The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Maytime

  • Sigmund Romberg

    Zsigmund Rosenberg (1887-1951) was a Hungarian-born composer and one of the most celebrated composers of operettas for the American stage.

    Romberg arrived in New York in 1909 and eventually found work playing the piano in cafes and restaurants. He published a few songs and came to the attention of the Shubert brothers, who commissioned him to write material for their Broadway revues. He wrote for a number of shows starring Al Jolson.

    In the 1920s, Romberg wrote three classic operettas in the Viennese style–The Student Prince (1924), The Desert Song (1926) and The New Moon (1928)–working with various lyricists, including Oscar Hammerstein II. He also wrote film scores and adapted his own work for the screen.

    MGM made two versions of New Moon (dropping the definite article) and also adapted Rosalie, Maytime and The Student Prince. He also contributed music to The Night is Young and The Girl of the Golden West.

    In 1954, Romberg was the subject of an MGM musical-biopic, Deep in My Heart, which drew extensively on his back catalogue.

  • James Brock

    James Kendall Brock (1901-63) was a sound recording engineer who spent most of his career at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and worked on sixteen musicals during that time.

    Brock began, under the supervision of Douglas Shearer, on A Lady’s Morals. Here, as for most pictures, he was uncredited.

    Barnes was the sound mixer on The Merry Widow and A Night at the Opera, then sound engineer on The Great Ziegfeld, Maytime, The Girl of the Golden West, Du Barry Was a Lady, On an Island With You, Easter Parade, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, The Band Wagon, Easy to Love, The Student Prince, Interrupted Melody, Merry Andrew and Gigi.

  • Claudine West

    Ivy Claudine Godber (1890-1943) was a British novelist and playwright (to little lasting effect, it would seem), who journeyed to Hollywood in 1929 to write for the talking pictures, where she found considerable success.

    Signed up by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, West contributed to the scripts of some of the studio’s most successful films of the 30s and early 40s. These included Queen Christina (1933, uncredited), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), The Good Earth (1937), Goodbye, Mr Chips (1939), Mrs Miniver and Random Harvest (both 1942). She shared Oscars for the last three pictures.

    West worked on four Metro musicals: A Lady’s Morals and, without credit, Maytime, The Firefly and The Chocolate Soldier.

    Claudine West worked as a codebreaker during the First World War, and it is noticeable that Mrs Miniver and her screenplay for Frank Borzage’s The Mortal Storm (1940) were as fervently anti-Nazi as might be expected from somone with brothers serving in the RAF at the time.

  • Agostino Borgato

    Agostino Borgato (1871-1939) was a theatre actor in Italy and the UK prior to emigrating to America in 1925. He had also appeared in a number of Italian films from 1910 onwards, and directed five in the period 1918-21.

    Borgato made his American screen debut in 1925, eventually appearing in around sixty films. After the introduction of sound, he played a variety of foreigners, though obviously with an emphasis on Italians. He was also cast in foreign-language versions of Hollywood films.

    Borgato acted in seven MGM musicals: A Lady’s Morals, The Cuban Love Song, Broadway Melody of 1936, Rose-Marie, Maytime, The Firefly and Swiss Miss.

  • Paul Porcasi

    Italian actor Paul Porcasi (1879-1946) was a stage performer, both in straight theatre and grand opera. He made a few silent films for East coast companies from 1917 onwards, but began his screen career in earnest when he travelled to Hollywood in 1929 to recreate the role of Nick Verdis in the adaptation of the eponymous Broadway hit, Broadway.

    Porcasi went on to accumulate 140 credits for character roles in just sixteen years. He was the apple vendor who catches Fay Wray stealing in King Kong (1933), and in Casablanca (1942) he played a fez-wearing local who provides the exposition explaining the character Ferrari.

    Most of Porcasi’s parts were Hollywood-exotic, though rarely as left-field as when he played Benito Mussolini in Star Spangled Rhythm (1942).

    Porcasi made appearances in four MGM musicals. A Lady’s Morals and its French-language remake were followed by three pictures starring Jeanette MacDonald, The Cat and the Fiddle, Rose-Marie and Maytime.

  • 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.

  • Claude King

    British actor Claude Ewart King appeared on stage and in silent films in the UK, making his screen debut in 1912. After serving in the First World War, he emigrated to America, successfully continuing to work in both fields.

    King’s most significant American credit was probably as Roger Balfour, whose murder and resurrection were the focus of Tod Browning’s lost film London After Midnight (1927).

    King played Ramon Novarro’s disapproving father in In Gay Madrid, and followed this with uncredited appearances in Maytime and Broadway Serenade. His final MGM musical was the 1940 version of New Moon, where he played Monsieur Dubois. 

  • 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.

  • Ed Ward

    Edward Ward (1896-1971) was a composer and musical director, seven-times Oscar nominated, though with no wins.

    In 1930 he co-wrote a number for Chasing Rainbows, later composed music for Reckless, Maytime and The Firefly.

    Ward also composed music used in the trailer for Broadway Melody of 1936.

  • Herbert Stothart

    Herbert Pope Stothart (1885-1949) is a composer whose name is less familiar today than, say, Dimitri Tiomkin or Max Steiner, but in Hollywood’s golden age he was ranked alongside them for his work at MGM.

    Stothart had a successful career writing stage musicals, most notably Rose-Marie, but was invited to join Metro in 1929. He signed a contract and stayed there for the rest of his life. 

    Scores by Stothart were prominent in some of the studio’s most important pictures of the 1930s and 40s. These included Queen Christina (1933), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Camille (1936), The Good Earth (1937), Pride and Prejudice (1940), Mrs Miniver (1942), They Were Expendable (1945) and The Yearling (1946). In all, Stothart wrote over 100 scores.

    Stothart worked on many of MGM’s musicals. He and Clifford Grey wrote the songs for Devil-May-Care and contributed numbers to Montana Moon, The Rogue Song, In Gay Madrid, The Florodora Girl, Call of the Flesh, New Moon and Madam Satan. 

    He worked with other lyricists on A Lady’s Morals, The Cuban Love Song, Here Comes the Band, Maytime, The Firefly (composing ‘The Donkey Serenade’), Broadway Serenade, Balalaika, The Chocolate Soldier and I Married an Angel.

    Stothart was the musical director on some of these films and also on The Cat and the Fiddle, Lubitsch’s The Merry Widow, The Night is Young, Naughty Marietta, Reckless, San Francisco, Rosalie, The Girl of the Golden West, Sweethearts, The Wizard of Oz (picking up an Oscar), New Moon, Bitter Sweet, Rio Rita, Thousands Cheer, Ziegfeld Girl, Cairo, Thousands Cheer, Kismet, The Unfinished Dance. Musical direction usually involved writing incidental music.

    And, of course, Metro produced two versions of Stothart’s greatest stage success, Rose-Marie, and he worked on the first version.

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial
RSS
Facebook
X (Twitter)
WhatsApp
Copy link
URL has been copied successfully!