The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Going Hollywood

  • 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.  

  • Frank Sullivan

    Francis Starbuck Sullivan (1896-1972) worked in silent cinema as both cinematographer and editor, but restricted himself to the latter after 1928. Before retiring in 1962, he worked at various times with Fritz Lang, Josef Von Sternberg, Frank Borzage, George Cukor (Oscar nominated for The Philadelphia Story in 1940), George Stevens and Joseph H Lewis.

    Sullivan’s MGM musical assignments were So This is College, It’s a Great Life, Going Hollywood and Babes in Arms.

    Some sources also assert he contributed as a writer to Ziegfeld Follies, but this may have been the New Yorker  humourist of the same name.

  • Sam McDaniel

    Samuel Rufus McDaniel (1886-1962) started his show business career singing with his three sisters, including the subsequently renowned Hattie. Like most Black actors, his Hollywood career was largely limited to servants and railway porters, though he was notable as Doc (a cook) in Captains Courageous (1937), even if his name was misspelt in the credits.

    McDaniel’s MGM musical appearances were Hallelujah, Going Hollywood, Music for Millions and Living in a Big Way.

  • Robert Montgomery

    The mature roles undertaken by Robert Montgomery (real name Henry) (1904-1981) include the killer Danny in Night Must Fall (1937), a naval commander in They Were Expendable (1945) and Philip Marlowe in The Lady in the Lake (1947). It is easy to forget that he started out playing a jock named Biff in So This is College and predominantly worked in light comedies.

    By no means a gifted singer, Montgomery still performed in three early MGM musicals. As well as So This Is College, he made Free and Easy and Love in the Rough  in quick succession, then called it a day with musicals, apart from archive footage of him at a premiere in Going Hollywood.

    Later in life Montgomery asserted that So This Is College had shown him that making a picture is a “great co-operative project”. This is arguably more true of musicals than any other type of film.

  • 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.

  • Marion Davies

    It is a regrettable side effect of Citizen Kane’s success that the name of Marion Davies (1897-1961) has become linked with that of Susan Alexander, the second-rate singer and mistress of the newspaper magnate. The second of these is undeniably a similarity: Davies was the long-term companion of William Randolph Hearst, the main inspiration for the character of Kane, and Hearst certainly made some inappropriate decisions about her career. But Marion Davies was far from being a second-rate performer. In David Thomson’s words, she was “a genuinely funny actress who did good work”. Davies’s most successful period was in silent films, but she made a successful transition to sound, overcoming the obstacle of a stammer.  

    Davies’s appearance in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 was a less than triumphant start to her musical career, singing and dancing furiously to two songs, dressed in the military uniform Hearst loved to see her in.   

    She is seen to better effect as the eponymous Marianne (which she co-produced), though the musical demands made on her are admittedly far less than in the earlier appearance. Davies’s strengths are seen in the light comedy aspects of her role. Davies was an equally-fetching protagonist in The Florodora Girl (which she produced) and, in particular, opposite Bing Crosby in Going Hollywood. 

    Some commentators list Blondie of the Follies (1932) as a musical, but is actually a romantic comedy featuring an attractive performance by Davies.

  • 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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