Category: Good News (1930)
-
Frances Marion
With a career that lasted more than thirty years, Marion Benson Owens (1888-1973) was undoubtedly one of the most important writers in American cinema, even though her name is not well known today. She worked with Anita Loos on a film for D W Griffith, then became a writer for pioneer filmmaker Lois Weber, developing into one of the most prolific and skilled screenwriters in Hollywood.
Some of the major pictures worked on by Marion include: The Big House (1930), for which she won an Academy Award; Garbo’s first talkie, Anna Christie (1931); The Champ (1931), bringing a second Academy Award; Dinner at Eight (1933); Camille (1936); and The Good Earth (1937), uncredited.
Marion’s extensive work for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer included eight musicals. She co-wrote The Rogue Song, and immediately followed this with an uncredited contribution to In Gay Madrid. She wrote the screenplay for the 1930 version of Good News, and then worked without credit on Going Hollywood, Maytime, Rosalie, Presenting Lily Mars and, her swan song, The Pirate.
-
Percy Hilburn
Percy Hilburn (1889-1946) had a career as a cinematographer lasting only from 1915 to 1931, but still managed to shoot over 70 pictures. Most notable amongst these was MGM’s Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), on which he was one of several DoPs.
During the remainder of his career at the studio Hilburn shot two musicals, Children of Pleasure and Good News.
-
George Ward
It is difficult to find any information about George Ward (????-????), the co-writer of songs featured in Children of Pleasure, Good News and the uncompleted The March of Time. Most online sources seem to confuse him with George Warde, a child actor during the 1920s.
-
William LeVanway
William LeVanway (1896-1957) was an editor who spent his entire career at Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, latterly as head of the editing department. Unlike Douglas Shearer and Cedric Gibbons, he was not credited on every film.
While still undertaking editing assignments, LeVanway worked on the silent version of The Broadway Melody (1929), and was the cutter on Free and Easy, Good News and A Night at the Opera. He was the supervising editor for An American in Paris and Singin’ in the Rain.
-
Russell Franks
Russell Franks (1901-73) worked in the MGM sound department under Douglas Shearer. After acting as assistant on The Hollywood Revue of 1929, he was recording engineer onChasing Rainbows and Good News.
-
Reggie Montgomery
Reggie Montgomery (1906-??) co-write musical numbers for three MGM musicals–Chasing Rainbows, Children of Pleasure and Good News–and for the abandoned The March of Time.
-
David Cox
Little seems to be known about David Cox (1906-19??), who designed costumes at MGM before moving to work with Dolly Tree at Fox in 1932. He is, nonetheless, a featured artist at the Victoria & Albert Museum, where a costume designed for Bessie Love to wear in The Broadway Melody is among the exhibits.
Cox also designed for The Hollywood Revue of 1929, It’s a Great Life, Chasing Rainbows, Call of the Flesh, Good News and Love in the Rough.
-
Joseph Farnham
Joseph White Farnham (1884-1931) is the permanent holder of two cinematic records. He was the only person to receive an Academy Award for writing title cards, for The Fair Co-Ed (1927), Laugh, Clown, Laugh and Telling the World (both 1928). And he was the first winner of an Academy Award to die.
Farnham’s more ignominious claim to fame is that it was he who reduced Erich Von Stroheim’s Greed (1924) to the bowdlerized version we have today. Von Stroheim said it “was like seeing a corpse in a graveyard…I found a thin part of the backbone and a little bone of the shoulder”.
Farnham’s brief career in talking pictures was less prestigious and/or deplorable, but did include work on six Metro musicals. He wrote a skit for The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and titles for Marianne (both without credit). He then contributed dialogue to So This Is College, Montana Moon, Good News and Love in the Rough. Farnham also appeared as himself in Free and Easy.
-
Delmer Daves
Delmer Lawrence Daves (1904-77) started out as a prop boy, dabbled in acting and screenwriting, and became a director with a distinctive style. He was singled out by Martin Scorsese as a neglected artist, and as a forerunner of his own approach to depicting indigenous Americans in Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). Daves’s best-known films include the westerns Broken Arrow (1950) and 3:10 to Yuma (1957).
In his mid-twenties Daves co-wrote So This Is College, and also appeared onscreen as one of the USC footballers. Sticking with the college background, he then played Beef in Good News.
