The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: For Me and My Gal

  • Edwin B Willis

    Edwin Booth Willis (1893-1963) worked on the design of over 800 MGM pictures, in a career lasting a little over thirty years. He was nominated for Academy Awards 32 times, and won on eight occasions. In broad terms, Willis was an art director, but his specialism was set decoration and the bulk of his credits were in this capacity. 

    After working as an art director for Tiffany Pictures in the 1920s, Willis worked exclusively for Metro, obtaining three types of credit: Associate Art Director (AAD), Interior Decorations (ID) and Set Decorator (SD). He did early work as SD on Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925).

    Willis worked on some of the studio’s major critical and commercial successes, including Queen Christina (1933, for ID), The Thin Man (1934, as AAD), Anna Karenina (1935, as AAD, Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936, as AAD), Camille (1936, as AAD), The Good Earth (1937, as AAD), Captains Courageous (1937, as AAD), Boys’ Town (1938, as AAD), The Women (1939), Ninotchka (1939, as SD), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Waterloo Bridge (1940), Pride and Prejudice (1940), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Blossoms in the Dust (1941, winning an Oscar), Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1941), Woman of the Year (1942), Mrs Miniver (1942), Lassie Come Home (1943), Madame Curie (1943), Gaslight (1944, winning an Oscar), John Ford’s They Were Expendable (1944), The Yearling (1946, winning an Oscar), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), State of the Union (1948), Act of Violence (1948), Intruder in the Dust (1949), Little Women (1949, winning an Oscar), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The Red Badge of Courage (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful 1952, winning an Oscar), Julius Caesar (1953, winning an Oscar), Bad Day at  Black Rock (1955), Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956, winning an Oscar), Forbidden Planet (1956) and Lust for Life (1956).

    Willis had a particularly extensive collaboration with Vincente Minnelli, decorating most of his musical and non-musical pictures

    Edwin B Willis contributed to 153 musicals, around 70 per cent of MGM’s total output. It could be argued that this makes him the single most influential figure on the look of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical. The pictures were:

    Broadway to Hollywood

    Stage Mother (ID)

    Dancing Lady (ID)

    Going Hollywood (ID)

    The Cat and the Fiddle (ID)

    Hollywood Party (ID)

    Student Tour (AAD)

    The Merry Widow (AAD)

    The Night is Young (AAD/SD)

    Naughty Marietta (AAD)

    Reckless (AAD)

    Broadway Melody of 1936 (AAD)

    Here Comes the Band (AAD)

    A Night at the Opera (AAD)

    Rose Marie (AAD)

    The Great Ziegfeld (AAD)

    San Francisco (AAD)

    Born to Dance (AAD)

    Maytime (AAD)

    A Day at the Races (AAD)

    Broadway Melody of 1938 (AAD)

    The Firefly (AAD)

    Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry (AAD)

    Rosalie (AAD)

    Everybody Sing (AAD)

    The Girl of the Golden West (AAD)

    Listen, Darling (AAD)

    The Great Waltz (AAD)

    Sweethearts

    Honolulu

    Let Freedom Ring

    Ice Follies of 1939

    The Wizard of Oz

    Babes in Arms

    At the Circus

    Balalaika

    Broadway Melody of 1940

    New Moon

    Strike Up the Band

    Hullabaloo (Associate Set Decorator, uncredited)

    Bitter Sweet

    Little Nellie Kelly

    Go West

    Free and Easy

    Ziegfeld Girl

    The Big Store

    Lady Be Good

    The Chocolate Soldier

    Smilin’ Through

    Babes on Broadway

    Born to Sing

    Ship Ahoy

    Rio Rita

    I Married an Angel

    Cairo

    Panama Hattie

    For Me and My Gal

    Seven Sweethearts

    Cabin in the Sky

    Presenting Lily Mars

    Du Barry was a Lady

    Best Foot Forward

    Thousands Cheer

    Swing Fever

    Girl Crazy

    Broadway Rhythm

    Two Girls and a Sailor

    Meet the People

    Bathing Beauty

    Meet Me in St Louis

    Music for Millions

    Thrill of a Romance

    Anchors Aweigh

    Ziegfeld Follies

    Yolanda and the Thief

    The Harvey Girls

    Two Sister from Boston

    Easy to Wed

    Holiday in Mexico

    No Leave, No Love

    Till the Clouds Roll By

    It Happened in Brooklyn

    Living in a Big Way

    Fiesta

    The Unfinished Dance

    Good News

    Summer Holiday

    On an Island With You

    The Pirate

    Easter Parade

    A Date with Judy

    Luxury Liner

    The Kissing Bandit

    Words and Music

    Take Me Out to the Ball Game

    The Barkeleys of Broadway

    Neptune’s Daughter

    In the Good Old Summertime

    That Midnight Kiss

    On the Town

    Nancy Goes to Rio

    Annie Get Your Gun

    Three Little Words

    Duchess of Idaho

    The Toast of New Orleans

    Summer Stock

    Two Weeks with Love

    Pagan Love Song

    Grounds for Marriage

    Royal Wedding

    The Great Caruso

    Excuse My Dust

    Rich, Young and Pretty

    Show Boat

    An American in Paris (winning an Oscar)

