The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Duchess of Idaho

  • Kenneth Gibson

    Bit player Kenneth Koch Gibson (1898-1972) spent a lot of time being paid to party. He was in fourteen MGM musicals, and in at least eight of them was a party guest or nightclub patron. 

    In a career stretching from 1921 to 1969, Gibson notched up approaching 300 screen appearances. He was actually the male lead in his first film, Big Town Ideas (1921), but by 1929 was generally uncredited. He became a regular bit player for Cecil B DeMille and Preston Sturges, and can be found in some excellent pictures, including This Gun for Hire (1942), The Big Sleep (1946), Sunset Boulevard (1950) and A Star is Born (1954).

    Gibson’s musicals at Metro were: Madam Satan, New Moon (1940), Yolanda and the Thief, Luxury Liner, The Barkeleys of Broadway, Duchess of Idaho, The Toast of New Orleans, Rich, Young and Pretty, Singin’ in the Rain, Small Town Girl, Interrupted Melody, It’s Always Fair Weather, I’ll Cry Tomorrow and Ten Thousand Bedrooms.

  • Charles Schoenbaum

    Charles Edgar Schoenbaum (1893-1951) was a hard-working cinematographer whose earliest credit seems to be working for Cecil B DeMille at Paramount in 1917, but who spent much of his career at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He was sometimes credited as Charles E Schoenbaum, and even C Edgar Schoenbaum.

    His work was not greatly celebrated–his sole Academy Award nomination was for Little Women in 1949–but he was valued for his work ethic.

    Schoenbaum worked on five MGM musicals over a twenty-year period, from The Rogue Song in 1930 to Duchess of Idaho in 1950. In between came Here Comes the Band and the second version of Good News. He was also drafted in by Rouben Mamouian to replace Charles Rosher on Summer Holiday. 

  • 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.

  • Robert Z Leonard

    Robert Zigler Leonard (1889-1968), commonly known as Pop, turned to directing in 1914 after a short career as a leading man, and was a workhorse producer-director at MGM from 1926 until 1957. He worked in pretty much every genre tackled by the studio, and was one of its most prolific directors of musicals, working on fifteen between 1929 and 1952.

    Leonard directed and co-produced Marianne in 1929, one of his many collaborations with Metro’s female stars. A few years later he made In Old Madrid, then became the first person to direct Fred Astaire on film in Dancing Lady.

    The Great Ziegfeld was the second musical to win the Best Picture Oscar, and Leonard was also nominated for his direction.

    Leonard worked on five Jeanette Macdonald-Nelson Eddy vehicles–Naughty Marietta (uncredited), Maytime, Girl of the Golden West, Sweethearts (uncredited) and New Moon–as well as two MacDonald solo pictures, The Firefly and Broadway Serenade.

    Ziegfeld Girl returned him to the world of the Broadway impresario, and, after a gap of eight years, he was reunited with that film’s star, Judy Garland, for In the Good Old Summertime. Leonard then directed a new generation of musical performers in Nancy Goes to Rio (Jane Powell), Duchess of Idaho (Esther Williams) and Grounds for Marriage (Kathryn Grayson.

    Leonard’s final musical outing was Everything I Have is Yours in 1951. 

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