The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Madam Satan

  • Ann Sothern

    Harriette Arlene Lake (1909-2001) was described as “the greatest comedienne” by Lucille Ball, who was probably a good judge.

    In a career of almost sixty years, Ann Sothern was successful on stage, film, television and radio. In Hollywood, she moved from studio to studio before settling at MGM, where she was cast as Maisie Ravier in Maisie (1939). The film’s success gave a boost to her moderately successful career, as well as resulting in nine sequels and a radio series.

    When she stopped getting lead roles, Southern moved predominantly to television. But her last great big screen performance, in The Whales of August (1987) earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

    Ann Sothern was in seven Metro musicals. Early on, she made blink-and-you’ll-miss-them appearances in Good News and Madam Satan. Ten years later, she was back with the lead  in Lady Be Good (Eleanor Powell’s top billing being contractual rather than deserved). She next took the title role in Panama Hattie, then played herself in Thousands Cheer. She was Broadway star Joyce Harmon in Words and Music, and finished off playing Jane Powell’s mother in Nancy Goes to Rio. 

  • Dave O’Brien

    For someone who died aged 57, David Poole Fronabarger (1912-69) produced an astonishing body of work; he must have been one of the hardest-working people in Hollywood. He appeared in around 240 feature films and shorts. He contributed to at least 50 screenplays and won an Emmy in 1961 for writing for The Red Skelton Show. And he directed about 65 shorts. He even did some stunt work at the beginning of his career.

    O’Brien is probably best known as the lead performer in many Pete Smith Specialties, the series of comedy shorts produced by Pete Smith for MGM from 1935 to 1955. He also directed some of them as David Barclay. The acting in the Pete Smith films was always silent, with Smith himself providing narration. O’Brien was one of the last great adepts at silent cinema, with a particular skill at falls. 

    Dave O’Brien was in five Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals. In the 1930s he was uncredited in Good News, Madam Satan, Flying High and Student Tour. Two decades later he was Ralph the stage manager in Kiss Me Kate.

  • Abe Lyman

    Abraham Simon (1897-1957) was a drummer who ended up leading his own orchestra. One of his regular singers in the 1920s was Charles Kaley, who starred in Lord Byron of Broadway.

    Lyman was also a songwriter, his biggest hit being the standard ‘I Cried for You’, co-written with Gus Arnheim and with lyrics by Arthur Freed. It was sung by Judy Garland in Babes in Arms.

    Abe Lyman and his Orchestra made their screen debut in Syncopated Symphony (1928), a Vitaphone short. Out of a dozen or so subsequent film appearances, two were in Good News and Madam Satan.

    Lyman gave up music in the late forties to become a restaurateur. 

  • Vera Marshe

    Vera Merle Marsh (1905-84) was a vaudeville performer who hit the big time in 1932 when understudying Adele Astaire in The Band Wagon (1931). Adele Astaire left the show when she got married, leaving Vera Marsh (as she was then known) to dance with brother Fred in the remaining performances. Marshe also performed regularly in a comedy duo with Sterling Holloway.

    Marshe’s screen career was lengthy, though not auspicious. One of her few leads was opposite Eddie Foy Jr in Nearly Naked (1933), a comedy set in a nudist camp.

    A few years earlier she had made a brief appearance in Good News and was ‘Call of the Wild’ in Madam Satan. 

  • Philip Sleeman

    Although born in Camberwell, Philip Sleeman (1891-1953) spent much of his film career playing Arabs and other eastern characters with names like Sheik Abdullah Pasha.

    Sleeman made two appearances in Metro musicals, on both occasions having a good time. He was a patron in a cantina in In Gay Madrid and partying on the zeppelin in Madam Satan.

  • Wallace MacDonald

    Wallace Archibald MacDonald (1891-1978) was a Canadian actor who pursued a successful career in Hollywood from 1912. The quality of his roles deteriorated after the introduction of sound, so he moved into producing in 1937. The films he made were ‘B’ pictures, but one of them was the excellent My Name is Julia Ross (1945), directed by Joseph H Lewis.

    MacDonald the actor cropped up in two MGM musicals. He was Hassan in The Rogue Song and first mate of the zeppelin in Madam Satan.

  • Doris McMahon

    Doris McMahon (1910-61) was a performer whose short, mostly precode, career could largely be described as scantily clad.

    She was in three MGM musicals, Free and Easy, Children of Pleasure and Madam Satan.

  • Mary Carlisle

    Gwendolyn Witter (1914-2018) played bits in three MGM musicals (Montana Moon, Children of Pleasure and Madam Satan) before moving on to more substantial roles at Paramount, often paired with Bing Crosby,

    Carlisle retired in 1943 and lived for another 75 years.

  • Anne Bauchens

    Roseanne Bauchens (1882-1967) spent forty years as the editor-of-choice for Cecil B DeMille’s pictures, from Carmen (1915) to The Ten Commandments (1956). She even appeared alongside DeMille when he did his cameo in Sunset Boulevard (1950). So highly did DeMille value Bauchens that it was stipulated in his contracts that she was to be his editor. She won an Oscar for North West Mounted Police (1940).

    This meant that Bauchens was the cutter on DeMille’s Metro musical, Madam Satan. Earlier that year, she edited Lord Byron of Broadway. 

  • Jack Byron

    Byron Moses Cheek (1895-1991) began his film career with a featured role in Fixed By George (1920), but spent the next thirty-five years mostly in uncredited parts. His final appearance was as a photographer at the start of This Island Earth (1955).

    Byron played five uncredited roles in Metro musicals, in Lord Byron of Broadway, Madam Satan, Hollywood Party, Du Barry Was a Lady and Swing Fever.

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