The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Broadway Melody of 1938

  • Frank McGlynn

    Frank McGlynn (1866-1951) played Abraham Lincoln in at least twelve feature films and shorts. And in the Sonja Henie musical Second Fiddle, and in a picture called Are We Civilized?, he played actors playing Abraham Lincoln. It was always useful in Hollywood to have a speciality.

    McGlynn had trained for the bar, but took up acting in 1896, playing supporting roles with a variety of stock companies. He appeared in a short film as early as 1910, and played Lincoln for the first time in 1915. This led to him being cast in the lead in the Broadway production of Abraham Lincoln (1918).

    McGlynn amassed over 140 screen credits, three of which were MGM musicals. After the featured role of Professor Kenyon in Good News, he appeared without credit in Broadway Melody of 1938 and Girl of the Golden West.

  • Leo White

    Leo Herbert White (1873-1948) was born in Germany, raised in England and emigrated to America. His stage career had begun in the UK, but he made his first screen appearance in 1911.

    White worked as an actor and occasional director in silent comedy, including many collaborations with Charles Chaplin, with whom he worked for the last time on The Great Dictator (1940).

    By the end of his career White had contributed to almost 500 films, eight of which were MGM musicals (all uncredited). He started out in The Florodora Girl, followed by Call of the Flesh, The Devil’s Brother, Broadway to Hollywood, Stage Mother and The Cat and the Fiddle. He was one of the hirsute Russian aviators in A Night at the Opera, and bowed out with Broadway Melody of 1938.

  • Blanche Sewell

    Blanche Irene Sewell (1898-1949) died far too young, but had become one of the most talented of all Hollywood editors and a seminal influence on the MGM musical style . After training under pioneer Viola Lawrence, Sewell became a full-fledged editor at MGM in 1925 and spent the rest of her career there.

    She was the sister-in-law of Walt Disney, and it is generally accepted that she tutored him on the principles of editing and was very influential, in particular, on the form of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

    Sewell cut some of Metro’s most memorable pictures of the 1930s, including Grand Hotel, Red Dust and Queen Christina. In the 1940s, she edited twenty films, fourteen of which were musicals. 

    Sewell’s involvement with musicals began in 1930 with Children of Pleasure, after which she cut Naughty Marietta, Broadway Melody of 1936, Rose-Marie, Born to Dance, Broadway Melody of 1938, Rosalie and Listen Darling.

    In 1939, Sewell was chosen to edit The Wizard of Oz, and it was claimed that this was in the hope she could bring to it some of the magic that Disney had produced in Snow White.

    After this cameBroadway Melody of 1940, Go West, Ziegfeld Girl, Ship Ahoy, Panama Hattie, Seven Sweethearts, Du Barry Was a Lady, Best Foot Forward, Bathing Beauty, Easy to Wed, It Happened in Brooklyn, Fiesta andThe Pirate. Sewell’s last work, shortly before her death, was on Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

  • William Daniels

    William H Daniels (1901-70) was one of the most eminent cinematographers working during Hollywood’s Golden Age. The American Cinematographer website refers to his “inconspicuously perfect execution”. Daniels’s career lasted fifty years, from silent cinema to the self-conscious kookiness of Move (1970).

    Daniels started out as a camera operator at Universal, but followed Erich Von Stroheim to MGM, where he shot Foolish Wives (1922), Greed and The Merry Widow (both 1925). He then, famously, became Greta Garbo’s cinematographer of choice, shooting sixteen of her pictures. 

    Daniels worked with many major directors, including Clarence Brown, Frank Borzage, Raoul Walsh, George Cukor, Anthony Mann, Ida Lupino and Jules Dassin  In 1950 he won an Oscar for Dassin’s The Naked City.

    Daniels was photographing musicals for MGM for over thirty years, starting with Montana Moon in 1930 and ending with Billy Rose’s Jumbo in 1962.  In between came Broadway to Hollywood, Naughty Marietta, Rose-Marie, Broadway Melody of 1938, New Moon, For Me and My Gal and Girl Crazy.

  • Gino Corrado

    Italian-born Gino Corrado Liserani (1893-1982) had the occasional featured role during the silent period, such as Aramis in Douglas Fairbanks’s The Iron Mask (1929). He also made appearances in Intolerance (1916) and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927). In talking pictures, however, Corrado rarely strayed beyond restaurants and cafés, playing uncredited diners, chefs and no fewer than 86 waiters. He even served at table in Rick’s Café Américain in Casablanca (1942).

    Corrado appeared in fifteen Metro musicals, starting with a credited role in Lord Byron of Broadway. He was then uncredited as a waiter in The Merry Widow, followed by A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, Broadway Melody of 1938, New Moon, Bitter Sweet (a waiter), I Married an Angel, I Dood It (another waiter), Yolanda and the Thief (yet another waiter), Two Sisters from Boston (credited as Ossifish), Holiday in Mexico, Fiesta, Words and Music (a final waiter) and An American in Paris.