    The Strip

    Texas Carnival

    The Belle of New York

    Singin’ in the Rain

    Skirts Ahoy

    Lovely to Look At

    The Merry Widow

    Because You’re Mine

    Everything I Have is Yours

    Lili

    I Love Melvin

    Small Town Girl

    Dangerous When Wet

    The Band Wagon

    Latin Lovers

    The Affairs of Dobie Gillis

    Torch Song

    Kiss Me Kate

    Easy to  Love

    Rose Marie

    The Student Prince

    Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

    Brigadoon

    Athena 

    Deep in My Heart

    Jupiter’s Darling

    Hit the Deck

    The Glass Slipper

    Interrupted Melody

    Love Me or Leave Me

    It’s Always Fair Weather

    Kismet

    Meet Me in Las Vegas

    High Society

    The Opposite Sex

    Ten Thousand Bedrooms

    Silk Stockings

    Les Girls

  • Ben Lewis

    Benjamin Lewis (1894-1970) was a film editor who spent the whole of his career, forty-three years, working for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

    He started out working as an assistant editor on Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), and obtained his first full credit a year later on The Devil’s Circus (1926), directed by Benjamin Christiansen during his sojourn in Hollywood.

    Lewis edited some of MGM’s most prestigious pictures, as well as being a frequent editor on the money-making Andy Hardy series. He worked on Trader Horn (1931), Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), Dinner at Eight (1933) and The Good Earth (1937, uncredited).

    In 1951, Lewis was given the unpleasant task of editing John Huston’s cut of The Red Badge of Courage down to 69 minutes. 

    Lewis worked on seven MGM musicals, across a thirty-four-year period: Broadway to Hollywood, Love Finds Andy Hardy, Strike Up the Band, Rio Rita, For Me and My Gal, Three Little Words  and The Fastest Guitar Alive.

    Ben Lewis’s brother was the venerated ‘B’ picture director, Joseph H Lewis.

  • Edward Peil Sr

    Edward J Peil (1882/3-1958) studied drama at university, which ultimately led him to pursue a career in acting. His obituary stated that he was in a film, Charley’s Aunt, as early as 1906, , and that he starred in the first five-reel picture in 1910. What is certain is that he began to accumulate credits in 1913, following a period working in the theatre. 

    Peil worked for various studios in the 1910s, including playing a German officer in D W Griffith’s The Greatest Thing in Life (1918). He also performed in yellow face in Griffith’s Broken Blossoms (1919), doing so again in John Ford’s The Iron Horse (1924) and a number of other films of the 1920s. 

    Edward Peil acted in well over 420 pictures, though most of his appearances in the sound era were uncredited, apart from the many ‘B’ westerns he made for minor studios. 

    Seven of his uncredited appearances were in MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Reckless, Girl of the Golden West, Two Girls on Broadway, For Me and My Gal, Three Daring Daughters and Excuse My Dust.  

  • Busby Berkeley

    The birth name of Busby Berkeley William Enos (1895-1976) is something of a mystery since, according to his biographer, his birth certificate’s ‘name of child’ section was left blank. Busby may have been a nickname.

    IMDb declares that Berkeley “was one of the greatest choreographers of the US movie musical”. Technically, this is only true in part. He was certainly a great dance director, but choreographers usually know something about dancing, and Berkeley actually knew very little. As Jerome Delamater points out, Berkeley “used very little dance as such in his films”. He did not understand dance, but he did understand movement; specifically, the movement of human bodies in geometric patterns and shapes. As the artist Glen Baxter suggested, Busby Berkeley sequences were surrealism in action.

    In the 1920s, Berkeley became a celebrated Broadway dance director, staging around twenty shows and becoming celebrated for his tightly regimented routines. Florenz Ziegfeld invited him to go to Hollywood to work on the film version of the Eddie Cantor hit Whoopee! (1930), and he began honing the camera techniques that made his most famous numbers to stand out. It is important to recognize that these techniques were not necessarily of Berkeley’s devising. The overhead shot, for example, which is seen virtually as his signature, had been used in 1929 in MGM’s The Hollywood Revue of 1929, and the Ziegfeld idea of using a plethora of chorus girls was emulated by Larry Ceballos in Warner’s The Show of Shows (1929). But Berkeley used these techniques with more creativity and greater discipline.

