing as a ruthless cutthroat. He holds his own in his scenes with Stan and Ollie, though he later admitted to finding their improvisations very challenging. Lucile Brown is an effective ingenue and handles her one song capably (and fetchingly, since she is in lingerie). But Arthur Pierson’s Lorenzo demonstrates why he gave up acting to move behind the camera.

    Stanlio demonstrates Kneesy-Earsy-Nosey
    Stanlio demonstrates Kneesy-Earsy-Nosey

    A feature musical with the MGM imprimatur, The Devil’s Brother clearly has a larger budget than was normal for Hal Roach productions. This is demonstrated by the number of actors and extras on screen, and by Dolly Tree’s costumes. 

  • The Cuban Love Song

    Some Thoughts

    The Cuban Love Song is the story of a selfish man who manages to both have his cake and eat it, yet manages to be enjoyable in spite of this.

    Is Nenita (Lupe Velez) going to be amenable to the sweet talking of Terry (Lawrence Tibbett)? Of course she is.
    Is Nenita (Lupe Velez) going to be amenable to the sweet talking of Terry (Lawrence Tibbett)? Of course she is.

    This was, as well as being MGM’s last musical for a couple of years, the final film under Lawrence Tibbet’s contract with the studio. He handles himself very well in what is essentially a romance with music. Contemporaries may have smiled at well-known sex pot Lupe Velez playing a virginal peanut vendor, but she pulls it off, and her scenes with Tibbett are very believable, as is her faked bravura when she knows Tibbett has to leave her.

    This is a pre-code musical with some pretty blatant out-of-wedlock sex, though the fact that Velez dies might have made Will Hays feel slightly better about it. The man, of course, ends up with a son and in a clinch with Karen Morley, who has little to do in the picture other than be a good egg, but she does it very well.

    Crystal (Karen Morley) is told about Nenita, but she tells Terry she already knows
    Crystal (Karen Morley) is told about Nenita, but she tells Terry she already knows

    The optical printer had been in widespread use since 1927, and enabled The Cuban Love Song to achieve its most memorable sequence, when Lawrence Tibbett duets with himself, performing both baritone and tenor vocals. It was his last song in a film for four years, and it is a worthy one.

    There are a couple of good Fields-McHugh numbers in the film, but these are augmented by two genuine Cuban songs, one of which is reprised by Cuban artist Ernesto Lecuono, triggering a Proustian moment for our hero. The other is well-performed by Velez and nicely staged by W S Van Dyke, directing the first of the eleven musicals he worked on. Overall, his direction is fluid, with camera movement working in support of the narrative.

    Lawrence Tibbett performs with himelf years before Gene Kelly thought of it
    Lawrence Tibbett performs with himelf years before Gene Kelly thought of it

    Mention must be made, finally, of Jimmy Durante, energetic as always in his supporting  role, and playing the most unlikely-looking member of the US Marine Corps.

  • Flying High

    Some Thoughts

    Bert Lahr secured screen immortality by playing the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. But his first film, Flying High, demonstrates why he otherwise never achieved major success in Hollywood: he was simply too big for the screen, like Jimmy Durante turned up to 11. Lahr’s gurning, his exaggerated physical movements, and his insistence on saying most of his lines twice, may have come across well in the stalls of a Broadway theatre, but are just too much in medium-closeup.

    Pat O'Brien (as Sport Wardell) holds on, to avoid being blown off the screen by Bert Lahr (as Rusty Krause)
    Pat O’Brien (as Sport Wardell) holds on, to avoid being blown off the screen by Bert Lahr (as Rusty Krause)

    When Lahr is on screen with co-star Pat O’Brien, it would be an understatement to say it is as though they were in two different films: it is more as if they were two different species. This is not to suggest that Lahr is not entertaining, because he is, but it is also a relief when he is off screen for a while.

    It is interesting to contrast Lahr with his co-star, Charlotte Greenwood. She, too, was a stage performer with an eccentric bent, but she was actor enough to be able to modify (or moderate) her stage persona to the greater intimacy of the screen.

