The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Maytime

  • 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.

  • Oliver T Marsh

    Oliver Taylor Marsh (1892-1941) was an MGM company man for most of his career, and arguably achieved his greatest successes with some of the nineteen musicals he photographed, most of which were directed by Robert Z Leonard and W S Van Dyke.

    Marsh’s earliest efforts were Marianne, In Gay Madrid and The Florodora Girl. He protographed the 1930 New Moon and also worked uncredited on the 1940 remake. He returned to the genre after the 1932 hiatus and shot Dancing Lady. The following year he worked with Lubitsch on The Merry Widow and moved immediately from the sublime to the sublimely ridiculous Laurel and Hardy in Babes in Toyland.

    Marsh photographed the Oscar-winning The Great Ziegfeld and the destruction of San Francisco in the film of the same name. Maytime was the first of his five MacDonald-Eddy operettas, and he also worked with MacDonald on The Firefly and with Eddy on Rosalie. The Girl of the Golden West was followed by an Academy Award, with Allen Davey, for their Technicolor work on Sweethearts. 

    Following the ridiculous Ice Follies of 1939, Marsh was with Jeanette MacDonald again for Broadway Serenade. He rounded off his career with Broadway Melody of 1940, Bitter Sweet (again Oscar-nominated for Technicolor) and Lady Be Good, made shortly before his untimely death.

  • Robert Z Leonard

    Robert Zigler Leonard (1889-1968), commonly known as Pop, turned to directing in 1914 after a short career as a leading man, and was a workhorse producer-director at MGM from 1926 until 1957. He worked in pretty much every genre tackled by the studio, and was one of its most prolific directors of musicals, working on fifteen between 1929 and 1952.

    Leonard directed and co-produced Marianne in 1929, one of his many collaborations with Metro’s female stars. A few years later he made In Old Madrid, then became the first person to direct Fred Astaire on film in Dancing Lady.

    The Great Ziegfeld was the second musical to win the Best Picture Oscar, and Leonard was also nominated for his direction.

    Leonard worked on five Jeanette Macdonald-Nelson Eddy vehicles–Naughty Marietta (uncredited), Maytime, Girl of the Golden West, Sweethearts (uncredited) and New Moon–as well as two MacDonald solo pictures, The Firefly and Broadway Serenade.

    Ziegfeld Girl returned him to the world of the Broadway impresario, and, after a gap of eight years, he was reunited with that film’s star, Judy Garland, for In the Good Old Summertime. Leonard then directed a new generation of musical performers in Nancy Goes to Rio (Jane Powell), Duchess of Idaho (Esther Williams) and Grounds for Marriage (Kathryn Grayson.

    Leonard’s final musical outing was Everything I Have is Yours in 1951. 

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