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)
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
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)
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.
Pansy Potts is a waitress in a diner at the 10th Annual Airshow. A customer, ‘Sport’ Wardell, works for the Pilot’s Gazette, in which Pansy had advertised unsuccessfully for an aviator to marry. She tells Sport she came to the city to raise children, and is prepared to pay $500 for an aviator.
Nearby, inventor Rusty Krouse, is working on his Aerocopter, a vertical take-off plane, but has never flown it because he is afraid of flying. Sport befriends Rusty after saving him from a bully. [I’ll Make a Happy Landing (the Lucky Day I Land You)]. Sport thinks the Aerocopter is a good idea and goes into partnership with Rusty, but they are dogged by Rusty’s creditors.
Rusty Krause (Bert Lahr) is experiencing some problems with his Aerocopter
Sport issues a bad cheque to a creditor who threatens him with jail if it bounces, so Sport needs to get £1,000 in the bank before morning. He is about to sell stock in the company to Fred Smith when he discovers that Smith has no cash either. But when Sport meets Fred’s daughter Eileen, he makes Fred vice-president of the company. Eileen works at the aviation school.
Fred Smith (Guy Kibbee) is being persuaded to invest by Sport Wardell (Pat O’Brien), while Rusty listens and learns
Sport persuades Rusty to marry Pansy, to get hold of her $500. Sport makes the proposition to Pansy, but she wants to see Rusty before agreeing. He shows her a photograph of Clark Gable and Pansy gives Sport the money.
Pansy meets Rusty and at first thinks he has a face meant to frighten women and children, but she becomes excited when she hears he is a mechanic. She decides she will make do with Rusty [It’ll Be the First Time for Me].
Mrs Smith finds Eileen with Sport and warns her that “those windy guys always end up in jail”.
Sport persuades Rusty that the only way he can avoid marrying Pansy is to fly the Aerocopter and win the prize money. [song]. Trying to register as an aviator, Rusty finds himself in the office of Doctor Brown, who carries out a medical examination.
Sport and Eileen are at a ball [We’ll Dance Until the Dawn]. Rusty is there and Pansy finds him. She says if he will marry her tonight, she will never ask him again.
Sport asks Eileen to marry him, but then Sport and Fred are arrested for selling fake stock. Sport tells Rusty everything will be all right if he wins the meet tomorrow.
Rusty marries Pansy, so they can use her money to bail Sport and Fred.
The next day, the Aerocopter is ready for the altitude flight. Rusty is late because he has to wrestle with Pansy to get out of the bridal suite. After causing havoc on the ground, the Aerocopter finally flies upwards, with Pansy as a passenger. The landing gear breaks and the plane continues to rise. Rusty makes Pansy use the only parachute, and the high altitude sends him to sleep.
Pansy Potts (Charlotte Greenwood), taking a flight in the Aerocopter with Rusty
On the ground, Fred celebrates the Aerocopter’s victory. At over 50,000 feet, sleet wakes up Rusty. He syphons off the Aerocopter’s fuel, so that it begins to fall, passing Pansy on the way down. The Aerocopter crashes, but Rusty emerges unscathed and is joined by Pansy [I’ll Make a Happy Landing (the Lucky Day I Land You)]. Sport and Eileen kiss.
During a forty-year career, Rene Hubert (1895-1976) designed costumes for films made in France, the UK and Hollywood.
Born in Switzerland, Hubert is less well-remembered than contemporaries such as Orry-Kelly and Edith Head. But he worked on dozens of prestige pictures and dressed many of Hollywood’s biggest stars. His pictures included The Wind (1928), Under the Roofs of Paris (1930), Shanghai Express (1931), À Nous la Liberté (1931), Liliom (1934), Rembrandt (1936), Things to Come (1936), Lady Hamilton (1941), The Song of Bernadette (1943), My Darling Clementine (1946) and Anastasia (1956).
In 1931, Hubert designed costumes for tramps and gowns for Esther Ralston in The Prodigal.