    Rusty was Pansy Potts to keep her distance
    Rusty wants Pansy Potts to keep her distance

    Flying High is an enjoyable romp but, as one of MGM’s three 1931 musicals, prior to the 1932 moratorium, it is rather light on music. Twelve of the thirteen DeSylva-Brown-Henderson songs from the Broadway show are missing, replaced by three from the bottom drawer of Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh. There are a couple of production numbers directed by Busby Berkeley and featuring Kathryn Crawford. These show Berkeley refining the techniques he had developed on Eddie Cantor vehicles at Goldwyn, but still lacking the precision that would be on display a couple of years later in 42nd Street. 

    A bit of early chorus girl regimentation by Busby Berkeley
    A bit of early chorus girl regimentation by Busby Berkeley

    Berkeley’s numbers are the liveliest parts of the picture, with Charles Reisner clearly happy to point his camera at Bert Lahr and let him get on with it.  

  • The Prodigal

    Some Thoughts

    Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released fifteen musicals in 1930, but by the end of the year, musicals were falling out of favour with the general public. The studio had already abandoned one major production, The March of Time, and only put out three musicals in the whole of 1931.

    Stepin Fetchit doing his thing as Hokey, in conversation with the returning Jeff (Lawrence Tibbett)
    Stepin Fetchit doing his thing as Hokey, in conversation with the returning Jeff (Lawrence Tibbett)

    All three suffered as a result of the public’s growing aversion to singing actors, but none more so than The Prodigal. MGM was still keeping faith with opera star Lawrence Tibbett, and his singing in this latest picture was outstanding, especially in ‘Without a Song’, performed to Vincent Youmans’s beautiful melody and with only slightly racist lyrics. But two other numbers–Jacques Wolfe’s ‘De Glory Road’ and ‘Life is a Dream’, written by Oscar Straus and Arthur Freed–were filmed but then deleted from the final cut. Studios thought they could make musicals more palatable to the public by having less music in them, which made little sense when your star was one of the world’s greatest singers.

    Hobo Jeff is given a bath by his mother (Emma Dunn), in a scene some commentators find slightly disturbing
    Hobo Jeff is given a bath by his mother (Emma Dunn), in a scene some commentators find slightly disturbing

    At the same time, The Prodigal was an attempt at presenting Tibbett in a non-operetta, and he does quite well in the more low-key dramatic scenes. Comic relief is provided by Roland Young (in the last of his three MGM musicals–he even gets to sing a few notes in this one) and Cliff Edwards.

    Esther Ralston, as Toni, is a fetching female lead in the typically pre-code story, with its easy-going, non-judgemental attitude to divorce. Her mother-in-law, Cynthia, swoops in as a deus ex machina, blithely instructing one son to get a divorce and the other to come back and claim Toni when it is all over, in one of the most hastily-arranged climaxes in 30s’ cinema. 

    Jeff explains the nature of chitlins to Doc (Roland Young) and Snipe (Cliff Edwards)
    Jeff explains the nature of chitlins to Doc (Roland Young) and Snipe (Cliff Edwards)

    Harry Pollard was obscure enough not even to rate a mention in Quinlan’s Film Directors, but he does not do a bad job on The Prodigal. He keeps it simple, with the only busy sequence being the barbeque with its mass of singers. Sadly, the sequence is painful in its racial stereotyping and Tibbett’s condescending serenade to the ever-smiling crowd of unnamed Black performers.

  • New Moon (1930)

    Some Thoughts

    The 1930 version of New Moon is unmistakably a pre-code picture, the two lovers having sex within the first fifteen minutes but remaining unmarried until almost the end. Even more strikingly, the sexual relationship is engineered, not by the philandering Lawrence Tibbett, but by Grace Moore, knowingly having fun with no intention of taking it seriously. 

