The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Hollywood Party

  • Curly Howard

    Jerome Lester Horwitz (1903-52) was, by general consent, the greatest of the six performers who, at various times, comprised the Three Stooges. His brother Moe and vaudeville performer Larry Fine were permanent presences in the trio, but Curly, somewhat reluctantly, took over when  original member Shemp Howard decided to leave. 

    Curly Howard had been a watcher-on of his brothers’ performances when they were a part of the act called Ted Healy and his Three Stooges, and was drafted in when Shemp grew tired of working with the difficult Healy. He was required to cut his hair down to the scalp, something he hated for the rest of his life.

    But Curly was considered the most naturally gifted comedian in the act, and introduced many of its best-loved bits of business: the mock-Brooklyng pronunciation (“Soitanly!), the manic laugh (“Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk”) and much of the physical buffoonery, which he could improvise at will.

    Curly appeared in almost 100 Three Stooges shorts between 1933 and 1947, when ill-health, culminating in a stroke, ended his career.

    The Three Stooges never made their own feature film during Curly’s tenure, but he did make brief appearances in three MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Dancing Lady and Hollywood Party.

  • Tenen Holtz

    Alex Elihu Tenenholtz (1887-1971) was a stalwart of Yiddish theatre, both in pre-revolutionary Russia and in his adopted home in the United States. In 1925 he established a Yiddish theatre company with Cecilia Adler, the half-sister of Luther and Stella, and in 1926 was offered a contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 

    In one of his early films, The Mask of Comedy (1926), he appeared with Norma Shearer, and over the next few years he acted with most of Hollywood’s top women actors: Marion Davies (The Cardboard Lover [1928]), Marie Dressler (Bringing Up Father [1928]), Joan Crawford (The Duke Steps Out [1929]), Blanche Sweet (The Woman Racket [1930]), Loretta Young (Three Girls Lost [1931]), Kay Francis (British Agent [1934]) and Carole Lombard (Nothing Sacred [1937]).

    Holtz also appeared uncredited in three MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Hollywood Party and Let Freedom Ring. 

    When Hotz’s career was reduced to Poverty Row productions in the late 30s, he took up chicken farming instead. He returned to acting, predominantly on television, in 1959.

  • Ruth Channing

    Eva Louise Moynahan (1904-92) only appeared in about ten films before giving up her career so she could, as was normal at the time, ‘devote herself to her family’. But she was able to look back on a career that connected her, albeit without credit, with a few memorable pictures.

    Channing had wanted to be a dancer, but an injury put paid to that, and she devoted herself to acting instead. After gaining experience on the stage, she was cast in Working Girls (1931), a minor but engaging picture directed by Dorothy Arzner. 

    In 1934, Channing appeared in two solid MGM classics, The Thin Man and the musical The Merry Widow. She had previously been in two other of the studio’s musicals: Broadway to Hollywood and Hollywood Party.

    By 1935, her career was over.

  • Eddie Quillan

    Edward Quillan (1907-90) was a kind of cutprice forerunner to Mickey Rooney. As a child, he also performed in vaudeville with his parents. He was still a child when he signed a contract to make comedy shorts for Mack Sennett. He was a leading man throughout the 1930s, and moved down to ‘B’ pictures later. His film career lasted a respectable 58 years.

    Quliian’s career took off in 1929, when he starred in The Godless Girl for Cecil B DeMille. He featured prominently in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and was one of Alice Brady’s sons in John Ford’s Young Mr Lincoln (1939). He worked again for Ford in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), as treacherous Connie Rivers.

    Quillan always worked steadily, making his last feature film in 1979, and also making many television appearances. But his last film role of note was as Sandy in Brigadoon.

    He was in two MGM musicals during his 1930s heyday, Broadway to Hollywood and Hollywood Party.

  • Jimmy Durante

    James Francis Durante (1893-1980) had what in Britain might be called a Marmite personality: some people loved him, others hated him. For some, a little went a long way. (Personally, I’m a fan.) But what is undeniable is that Jimmy Durante had the longest career of any performer starring in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals. It began in 1931, ended in 1962, and included eleven pictures across all four decades.

    Durante started out in show business playing ragtime piano, and developed humour out of the musical performance. This led to vaudeville, and then radio, with time spent as part of a three-man comedy act. 

    He made his film debut in 1930, at Paramount’s New York studios. By the following year he was in Hollywood, working for Metro. Jimmy Durante, throughout his career, moved seamlessly between films, Broadway, radio, records and, later on, television. In 1934, for example, he made films in New York because he was appearing on Broadway in Jumbo, which he would film twenty-eight years later.

    Durante was sometimes the leading man in films; for instance, Palooka (1934), where he got top billing over Lupe Velez. More often, however, he was third or fourth billed, providing comic support.

