Supporting player Phyllis Crane (1914-82) was just 15 when she played a college student in So This Is College and definitely too young to have been involved in the craziness of Madam Satan. She made her last appearance at the grand old age of 23.
Category: Films
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Phyllis Crane
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Oscar Rudolph
Oscar Rudolph (1911-91) was a bit-part actor who went on to a career as a prolific director of television episodes.
After appearing as a freshman who loses his trousers in So This Is College, he played another student in In Gay Madrid, a cook in It’s a Great Life and a peasant in Maytime.
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The Hollywood Revue of 1929
Synopsis
Three young, blonde triplets hold a sign introducing the first scene: Palace of Minstrel. A minstrel chorus sings and dances [Bones and Tambourines]. Jack Benny enters and introduces Conrad Nagel as the Interlocutor. Nagel starts to introduce Charles King, but is interrupted by King himself. To apologize, King asks the chorus to name the screen’s greatest lover. Before they can answer, Cliff Edwards enters and declares it is he. Edwards plays his ukulele and sings scat. Benny re-enters and takes away Nagel, leaving Edwards to discover he has no audience. He exits and the curtain closes.
Cliff Edwards, aka Ukulele Ike Nagel introduces Joan Crawford, who sings and dances, supported by the Biltmore Quartet [Gotta Feelin’ for You].
Charles King and a dancing chorus performs [Minstrel Days]. June Purcell sings [Low Down Rhythm] and Joyce Murray performs a toe dance.
Conrad Nagel returns, with Charles King as Mr Bones and Cliff Edwards as Mr Tambo. After an exchange with Edwards, Nagel introduces King. [Your Mother and Mine]. King tells Nagel that, as a screen lover, he will now need to use words and music, and reminds him of the serenade to Anita Page in The Broadway Melody. He tells Nagel he is handicapped. Anita Page enters and Nagel serenades her [You Were Meant For Me]. King is astonished, shrinks to a tiny figure and storms off.
Jack Benny makes a risqué remark to Ann Dvorak, who slaps him. Benny introduces Cliff Edwards, who demands a bigger build up. [Nobody But You]. The chorus dances.
Benny returns and plays his violin. He is interrupted by Karl Dane and George K Arthur, dressed as sailors and laying a red carpet. Benny resumes [Your Mother and Mine], so Dane and Arthur roll up the carpet and carry it and Benny away. Benny returns with a cello, but the curtain closes.
Benny and William Haines exchange comic remarks while Haines destroys Benny’s tuxedo. Gwen Lee enters: Haines whispers to her and she slaps Benny. Haimes and Lee leave and a disheveled Benny takes a miniature Bessie Love from his pocket. She grows to her normal size. Bessie Love talks about the demands of talking pictures, then sings and dances with chorus boys. [I Never Knew I Could Do a Thing Like That].
Bessie Love: I Never Could Do a Thing Like That Jack Benny enters wearing a suit of armour. The curtains open and Conrad Nagel introduces Queen Marie Dressler and Princess Polly Moran. Dressler slaps Benny but hurts her hand on the armour. Dressler sings. [For I’m the Queen].
Marie Dressler is the Queen Jack Benny enters in his normal clothes. While he is making an introduction, the curtains open to reveal Laurel and Hardy setting up a magic act. Benny leaves and Laurel and Hardy perform a skit which ends with Hardy and Benny covered in cake. Benny introduces Marion Davies, who enters in miniature through the legs of a line of soldiers. She is in military uniform, and sings and dances. [Tommy Atkins on Parade].
The Brox Sisters enter dressed as toy soldiers and sing while the chorus marches and dances. [Strike Up the Band]. The curtain closes for the end of the first half.
The orchestra tunes up and plays a medley. The triplets display another sign: Tableau of Jewels. James Burroughs sings offscreen [Tableau of Jewels], while a tableau displays costumes by Erté. scantily-clad Carla Laemmle dances. The scene changes to the undersea world of Neptune, leading to a skit called ‘Dance of the Sea,’ with Buster Keaton in drag.
Jack Benny introduces Gus Edwards, who sings [Lon Chaney Will Get You If You Don’t Watch Out] and is joined by dancing ghouls. Benny then introduces an acrobatic dance number with the Natova company, [Turkish Adagio] which he interrupts occasionally with commentary.
Benny introduces Norma Shearer and John Gilbert in the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. Director Lionel Barrymore receives a letter from the New York office saying Romeo and Juliet is old fashioned and they want it modernized. Shearer and Gilbert perform the scene again using modern slang.