    Berkeley’s reputation rests largely on the numbers he staged for the series of Warner Bros musicals that began with 42nd Street (1933). A couple of years earlier, however, he had staged the big number in MGM’s Flying High.

    Berkeley returned to Metro in 1939, to direct Babes in Arms, and did a lot of work for the studio thereafter. He directed the Garland-Rooney follow-ups Strike Up the Band and Babes on Broadway, as well as For Me and My Gal and Take Me Out to the Ball Game. He was the original director of Annie Get Your Gun, but most of his footage was scrapped when George Sidney took over. He was one of a number of directors who worked on Till the Clouds Roll By, and worked without credit on Swing Fever.

    Berkeley also arranged musical numbers for The Wizard of Oz (though most of his footage was left out), Cabin in the Sky (uncredited), Lady Be Good, Ziegfeld Girl, Born to Sing, Girl Crazy, Two Weeks With Love, Million Dollar Mermaid, Small Town Girl, Easy to Love, Rose Marie and Billy Rose’s Jumbo.

  • Howard Johnson

    Lyricist Howard Johnson (1887-1941) both served in the First World War and wrote popular songs about it, including the immortal ‘I’d Like to See the Kaiser with a Lily in his Hand’:

    I’d like to see all mothers free from sorrow,

    I’d like to see poor Belgium free from pain;

    I’d like to see this cruel conflict ended,

    I’d like to see my daddy once again.

    I’d like to see the Yankees win this battle,

    I’d like to see France get back her promised land;

    I’d like to see this whole big world United,

    And I’d like to see the Kaiser with a lily in his hand!

    Johnson was capable of better than this, and his best-known song is probably ‘What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For?,’ written in 1916 and made a UK chart hit by Shakin’ Stevens 70 years later.

    Johnson co-wrote numbers for Children of Pleasure and the abandoned March of Time. His songs are also featured in Madam Satan, A Night at the Opera, For Me and My Gal and Hit the Deck.

  • 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.

  • Ray Egan

    Canadian Raymond Blanning Egan (1890-1952) was a regular partner of composer Richard A Whiting, and together they wrote a number of standards, notably including the perennial ‘Ain’t We Got Fun’.

    Egan and Whiting’s ‘The Japanese Sandman’ was performed by Cliff Edwards in Lord Byron of Broadway and, some years later, Lucille Norman sang the poignant ‘Till We Meet Again’ in For Me and My Gal.

  • Richard A Whiting

    Richard Armstrong Whiting (1891-1938) was an important contributor to the Great American Songbook, but his name is probably less than many of his contemporaries. Indeed, while working as a song plugger, Whiting discovered the young George Gershwin.

    Whiting wrote his first successful songs in 1914 and went on to compose a substantial number of standards, including ‘Ain’t We Got Fun,’ ‘Beyond the Blue Horizon’ and ‘Hooray for Hollywood’. He also provided Shirley Temple with her signature tune, ‘On the Good Ship Lollipop’.

    White composed music for a number of films, though only rarely for MGM (for example, Red-Headed Woman in 1932). Notably, he provided the songs for Paramount’s Lubitsch musical Monte Carlo (1930). 

    Cliff Edwards performs ‘The Japanese Sandman’ in Lord Byron of Broadway, originally written by Whiting and Ray Egan in 1920. Some years later, Lucille Norman sang ‘Till We Meet Again’ in For Me and My Gal.

  • George Davis

    George Davis (1889-1965) was a prolific small-part actor for almost forty years. He appeared without credit in It’s a Great Life, played a groom in  Devil-May-Care, was uncredited again in They Learned About Women, The Cuban Love Song and The Cat and the Fiddle. He appeared in The Merry Widow and played the same part, without credit, in the French version. 

    David showed up uncredited in Maytime, I Married an Angel, For Me and My Gal, Two Sisters from Boston, Words and Music, The Toast of New Orleans, Rich, Young and Pretty, An American in Paris, Lovely To Look At, the second version of The Merry Widow, Lili, Easy to Love, Interrupted Melody and Les Girls.

    That’s twenty Metro musicals plus a French copy, with a single credited appearance.

  • Fred Fisher

    Originally Alfred Breitenbach, German-born Fred Fisher (1875-1942) wrote the popular ‘Peg O’My Heart’ and many other Irish-themed ballads. He also co-wrote ‘Whispering Grass’ with his equally-successful daughter, Doris Fisher.

    Songs by Fisher, usually written in collaboration with others, are featured in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, So This Is College, Chasing Rainbows, Children of Pleasure, For Me and My Gal and In the Good Old Summertime. He also contributed a number to The March of Time.

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