    Durante’s first MGM musical, this time billed below Lupe Velez, was The Cuban Love Song. This was followed by Broadway to Hollywood and Hollywood Party (playing versions of himself), then Student Tour, Two Girls and a Sailor, Music for Millions, Two Sisters from Boston, It Happened in Brooklyn, This Time for Keeps, On an Island with You and, finally, Billy Rose’s Jumbo.

    Durante’s last big screen appearance was in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), but he continued to work on television. 

  • Lupe Velez

    María Guadalupe Villalobos Vélez (1908-44) was one of a small group of Mexican actors–others included Ramon Novarro and Dolores del Rio–to become stars during Hollywood’s Golden Age.

    Velez started out by performing in Mexico’s version of vaudeville, before moving to the United States and appearing in a Hal Roach short with Charley Chase when she was eighteen. Her first feature film, The Gaucho (1927), in which she had a starring role, was made in the same year.

    Velez had started learning English as a young teenager during a period living in Texas, and had no problem in transitioning to sound films. Habitually cast in Hispanic roles, she often exaggerated her very slight accent when acting. Velez developed a stereotyped reputation as a fiery, volatile character both on and off the screen, which led to her starring in a series of eight pictures about Carmelita Lindsay, the Mexican Spitfire. 

    The private life of Lupe Velez was of great interest to sections of the press, and she had highly-publicized relationships with, amongst others, Gary Cooper, Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams, and Johnny Weismuller, whom she married.

    Velez starred in two MGM musicals, The Cuban Love Song and Hollywood Party. 

    She took her own life at a young age, while pregnant, during what is now believed to have been a period of serious mental illness.

  • Tom Kennedy

    Thomas Aloysius Kennedy (1886-1965) had a face that bore testament to his first career as a heavyweight boxer. It was a face that brought him a fifty-year career as a character actor and appearances in more than 400 films and television programmes.

    Kennedy made his first screen appearance in 1915 in The Lamb, a Douglas Fairbanks comedy-western. He later played First Officer Gibson, in hot pursuit of the Marx Brothers in Monkey Business (1931). He was the gangster Slim Murphy in 42nd Street and appeared regularly as Gahagan in the Torchy Blane series (“What a day! What a day!”).

    Right at the end of his career, Kennedy was one of Spencer Tracy’s colleagues in the Santa Rosita Police Department in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).

    Kennedy made two uncredited appearances in Metro musicals in the 1930s: Flying High and Hollywood Party.

  • Linda Parker

    Linda Parker (1915-69) was the younger sister of Cecilia Parker, the actor best-remembered for playing Marian Hardy in the Andy Hardy series.

    In 1930, Linda ‘joined’ her sister to play Siamese twins in Lon Chaney’s sound remake of The Unholy Three. They were immediately asked to repeat the trick in A Lady’s Morals. 

    Linda Parker had uncredited  parts in five other Metro musicals: Stage Mother, Dancing Lady, Hollywood Party, Student Tour and Naughty Marietta (which also featured Cecilia).

  • Martha Sleeper

    Martha Sleeper (1910-83) reversed the usual actor’s journey of her day by starting out in films and transitioning to Broadway.

    Sleeper made her first film appearance in 1923, aged 12. She was spotted by Hal Roach, who signed her to appear in comedy sorts. She appeared in a number of early films directed by Leo McCarey.

    Aged 17, Sleeper was selected as a WAMPAS Baby Star, and played the lead in half-a-dozen pictures in 1928-29 for a minor studio. She was then signed by MGM and played many supporting roles. Two of these were as Fish Girl in Madam Satan and an uncredited appearance in Hollywood Party.

    Sleeper was unhappy with the work she was doing, and began seeking roles in local stage productions. In 1936, she effectively retired from screen acting and moved with her husband to New York, where she worked for ten years both on and off Broadway. She also began designing jewellery. 

    Sleeper made one last film in 1945, The Bells of St Mary’s, as a favour to Leo McCarey. In 1949, she relocated to Puerto Rico, where she began designing clothes, running her own business for twenty years.

  • Clarence Wilson

    Clarence Hummel Wilson (1876-1941) had been acting on the stage for a quarter of a century when he made his film debut in 1920. He spent the next twenty years playing a variety of bailiffs, landlords and old grumps, often in featured roles, at other times without credit, totalling around 200 appearances.

    Notable films featuring Wilson include: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), as the money lender; The Front Page (1931), as the sheriff; and You Can’t Take It with You (1938), as the property developer.

    Wilson appeared in four MGM musicals: Love in the Rough and, uncredited, Flying High, Hollywood Party and Maytime.

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