Ernst Hersh Klapholz (1881?-1965) was a composer and musical arranger, and also business partner of Arthur Lange. His sole MGM musical was as one of the arrangers on The Hollywood Revue of 1929.
Category: Films
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Ernest Klapholz
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Ray Heindorf
Raymond John Heindorf (1908-1980) was a composer and musical arranger who worked on The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and soon after moved tothe music department at Warner Bros, where he spent most of his long career.
A Jazz aficionado, Heindorf was known for his willingness to use Black musicians in what was largely a segregated industry.
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Joe Goodwin
Joe Goodwin (1889-1943) was the lyricist who gave the world ‘When You’re Smiling’. To offset that, he also perpetrated ‘Your Mother and Mine’.
The last-named song was one of the songs he produced in collaboration with Gus Edwards for The Hollywood Revue of 1929.
Goodwin went on to write ‘Love Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues’ with Louis Alter for Chasing Rainbows.
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Gus Edwards
Gustave Schmelowsky (1878-1945) grew up in Poland, was a song plugger in New York, performed in vaudeville and eventually became a songwriter, despite the fact that he could not read music. He was also known as the Star Maker, because he launched Sally Rand, Ray Bolger, George Jessel, the Duncan Sisters and may others on successful careers via his revues. He even gave Groucho Marx an early job as one of Gus Edwards’s Postal Telegraph Boys.
Edwards composed the majority of the songs used in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, and also performed a novelty item alongside Cliff Edwards and Charles King, and appeared solo singing ‘Lon Chaney’s Gonna Get You If You Don’t Watch Out’. Edwards also participated in The March of Time.
Edwards’s most famous number was ‘By the Light of the Silvery Moon,’ with lyrics by Edward Madden.
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Jo Trent
Joseph H Trent (1892-1954) was a lyricist who worked with notable jazz composers, including James P Johnson.
With Louis Alter, Trent contributed ‘Gotta Feelin’ for You’ to The Hollywood Revue of 1929.
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Louis Alter
Louis Alter (1902-1980) was a pianist and composer perhaps most celebrated for his piece ‘Manhattan Serenade’. He regularly contributed to films, although only once to an MGM musical, writing ‘Gotta Feelin’ for You’ with Jo Trent for The Hollywood Revue of 1929. He was twice nominated for the Oscar for Best Song.
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Andy Rice
Andy Rice (1881-1963) apparently started out as a monologist in vaudeville before developing into a song and sketch writer. He wrote two editions of George White’s Scandals whilst continuing to perform himself.
Rice contributed songs to The Hollywood Revue of 1929, Children of Pleasure, The Florodora Girl and the unfinished The March of Time.
Thanks to Travalanche for the biographical information.
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Richard Day
Canadian Richard Day (1896-1972) was one of the great Hollywood art directors, and one of the few to work steadily as a freelancer for much of his career. He won seven Oscars and was nominated a further thirteen times. Day worked with Erich Von Stroheim on a number of his best silent films, and developed a commitment to realism in design that set him apart from many of his peers.
For a period after 1929 Day worked in partnership with Cedric Gibbons at Metro, including designing most of the settings for The Hollywood Revue of 1929.
By the end of his career Day had worked on well over 300 films and with most of the leading directors, including Ford, Hawks, Vidor, Lang, Wellman and Preminger, and with Jean Renoir on Swamp Water (1941).
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Joe Rapf
Joseph Jefferson Rapf (1883-1939) was a younger brother of Harry Rapf. He apparently worked on costume design for The Hollywood Revue of 1929.
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Erté
Romain de Tirtoff (1892-1990) was a Russian-born French exponent of Art Deco in many forms, including clothing, interior decoration and jewellery. He also worked in the theatre, designing costumes and sets for, for example, the Folies Bergère in Paris and George White’s Scandals on Broadway.
Erté first worked for MGM in 1924-25, designing gowns and costumes for The Mystic and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (both 1925). He continued in films, mostly in costume design, throughout the 1920s, culminating in costumes and sets for The Hollywood Revue of 1929. See, for example, the art deco arch in the opening number.
Erté was still working at the age of 95, two years before his death.