    After retiring from acting, Corrado opened a restaurant.

  • Jack Yellen

    Jacek Selig Jeleń (1892-1981) was born in what is now Poland but grew up in Buffalo, New York. First working as a reporter while writing songs on the side, he eventually partnered with Milton Ager, though working from time to time with other composers, including Sammy Fain and Lew Pollock. With the latter he wrote the immortal ‘My Yiddishe Momme’ in 1925 for Sophie Tucker.

    Yellen and Ager moved to Hollywood in 1929 and wrote songs for Chasing Rainbows and They Learned About Women. 

    ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’ was first heard in Chasing Rainbows’ before becoming the anthem of Roosevelt’s Democratic Party. It was used as incidental music in many other MGM pictures, including the musicals Going Hollywood,Here Comes The Band,  Broadway Melody of 1938 and The Ice Follies of 1939.  

    Yellen also worked as a screenwriter.

  • Milton Ager

    Like many other Tin Pan Alley alumni, Milton Ager (1893-1979) started out as a song plugger before turning to composition himself. He eventually partnered with lyricist Jack Yellen, with whom he wrote a Broadway show in 1920. One of their biggest hits was ‘Ain’t She Sweet’ in 1927.

    After moving to Hollywood, Ager and Yellen contributed songs to Chasing Rainbows, They Learned About Women. Later on, Ager wrote a number with Joseph McCarthy for Listen, Darling.

    ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’ was first heard in Chasing Rainbows’ before becoming the anthem of Roosevelt’s Democratic Party. It was used as incidental music in many other MGM pictures, including the musicals Going Hollywood,Here Comes The Band,  Broadway Melody of 1938 and Ice Follies of 1939.  

  • Beatrice Hagen

    Beatrice Hagen (1917-99) claimed a minor place in film history by providing the voice of Snow White in the French version of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). As well as being a Disney voice actor (she played Mickey’s nephews), she was a ubiquitous chorus girl in musicals from a number of studios.

    For MGM, Hagen made uncredited appearances in The Broadway Melody, Hollywood Party, The Merry Widow, Naughty Marietta, Broadway Melody of 1936, The Great Ziegfeld, Born to Dance, Maytime, Broadway Melody of 1938, Rosalie, Ziegfeld Girl, Babes on Broadway, Thousands Cheer, The Harvey Girls and Texas Carnival. 

  • Adrian

    The costumes he designed for The Wizard of Oz, which included the iconic ruby slippers, were unquestionably the high point of the career of Adrian Adolph Greenburg (1903-59), known simply as Adrian. But his designs were included in hundreds of MGM features, mostly between 1928 and 1941, including 34 other musicals. These included eleven Jeanette MacDonald pictures: The Cat and the Fiddle, The Merry Widow, Naughty Marietta, Rose-Marie, San Francisco, Maytime, The Firefly, The Girl of the Golden West, Sweethearts, New Moon and Bitter Sweet.

    Adrian was very active during 1929-31, designing for Marianne, Devil-May-Care,The Rogue Song, Montana Moon, In Gay Madrid, Madam Satan, New Moon andThe Cuban Love Song.

    Dancing Lady reunited Adrian with Joan Crawford a year after the white mousseline de soie dress he created for her in Letty Linton (1932) was copied commercially and sold over 500,000 units.

    Going Hollywood, Hollywood Party, Reckless, Broadway Melody of 1936, The Great Ziegfeld, Born to Dance, Broadway Melody of 1938, The Great Waltz and Honolulu led up to the triumph ofThe Wizard of Oz. Adrian then worked on Balalaika, Broadway Melody of 1940, Ziegfeld Girl andThe Chocolate Soldier before leaving MGM in 1941 to open his own fashion business.

    He continued to freelance for a variety of studios and returned to Metro for a final musical, the aptly-named Lovely to Look At.

  • Nacio Herb Brown

    Nacio Herb Brown (1896-1964) was hired by MGM in 1928 to write scores for sound pictures; it was at a point when synchronized music was still perceived by many as the most promising feature of the new system. 

    Brown was paired with lyricist Arthur Freed to produce songs for the studio’s first all-talking picture, The Broadway Melody. Their partnership continued for many years as the contributed numbers to The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (in which he and Freed appeared onscreen), Marianne, Lord Byron of Broadway, Montana Moon, Dancing Lady, Going Hollywood, Student Tour, Broadway Melody of 1936, A Night at the Opera, San Francisco, Broadway Melody of 1938, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, Ice Follies of 1939, Babes in Arms, Two Girls on Broadway, Hullabaloo, Little Nellie Kelly, Lady Be Good, Born to Sing, Presenting Lily Mars, Meet Me in St Louis, Three Little Words, Pagan Love Song, Singin’ in the Rain and The Affairs of Dobie Gillies.

    Brown also worked with other lyricists on It’s a Great Life, Ziegfeld Girl, The Big Store, Swing Fever, Holiday in Mexico, On an Island With You, The Kissing Bandit and Seven Hills of Rome.

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