The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Broadway Melody of 1940

  • 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.

  • Edgard Dearing

    Edgar Dearing (1893-1974) is a familiar face from supporting roles in well over 300 films. He usually portrayed figures of authority, including literally dozens of police officers, a large number of whom were on motorcycles. 

    His most famous motorcycle cop was in Laurel and Hardy’s Two Tars (1928), in which his vehicle is crushed by a steamroller.

    Dearing featured in eleven Metro musicals, with his most notable (and credited) appearance being in the first, Free and Easy. He plays the studio gate guard who pursues Buster Keaton across the soundstages of Culver City.

    The other musicals were Here Comes the Band (though Dearing’s scenes were deleted), Rose-Marie, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, Everybody Sing, Listen Darling, Honolulu, Broadway Melody of 1940, Go West, The Big Store and Grounds for Marriage

  • Larry Steers

    Lawrence Wells Steers (1888-1951) appeared in around 550 films during his thirty-year career, sometimes credited, more often not.

    Twenty-seven of those uncredited roles were in Metro musicals, starting in 1930 with Lord Byron of Broadway. Steers was subsequently in Stage Mother, Dancing Lady, Hollywood Party, Reckless, Here Comes the Band, The Great Ziegfeld, Nobody’s Baby, The Great Waltz, At the Circus, Broadway Melody of 1940, Ziegfeld Girl, Lady Be Good, Two Girls and a Sailor, Meet the People, Ziegfeld Follies (giving the hattrick of MGM Ziegfeld titles), Yolanda and the Thief, Holiday in Mexico, No Leave, No Love, Till the Clouds Roll By, A Date with Judy, The Barkeleys of Broadway, That Midnight Kiss, Annie Get Your Gun, Duchess of Idaho, The Toast of New Orleans and The Great Caruso.

  • George Chandler

    W C Fields’s fans will know George Chandler (1898-1985) as Chester Snavely, the unfortunate youth who drank The Fatal Glass of Beer (1933).

    In his fifty-year career Chandler kept very busy, right up to a final appearance in the Lou Grant TV series. He made credited appearances in two MGM musicals–In Gay Madrid and The Florodora Girl–and also showed up uncredited in Devil-May-Care, Love in the Rough, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, Broadway Melody of 1940, Swing Fever and The Pirate.

  • 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.

  • Oliver T Marsh

    Oliver Taylor Marsh (1892-1941) was an MGM company man for most of his career, and arguably achieved his greatest successes with some of the nineteen musicals he photographed, most of which were directed by Robert Z Leonard and W S Van Dyke.

    Marsh’s earliest efforts were Marianne, In Gay Madrid and The Florodora Girl. He protographed the 1930 New Moon and also worked uncredited on the 1940 remake. He returned to the genre after the 1932 hiatus and shot Dancing Lady. The following year he worked with Lubitsch on The Merry Widow and moved immediately from the sublime to the sublimely ridiculous Laurel and Hardy in Babes in Toyland.

    Marsh photographed the Oscar-winning The Great Ziegfeld and the destruction of San Francisco in the film of the same name. Maytime was the first of his five MacDonald-Eddy operettas, and he also worked with MacDonald on The Firefly and with Eddy on Rosalie. The Girl of the Golden West was followed by an Academy Award, with Allen Davey, for their Technicolor work on Sweethearts. 

    Following the ridiculous Ice Follies of 1939, Marsh was with Jeanette MacDonald again for Broadway Serenade. He rounded off his career with Broadway Melody of 1940, Bitter Sweet (again Oscar-nominated for Technicolor) and Lady Be Good, made shortly before his untimely death.

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