The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Films

  • Jackie Coogan

    John Leslie Coogan (1914-84) claimed his place in cinema history at a very young age when he played the eponymous character in Chaplin’s The Kid (1921). It is a performance for the ages, though the downside is that Coogan’s parents exploited his earnings, with subsequent legal action culminating in the California Child Actors Bill (the Coogan Act).

    Unlike many other child actors who have immediate success, Coogan had other substantial parts while young, such as Oliver Twist (1922) and Tom Sawyer (1930), and also continued his career into adulthood. He found renewed fame in the sixties playing Uncle Fester in The Addams Family (1964-66). His final credit, as far removed as possible from The Kid, was in the 1983 slasher movie The Prey.

    Jackie Coogan made two appearances in Metro musicals, and with the longest gap between of any performer. In 1930 he appeared as himself in the Hollywood-set Free and Easy. Thirty-five years later he played a cop in Girl Happy (1965), an Elvis Presley vehicle. Chaplin to Presley is a long journey. 

  • Louise Carver

    Mary Louise Stieger (1869-1956) began her performing career singing grand opera, and made her first screen appearance in 1908, in a very abbreviated version of Macbeth (she played Lady Macbeth).

    She worked more steadily in films from 1916 on, usually in minor roles in comedies, frequently uncredited. One of her credited appearances was as El Brendel’s mother-in-law in The Big Trail (1930).

    In the same year she appeared in Free and Easy, without credit. Her one other musical at MGM was The Devil’s Brother. 

  • Edward Brophy

    Edward Santree Brophy (1895-1960) was one of the most recognizable character actors in Golden Age Hollywood, both physically and vocally. He made his first screen appearance in 1920, but mostly worked as a unit manager or assistant director during the twenties.

    After standing in for an absent actor in Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman (1928) (on which he was working as unit manager), Brophy’s acting career took off, aided by several other supporting roles with Keaton. He specialized in cops, gangsters and sidekicks, notably Goldie Locke in the Falcon series. His distinctive New York accent also won him the voice role of Timothy Q Mouse in Disney’s Dumbo (1941). 

    Brophy made a couple of uncredited appearances in MGM musicals: with Keaton again, in Free and Easy, and in Broadway to Hollywood. He was then credited as Zeke, one of the settlers who tramp-tramp-tramps with Nelson Eddy in Naughty Marietta.

    In keeping with Brophy’s Runyonesque personality, it is fitting that he is alleged to have died while watching a boxing match.

  • Jack Baxley

    Andrew Jackson Baxley (1884-1950) appeared in a handful of excellent films during his career as a character actor, including two with Orson Welles (The Magnificent Amberson in 1942 and The Lady from Shanghai in 1947). But there, as in most of his other pictures, he was uncredited.

    Baxley was in eight Metro musicals: Free and Easy, The Florodora Girl, Dancing Lady, The Great Ziegfeld, San Francisco, Strike Up the Band, Thrill of a Romance and Summer Holiday.

  • William Collier Sr

    William Morenus (1864-1944) ran away from home, aged 11, to join the theatre. He interrupted his successful stage career forty years later, in 1915, to make a few silent shorts (his first role was playing himself in Fatty and the Broadway Stars), but his film career really started in 1929 with the introduction of sound.

    Collier played himself again in Free and Easy, as the MC at the premiere. For a hattrick, he was seen as William Collier Sr once again in Broadway to Hollywood. His non-musical roles offered more variety.

  • Edgard Dearing

    Edgar Dearing (1893-1974) is a familiar face from supporting roles in well over 300 films. He usually portrayed figures of authority, including literally dozens of police officers, a large number of whom were on motorcycles. 

    His most famous motorcycle cop was in Laurel and Hardy’s Two Tars (1928), in which his vehicle is crushed by a steamroller.

    Dearing featured in eleven Metro musicals, with his most notable (and credited) appearance being in the first, Free and Easy. He plays the studio gate guard who pursues Buster Keaton across the soundstages of Culver City.

    The other musicals were Here Comes the Band (though Dearing’s scenes were deleted), Rose-Marie, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, Everybody Sing, Listen Darling, Honolulu, Broadway Melody of 1940, Go West, The Big Store and Grounds for Marriage

  • Fred Niblo

    Frederick Liedtke (1874-1948) was a vaudeville performer and actor, and worked in theatrical management before directing his first film in 1916. A successful collaboration with Douglas Fairbanks, combined with directing Rudolph Valentino in Blood and Sand (1922), gave MGM the confidence to choose Niblo as a safe, if uninspired, replacement for Charles Brabin, who had allowed Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ to spend its $1.25 million budget in two months on unusable footage.

    Fred Niblo never directed a musical, but he did act in one. In Hollywood-set Free and Easy he played himself, a director struggling to get Buster Keaton’s character to memorize, and say correctly, his one line of dialogue.

  • Trixie Friganza

    Actor, poet, suffragist and body-positive activist Delia O’Callaghan (1870-1955) had been a star in vaudeville for many years before making her first film appearance in 1923. She had a featured role in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928), but her best part was probably Ma Plunkett in Free and Easy, which allowed her to demonstrate some of the comedic and musical skills she had honed on the stage.

    The weirdest item in Friganza’s filmography is How to Undress in Front of Your Husband (1937), an ‘educational’ short in which she and Elaine Barrymore demonstrate the right and wrong ways for a woman to get ready for bed. Friganza was 67 at the time, but still game.

  • Free and Easy

    Cast

    Buster KeatonElmer Butts
    Anita PageElvira Plunkett
    Trixie FriganzaMa Plunkett
    Robert MontgomeryLarry Mitchell
    Fred NibloDirector Fred Niblo
    Edgar DearingStudio Gate Guard
    Gwen LeeGwen Lee – Actress in Bedroom Scene
    John MiljanJohn Miljan – Actor in Bedroom Scene
    Lionel BarrymoreLionel Barrymore – Director of Bedroom Scene
    William HainesWilliam Haines – Guest at Premiere
    William Collier Sr.William Collier Sr. – Master of Ceremonies at Premiere
    Dorothy SebastianDorothy Sebastian – Actress in Cave Scene
    Karl DaneKarl Dane – Actor in Cave Scene
    David BurtonDirector DavidBurton
    Jack BaxleyTrain Conductor (uncredited)
    Edward BrophyBenny – The Stage Manager (uncredited)
    Richard CarleEunuch Crowning Elmer (uncredited)
    Louise CarverBig German Woman (uncredited)
    Emile ChautardUndetermined Role (uncredited)
    Jackie CooganJackie Coogan – at Premiere (uncredited)
    Cecil B. DeMilleDirector Cecil B. DeMille (uncredited)
    Drew DemorestLarry’s Valet (uncredited)
    Ann DvorakChorine (uncredited)
    Joseph FarnhamJoseph Farnham (uncredited)
    Pat HarmonDoorman at Premiere (uncredited)
    Lottice HowellVocalist in ‘It Must Be You’ Number (uncredited)
    Arthur LangeArthur Lange – Orchestral Conductor (uncredited)
    Theodore LorchTheodore Lorch – Dynamite Scene Director (uncredited)
    Billy MayBilly May (uncredited)
    Doris McMahonSinger and Dancer in the ‘Free and Easy’ number (uncredited)

  • Free and Easy

    Songs

    It Must Be YouRoy Turk, Fred E AhlertRobert Montgomery, Lottice Howell; Buster Keaton
    Oh King, Oh QueenUnknownBuster Keaton, Trixie Friganza
    The Free and EasyRoy Turk, Fred E AhlertBuster Keaton, Doris McMahon

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