The triplets hold a sign introducing ‘Singing [sic] in the Rain’. Cliff Edwards sings to his own ukulele accompaniment [Singin’ in the Rain] and the chorus dances in the rain. Then the Brox Sisters take up the song.
The Brox Sisters singin’ in the rain Jack Benny introduces Gus Edwards, Charles King and ‘Ukulele Ike’. [Charlie, Ike and Gus]. The triplets introduce ‘The Italian Trio’ and Charlie, Ike and Gus reappear as Italians (with Cliff Edwards in drag). [The Italian Trio].
Benny introduces five lovely girls: Bessie Love, Marie Dressler and Polly Moran. [Marie, Polly and Bess]. In the middle of this skit, Moran breaks away. [Sonny Boy]. Marie, Polly, Bess, Charlie, Ike and Gus sing. [The Fountain in the Park].
Charles King sings to Myrtle McLaughlin. [Orange Blossom Time]. The Albertin Rasch troupe dances.
Finally, most of the cast gathers for a reprise. [Singin’ in the Rain].
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David Cox
Little seems to be known about David Cox (1906-19??), who designed costumes at MGM before moving to work with Dolly Tree at Fox in 1932. He is, nonetheless, a featured artist at the Victoria & Albert Museum, where a costume designed for Bessie Love to wear in The Broadway Melody is among the exhibits.
Cox also designed for The Hollywood Revue of 1929, It’s a Great Life, Chasing Rainbows, Call of the Flesh, Good News and Love in the Rough.
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Arthur Lange
Arthur Lange (1889-1956) was a prolific composer of songs, scores and incidental music for dozens of films at a variety of studios.
At MGM Lange began by composing and arranging music for the Buster Keaton ‘underwater’ sequence in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, where he also appeared onscreen conducting the orchestra. Lange also made an appearance as himself in Free and Easy. He was subsequently the musical arranger onSo This Is College, and composed and arranged forThe Great Ziegfeld and Let Freedom Ring.
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Charlotte Greenwood
Frances Charlotte Greenwood (1890-1977) had aspirations to be a serious actor, but found that her destiny was to make people laugh. This was, in part, owing to her very long legs and the things she could do with them while dancing; as she said herself, “I’m the only woman alive who can kick a giraffe in the eye”.
Greenwood appeared in many film musicals, though only three at MGM. In 1931 she was Pansy Potts, Bert Lahr’s love interest, in Flying High. There followed a gap of 22 years until Dangerous When Wet, and then, just three years later, The Opposite Sex.
Charlotte Greenwood also notched up one entry as a Metro songwriter when she and her husband Martin Broones contributed ‘Campus Capers’ to So This Is College.
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Fred Fisher
Originally Alfred Breitenbach, German-born Fred Fisher (1875-1942) wrote the popular ‘Peg O’My Heart’ and many other Irish-themed ballads. He also co-wrote ‘Whispering Grass’ with his equally-successful daughter, Doris Fisher.
Songs by Fisher, usually written in collaboration with others, are featured in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, So This Is College, Chasing Rainbows, Children of Pleasure, For Me and My Gal and In the Good Old Summertime. He also contributed a number to The March of Time.
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Martin Broones
Martin Broones (1892-1971) was a prolific, if little-remembered, composer who worked in theatre, radio, television and moving pictures. He was also the creator and first director of MGM’s music department.
Broones only composed songs for two of Metro’s earliest musicals: The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and So This is College. For the latter, he collaborated on the number ‘Campus Capers’ with his wife, the actor and eccentric dancer Charlotte Greenwood.
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Henrietta Frazer
Henrietta Frazer (1889-1966, née Henriette Gant) is not one of the big names of costume design. The only reference to her in Dressed A Century of Hollywood Costume Design is for helping Marion Davies spend $52,000 a year on clothes for her pictures.
It is a reasonable assumption that Frazer designed Davies’s military-style costume for The Hollywood Revue of 1929. Her other musical credits are for Hallelujah and So This Is College.
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Leonard Smith
Leonard Smith (1894-1947) photographed his first film in 1915 and spent most of his career at Metro. He was nominated four times for an Academy Award, finally winning for The Yearling shortly before his death. Smith was best known for his Technicolor work, but most of the thirteen musicals he worked on were in black and white.
In the 1929-30 period Smith shot So This Is College, They Learned About Women and Free and Easy.
After a seven-year break he worked uncredited on A Day at the Races and Rosalie, photographed Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, then shot the Marx Brothers next two pictures, At the Circus and Go West.
There followed Ship Ahoy and uncredited work on I Married an Angel and Seven Sweethearts. Finally, Smith photographed Best Foot Forward and Broadway Rhythm in colour.
