The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Hollywood Party

  • Leonid Kinskey

    Leonid Nikolaevich Kinskii (1903-98) started out working as a theatrical mime in Czarist Russia. He left the country in 1921 and acted on stage in various countries until arriving in the United States in 1924.

    After further stage work, and working on a film in 1926 where he did not make the final cut, Kinskey finally made it to the screen with an uncredited appearance in Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise (1932). He went on to become one of the most instantly-recognizable character actors in Hollywood.

    Pictures featuring Kinskey include Duck Soup (1933), The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), Algiers (1938), The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939), Ball of Fire (1942) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1956).

    Kinskey is best remembered as Sascha the “crazy Russian” bartender in Casablanca (1942) and was the last-surviving member of its leading cast.

    During the Second World War, Kinskey worked with the US government to help select American films to be shown in the Soviet Union. Later in life, he worked extensively on television.

    Kinskey acted in eight MGM musicals: The Cat and the Fiddle, Hollywood Party, The Merry Widow, Maytime, The Great Waltz, I Married an Angel, Presenting Lily Mars and Nancy Goes to Rio.

  • Charles Butterworth

    Charles Edward Butterworth (1896-1946) was one of those Hollywood character actors with a very defined onscreen persona which he carried with him from picture to picture: mild-mannered, courteous and hesitant/confused. 

    After starting out as a journalist, Butterworth dabbled in writing  humorous pieces, which ended with him performing comic monologues in vaudeville. This led, in turn, to Broadway shows.

    In 1929, Butterworth performed a monologue in a Paramount short called Vital Subjects, and followed this with 47 appearances in feature films, almost always credited. He was top-billed in a handful of pictures, for example Baby Face Harrington (1935), but was usually cast in a strong supporting role.

    Butterworth played the Comte de Savignac in Rouben Mamoulian’s Love Me Tonight (1932) and was Algy Longworth in Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (1934). He provided comic relief in Magnificent Obsession (1935) and was the Duke of Ephesus in the, not wholly successful, screen adaptation of Rodgers and Hart’s The Boys from Syracuse (1940). Butterworth was an adept ad libber, and often improvised better dialogue than had been written for him.

    Charles Butterworth featured in five MGM musicals of the 1930s: The Cat and the Fiddle, Hollywood Party, Student Tour, The Night is Young and Let Freedom Ring.

    Butterworth died aged 49, when his car ran off the road in an unexplained accident. 

  • Gus Kahn

    Gustav Gerson Kahn (1886-1941) was one of Tin Pan Alley’s most prolific and successful writers of popular songs.

    Khan started out writing for vaudeville performers in the 1910s before forming the first of many partnerships with composers. In 1924, he wrote his first standard, ‘I’ll See You in My Dreams’.

    Contributing to many Broadway scores throughout the 1920s, he also moved into writing for films, and by 1933 was effectively working full time for Hollywood. Khan’s lyrics featured in Flying Down to Rio (1933), Kid Millions (1934) and Captains Courageous (1937).

    Khan worked most frequently with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, contributing to Going Hollywood, Hollywood Party, The Merry Widow, Naughty Marietta, Rose-Marie, A Day at the Races, The Firefly, The Girl of the Golden West and Bitter Sweet.

    Khan’s contributions to the Great American Songbook include ‘Ain’t We Got Fun?’, ‘It Had to Be You’, ‘Yes Sir, That’s My Baby’, ‘Makin’ Whoopee’ and ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’.

    Gus Kahn was played by Danny Thomas in a Warner Bros musical biopic, I’ll See You in My Dreams (1951).

  • The King’s Men

    The King’s Men was a musical quartet formed in 1928 by Kenneth ‘Ken’ Lorin Darby (1909-92) and also comprising Jon Dodson [Blunt] (1907-63), Grafton ‘Bud’ Linn (1909-68) and Radburn ‘Rad’ Brown Robinson. 