    Tanya (Grace Moore) reveals to Michael (Lawrence Tibbett) that she knows a dirty song when she hears one

    Moore was, by her own admission, no great shakes as an actor (she described herself as “like a singing Mae West with long hair”), but she is much more effective here than in A Lady’s Morals, where the virginal Jenny Lind gave her little scope to do anything but sing. Her Princess Tanya is bold, promiscuous and, at least in the first half, a cold-hearted opportunist, conspiring with her uncle and aunt to marry wealth. Moore’s performance is playful; notice the subtle  reaction when Adolphe Menjou’s wandering hand finds her outstanding derrière.

    Tanya reacts as Boris (Adolphe Menjou) cops a feel

    Lawrence Tibbett gives a solid performance, the highlight being his fully-integrated rendition of the beautiful ‘Lover Come Back to Me’. He is also suitably vituperative when singing ‘What is Your Price Madam?’, a number by Stothart and Grey which holds its own with the songs retained from the original Romberg-Hammerstein score.

    New Moon benefits from having two outstanding supporting players in Roland Young and Adolphe Menjou. Young, as the easygoing uncle, seems much more comfortable here than in the frenzy of Madam Satan and steals all his scenes. Menjou, as always, personifies debonair sophistication as ‘Bedroom Boris’. Gus Shy, the only member of the original stage cast to feature in the film version, was always an acquired taste, but he does, at least, get to die a noble death.

    Tanya has driven an unfeasibly long distance, into dangerous country, for the pleasure of horse-whipping Michael

    Jack Conway’s direction is above-average for Metro’s earliest musicals, especially in the first, boudoir comedy section.  The second half, set in the fortress, is less interesting, though it features some excellent photography by Oliver T Marsh and impressive process shots. There is also a well-staged battle sequence that is quite unexpected in a musical. Apparently the effort of wrangling two Metropolitan Opera stars wore out Conway and Sam Wood completed the picture, which may explain some dropping off in the quality of the staging.

    Nonetheless, while New Moon creaks like the ship the characters sail on, it remains eminently watchable.

  • A Lady’s Morals

    Some ThoughtsNo thesaurus is needed to find the best word to describe A Lady’s Morals. ‘Dull’ is the obvious choice. 

    Jenny Lind (Grace Moore) is affronted by the ardour of stalker Paul Brandt (Reginald Denny)

    Grace Moore was the second star of the Metropolitan Opera signed up by MGM but, unlike Lawrence Tibbett, she has no onscreen charisma. In real life–and judging from her enjoyable autobiography–Moore was lively and vivacious, but none of that comes across in her film debut. Her performance is far too weak to carry the picture, and no one knew that better than Moore herself, who wrote scathingly about it. 

    She is not helped by the fact that the film’s subject, Jenny Lind, lived a stainless and uneventful life, reflected in the fact that the only moment of drama in A Lady’s Morals is a bout of stage fright.

    Reginald Denny’s mannered performance aonly adequate support. In his first scenes he seems to be continuing his irritating performance as Bob in Madam Satan; later, he is self-sacrificing. Wallace Beery makes nothing of his brief appearance as P T Barnum, because he is given nothing to do. He was given another, and better, stab at the role in The Mighty Barnum (1934).

    Jenny Lind is about to be overwhelmed by stage fright

    Sidney Franklin’s direction and George Barnes’s cinematography are workmanlike, but it is the screenplay that really disappoints. Dorothy Farnum was forced to fictionalize Jenny Lind’s unexciting life, but produces only a hackneyed tale involving blindness brought on by being hit on the head with a bottle. 

    MGM scored something of a coup by persuading the venerable Carrie Jacobs-Bond to contribute the song ostensibly written by Denny’s character, but otherwise the newly-written score is workaday. This is in contrast to the songs by Donizetti and Bellini. The studio had put a toe in the water of Grand Opera in Call of the Flesh, and continues the experiment here. Further steps were curtailed, however, by the 1932 moratorium. 