Jacques Leon Wolfe (1896-1973) was a Romanian Jew who emigrated to the United States and became fascinated by African-American music.
Trained at Juillard, Wolfe did extensive research into the history of Black music in the United States, both as folk song and spiritual, and started to incorporate it into his own compositions. This led to a collaboration with Langston Hughes, in which Wolfe set to music Hughes’s poem Homesick Blues (1927) as ‘Sad Song in De Air’.
Wolfe is credited with Herbert Stothart and Howard Johnson at the beginning of The Prodigal. Three songs are performed by Lawrence Tibbett and unidentified Black singers in the nighttime party sequence. Given that these are in Black dialect, it is likely that Wolfe made a significant contribution to the lyrics and music. Some online sources credit only Stothart and Johnson. What is certain is that Tibbett recorded Wolfe’s ‘The Glory Road’, but the number was not included in the final version of the film.
John Howard Payne (1791-1852) was an American poet, actor, dramatist, lyricist and, for the last ten years of his life, diplomat.
He also studied the history of the Cherokee people, lobbied for their better treatment and, from left field, supported the theory that they were one of the ten lost tribes of Israel.
Payne’s lasting legacy is the song ‘Home! Sweet Home!’, written with Henry Bishop and sung in four MGM musicals: The Prodigal, Sweethearts, Let Freedom Ring and Cairo.
Henry Rowley Bishop (1787-1856) was a British composer from the Romantic period who composed for ballet and opera. He was a founder member of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Bishop’s lasting legacy was the ballad ‘Home! Sweet Home!’, written with American John Howard Payne for the opera Clari, or the Maid of Milan (1823). The song was performed in four MGM musicals: The Prodigal, Sweethearts, Let Freedom Ring and Cairo.
William Samuel Rosenberg (1899-1966) became familiar to audiences in 1975 when he was played by James Caan in Funny Lady, a film about Fanny Brice, to whom Rose was married for nine years. In the mid-20th century, however, he was one of the biggest impresarios on Broadway.
Rose started out as a stenographer, playing an important role during the First World War as a senior clerk at the War Industries Board. After the war, he started writing song lyrics, and eventually became the co-writer of many standards, including ‘It’s Only a Paper Moon’, ‘Don’t Bring Lulu’ and ‘Me and My Shadow’. It should be noted, however, that Rose was an enormously successful self-publicist, and doubt has been cast on the extent of his contribution in song-writing partnerships.
Inevitably, given his ego, Rose moved into Broadway producing. One of his biggest hits was Jumbo (1936), which was filmed by MGM in 1962. Rose played no part in the production of the film, but a contractual requirement meant that it was titled Billy Rose’s Jumbo.
As an impresario, Rose was known for glitz and vulgarity, but also for giving an early opportunity as choreographer to Gene Kelly, and for staging Carmen Jones in 1943 with an all-Black cast.
Numbers co-written by Billy Rose were used in The Prodigal and Hit the Deck.
Edward Eliscu (1902-98) was multi-talented, an actor, writer, producer and lyricist.
After graduating from university, Eliscu became an actor, securing roles on Broadway. He began writing songs, and in 1929 teamed up with Vincent Youmans and Billy Rose to write the musical Great Day. This included the number ‘Without a Song’, which was sung beautifully by Lawrence Tibbett in MGM’s The Prodigal.
Eliscu also began contributing songs to film scores, after being invited to Hollywood by Nacio Herb Brown. He scored a hit with the first big Astaire and Rogers number, ‘Carioca’ in Flying Down to Rio. He also co-wrote a number in Hit the Deck.
Eliscu’s stage revue Meet the People was a big success in Hollywood in 1939, “an exhortation to Hollywood to come out of its cocoon and realize what was going on in the rest of the world”. None of his work was retained in MGM’s 1944 film of the same name.
Eliscu’s career in Hollywood ended when he was one of the many people named to HUAC by Martin Berkeley. But he continued to work productively back in New York. He served for five years as president of the Songwriters Guild of America.