    The group sang on radio in the Hollywood area before being invited by Paul Whiteman to appear with his orchestra. They were later the backing singers on Bing Crosby’s recording of ‘White Christmas’.

    The King’s Men appeared on screen in a number of films during the 1930s and 40s, including five MGM musicals: Going Hollywood, Hollywood Party, Honolulu, Cairo and For Me and My Gal. In addition, they provided singing voices for the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz. They also undertook vocal work for Disney animations.

    Ken Darby had a varied and successful career in Hollywood. In addition to his appearances with the King’s Men, he was a composer and musical arranger, winning three Academy Awards. The films he worked on included The Wizard of Oz and At the Circus for MGM, Disney features such as Dumbo (1941) and Bambi (942),  and The King and I (1956), Porgy and Bess (1957) and Camelot (1962). He was also musical director on non-musicals such as How the West Was Won (1962).

    Darby also worked as a vocal coach, including with Marilyn Monroe in several pictures, and coached the chorus onThe Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).

  • Lorenz Hart

    The lyrics of Lorenz Milton Hart (1895-1943) were sophisticated, erudite, witty, conversational and amongst the finest contributions to the Great American Songbook. He stands with Cole Porter and Ira Gershwin as one of the foremost lyricists of the mid-twentieth century.

    In 1919, Hart met Richard Rodgers, and they formed a partnership that produced 26 of the most inventive Broadway shows of the late-1920s and 1930s These included A Connecticut Yankee (1927), Babes in Arms (1937), (The Boys from Syracuse (1938) and Pal Joey (1940).

    Hart and Rodgers worked in Hollywood for a period in the early 30s, with notable work for Lubitsch’s Love Me Tonight (1932) and Hallelujah, I’m a Bum (1933).

    Hart’s erratic behaviour eventually led to a rift with Rodgers, culminating in the latter working with Oscar Hammerstein II on Oklahoma! (1943). Hart died not long after the show’s premier.

    Lorenz Hart’s lyrics can be heard in eleven MGM musicals, starting with Dancing Lady  in 1933. The others were Hollywood Party, The Merry Widow, Babes in Arms, I Married an Angel, Words and Music (a less-than-accurate dramatization of the Rodgers and Hart partnership), Torch Song, Love me or Leave Me and Billy Rose’s Jumbo. 

  • Richard Rodgers

    There were better composers of popular music in the mid-twentieth century than Richard Charles Rodgers (1902-77), but none was as popular, prolific and influential. He was the first person to be awarded an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, a Tony and a Pulitzer.

    Rodgers’s career hinges on two partnerships with great, but very different, lyricists: Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. He met Hart while still a teenager, and they started out writing amateur shows, until contributing to their first Broadway show, Poor Little Ritz Girl in 1920. Rodgers had to work at other jobs to make a living, and was considering giving up music until the songs he and Hart wrote for a benefit show in 1925 received high praise from the critics. There was particular admiration for ‘Manhattan’, now an American standard.

    Rodgers and Hart wrote Broadway shows throughout the late 1920s before moving to Hollywood, where they scored a particular success with songs for Lubitsch’s Love Me Tonight (1932). Another string of Broadway shows ran from 1935 till Hart’s death in 1943. 

    Rodgers had, by that time, already begun working with Hammerstein, with Oklahoma! (1943) establishing a new style of integrated musical. They went on to write some of the most successful shows on Broadway and throughout the world of musical theatre.

    Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer never filmed any of the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows, so it is Rodgers’s collaborations with Hart that feature in ten of the studio’s musicals: Dancing Lady, Hollywood Party, Babes in Arms, I Married an Angel, Meet the People, Words and Music (a highly-fictionalized Rodgers and Hart biopic), Torch Song, Love Me Or Leave Me, This Could be the Night and Billy Rose’s Jumbo.

    Although none of their songs were used by MGM, the influence of Rodgers and Hammerstein can clearly be seen in the greater integration of music and plot from the late 40s onwards.