    Jenny and Paul are reunited in a happy ending that would have surprised the real Jenny Lind’s husband

    By all accounts, Jenny Lind (1931), the French remake of A Lady’s Morals, was a better film. Running slightly longer, it was directed by the talented Arthur Robison and playwright Jacques Deval worked on the screenplay.

  • Madam Satan

    Some Thoughts

    Madam Satan is a fascinating film. Fascinating in the sense that, while it is really not very good at all, it is almost impossible to look away from. And the nagging thought, while watching it, is: what were they thinking?

    Angela (Kay Johnson) as Madam Satan, vamps it up for an unsuspecting Bob (Reginal Denny in a miniskirt)

    This only applies to the second half, of course, because Madam Satan is a little like two different films spliced together. The first fifty minutes or so are the kind of sex comedy which had been so successful for Cecil B DeMille earlier in his career; films like Don’t Change Your Husband (1919) and Why Change Your Wife? (1920). This is nowhere as good as those earlier films, but DeMille was seeking to find his feet in the sound era, following the melodrama of his first talkie, Dynamite (1929), by reverting to familiar territory.

    The second part of Madam Satan is something else entirely, the strangest musical made at MGM before Yolanda and the Thief came along fifteen years later to give it some competition. But while Yolanda is an extremely well-made oddity, Madam Satan is a farrago directed by someone who did not know one end of a musical from the other.

    Trixie (Lillian Roth) parachutes into a men’s sauna and doesn’t seem too put out

    Madam Satan is, considering the money spent on it and the records of the people involved in making it, largely incompetent. For example, the film was edited by DeMille regular Anne Bauchens, who cut all of his greatest films. But Madam Satan is filled empty space, a screen where nothing happens. And there is a moment during the sequence in Trixie’s apartment where Angela goes into the bedroom and closes the door behind her. After three seconds, the door clearly starts to reopen, but there is a cut to a shot inside the bedroom, showing Angela looking out with the door wide open. It is a jarring moment.

    Reginald Denny was a perfectly competent actor, but his line readings in Madam Satan are laboured, especially alongside the manic overacting of Roland Young, who gives the impression of being somewhere he would rather not be and desperately trying to act his way out of it.

    But it is in the extended party scene aboard the zeppelin that Madam Satan achieves genuine lunacy. The entrance of the revellers, the Ballet Mecanique, the auction–none of it makes any sense, and is clumsily staged, with choreography that is saved from looking as poor only because it is so badly photographed by, of all people, Hal Rosson.

    The sex comedy is picks up again at 1500 feet, only to be interrupted as almost the entire cast parachutes to earth, and the death of the Jazz Age is delivered in heavy-handed symbolism.

    The zeppelin awaits the arrival of the revellers, in one of Madam Satan‘s more interesting shots

    And yet, I have watched Madam Satan four times and will probably do so again. Its special effects are genuinely impressive, and its overall effect is mesmerizing. At its heart lie the puzzles of why Angela is wasting her time on an idiot like Bob, and why DeMille did not just try a musical version of The Squaw Man. Oh, the humanity.

  • Love in the Rough

    Some Thoughts

    The 1925 play Spring Fever was made into a silent film comedy in 1927. Three years later it became the first film musical about golf, just beating Paramount’s Follow Thru (1930) into cinemas.

    Perhaps a more significant first for Charles F Reisner’s film is the fact that it contains a production number, admittedly quite a small-scale one, shot out of doors on a real location. MGM had made musicals with location sequences before. Hallelujah, for example, opens with characters singing in a genuine cotton field. And in Montana Moon, Joan Crawford sings to some real trees while on horseback. But in Love in the Rough, Dorothy Jordan and the Biltmore Trio deliver a full song-and-dance number filmed on location at California’s Lake Norconian Club.

    Earl ‘Snakehips’ Tucker, doing his thing

    Dorothy Jordan had made three period musicals with Ramon Novarro in the previous twelve months, becoming increasingly virginal and irritating in each one. She is clearly much happier in a modern setting, and gives a much more engaging performance. The dance skills she had honed in Broadway shows come to the fore in the aforementioned ‘I’m Doing that Thing (Falling in Love)’ routine, before giving way to a brief display by Earl ‘Snakehip’ Turner.