  • Florine McKinney

    Florine McKinney (1909-75) was an actor and singer who worked in Hollywood for about ten years, making around 35 pictures.

    McKinney played with the Marx Brothers in Horse Feathers (1932) and was Little Em’ly in David Copperfield (1935). She was uncredited in Waterloo Bridge and The Philadelphia Story (both 1940).

    Four MGM musicals featured uncredited appearances by Florine McKinney: Dancing Lady, Hollywood Party, Student Tour and The Merry Widow.

    McKinney continued to work on the stage after leaving Hollywood.

  • Ferdinand Gottschalk

    Ferdinand Gottschalk (1858-1944) was a British actor who started working in Canada in the late 1880s, supporting music hall star Rosina Vokes. He made his Broadway debut in 1894, and went on to act in and direct many productions, as well as writing for the stage.

    Gottschalk’s first screen appearance was in 1917, when he was 59, in Please Help Emily, recreating one of his stage roles. This, and three other silent films, were shot in New York.

    Moving to Hollywood after the introduction of sound, Gottschalk had a prominent role in the Gloria Swanson comedy Tonight or Never (1931). He only worked in films until 1938, but during that period was a distinguished character actor in over seventy pictures. 

    Gottschalk’s notable appearances included: Grand Hotel (1932), as the ballet master Pimenov; The Sign of the Cross (1932), as the decadent Glabrio, a role he repeated in Cleopatra (1934), but his scenes did not make the final cut; and Thenardier in Les Misérables (1935).

    Gottschalk made many uncredited appearances, and three were in the MGM musicals Dancing Lady, Hollywood Party and Here Comes the Band.

    After retiring, Gottschalk returned to the UK.

  • Louis Silvers

    The status of Louis Silberstein (1889-1954) as the pioneer of film music is unassailable, given that he worked as musical director and composer on The Jazz Singer (1927), the ur-musical/talking picture.

    Silvers had already claimed his place in musical history when, aged 24, he composed the music for ‘April Showers’, with lyrics by Buddy De Sylva. He also wrote the music for the experimental sound sequences in the D W Griffith turkey Dream Street (1921). He also composed for three other Griffith pictures.

    Silvers had started out as a vaudeville pianist and was working as a musical director on Broadway when he went to Hollywood. His work on The Jazz Singer is far more nuanced and inventive than the film in general, or Al Jolson’s overblown performance in particular, though it rarely figures in discussion of the picture’s importance.

    Silvers went on to compose music for over thirty films and act as musical director on around seventy. He also conducted the music for dozens of Warner’s early Vitaphone recordings. In 1935, he won the Oscar for Best Original Score for One Night of Love (1934).

    For MGM, Silvers composed and conducted incidental music for Stage Mother and Dancing Lady, and co-wrote ‘Schnarzan’ for Hollywood Party.

  • Maurice De Packh

    Composer Maurice De Packh (1896-1960) was already working as an orchestrator on Broadway by the time he was 22, and its was in that capacity that he excelled. He continued to work on Broadway for decades, while maintaining a parallel career in films.

    De Packh, usually without credit, arranged the scores for some of Hollywood’s greatest Golden Age pictures. The total exceeded 240, but some of the highlights were: Queen Christina (1933), The Informer (1935), Top Hat (1935), Ninotchka (1939), Gone With the Wind (1939, one of several), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Nightmare Alley (1947), Unfaithfully Yours (1948), All About Eve (1950), A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Rio Bravo (1959) and Spartacus (1960, his final film).

    De Packh started out in MGM musicals composing incidental music for Stage Mother and Dancing Lady. He was also the arranger on the latter, and later orchestrated Annie Get Your Gun, The Belle of New York, Singin’ in the Rain, The Merry Widow, The Student Prince, I’ll Cry Tomorrow and Gigi. He also co-wrote the song ‘Schnarzan’ for Hollywood Party.

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