    ‘I’m Learning a Lot from You’ is an interesting number. Performed by two romantic couples–one serious, one comic–it represents an early example of the courtship-through-dance trope that musicals would use so effectively later on; think, for example, of Gene Kelly and Vera-Ellen singing and dancing ‘Main Street in On the Town.

    Benny (Benny Rubin) and Virgie (Penny Singleton) parody the courtship dance of the two leads

    Love in the Rough, despite being about golf, remains an enjoyable eighty-four minutes. Benny Rubin’s ethnic schtick (Russian-Jewish this time) is pretty good, aided by a pairing with bit-part player Jack Raymond as another caddy from the Old Country and some sparkling Yiddish patter. It is also fascinating to watch veteran J C Nugent as Mr Waters, the protagonist’s boss. In the early scenes in particular, he genuinely seems to be making up his dialogue as he goes along. Either that, or no one had thought to show him the script until just before saying Action.

    Benny and C Wesley Rappaport (Jack Raymond), discuss the finer points of golf in Yiddish

    But Love in the Rough also points towards one of the problems that contributed to the public tiring of musicals. Robert Montgomery and Dorothy Jordan are pleasant enough singing ‘Go Home and Tell Your Mother’, but they are still giving the performances of amateur singers. MGM had not yet learnt that the musical was a form that required professionals who could really dance and sing (or be dubbed to make it appear they could sing). 

  • Call of the Flesh

    Some Thoughts

    Call of the Flesh is the first musical at MGM to combine popular songs with extracts from Grand Opera, in the way so beloved of producer Joe Pasternak in the 40s and 50s. Sadly, the three Stothart-Grey numbers are instantly forgettable. Ramon Novarro was no Lauritz Melchior, but his renditions of Donizetti and Massenet at least deserve an A for effort.

    Juan (Ramon Novarro) sings ‘Ah! fuyez, douce image’ from Manon

    Tonally, the film shifts from being the light-hearted story of an arrogant young singer and his growing love for an innocent novice from the local convent, to a near-tragic final twenty minutes. It all works thanks to the acting of Raomon Novarro and Renée Adorée, and in spite of that of Dorothy Jordan. Jordan was not a bad actor, but her performance here is very laboured and one-note. She leaves inexplicable pauses before picking up her cues and relies too much on looking innocent.

    Novarro, however, gives one of his best performances in a sound picture. The scene in which he heartlessly rejects Jordan because her brother has persuaded him she should return to the convent, is genuinely touching. Elsewhere, he succeeds in the difficult task of making a conceited, unlikeable character likeable and amusing.

    Renée Adorée is also very good as Jordan’s jealous rival, but her performance is quite painful to watch. She was very ill with tuberculosis during the making of the film, to the extent that her friend Novarro tried to persuade her to stand down. She declined, but is visibly unwell. It was her final film, and she died a couple of years later. 

    Adorée does, however, combine with Novarro to deliver the MGM musicals’ first genuinely entertaining dance number. Both had worked as dancers when young, and it shows in the comic routine they deliver in the cantina.

    Juan and Lola (Renée Adorée) perform the first entertaining dance in an MGM musical

    The Technicolor sequences have not survived, but Call of the Flesh looks really good without them. Cedric Gibbons’s design is excellent and well photographed by Merritt B Gerstad. The scene in a church that looks like a cathedral is particularly impressive. There are even one or two stylistic flourishes from director Charles Brabin (or editor Conrad Nervig, perhaps). For example, the scene where the brother is persuading Juan to give up Maria Consuelo is truncated with dissolves, to force home the sense that Juan is being worn down. 

    Overall, Call of the Flesh–its terrible sexed-up title notwithstanding–is much more entertaining than might be expected.

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial
RSS
Facebook
X (Twitter)
WhatsApp
Copy link
URL has been copied successfully!