The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Films

  • Free and Easy

    Synopsis

    Gopher City, Kansas. Elvira Plunkett, Miss Gopher City, boards a train for Hollywood, a prize from the Chamber of Commerce. She is accompanied by her mother, Ma Plunkett, and her manager, Elmer J Butts. Elmer, who has the tickets, is forced to ride on the caboose until the first stop. Elvira and Ma mistakenly occupy the room of Larry Mitchell, an MGM movie star, who is returning to Hollywood for the opening of his new picture.  Ma and Elvira are reunited with Elmer when the train stops. 

    Elmer (Buster Keaton), stuck in the caboose

    The following week, Larry’s picture premieres at Graumann’s Chinese Theatre, with MGM contract players in attendance. Elmer, Elvira and Mas are there at Larry’s invitation. Elmer has to drive miles to park the car and enters the theatre just as the film is ending. He is mistaken for William Haines and dragged onto the stage. Back at their hotel, Elmer tries and fails to tell Elvira that he loves her. 

    Director Fred Niblo, playing himself, attempts to drum a single line into Elmer’s head: “Oh woe is me, the Quoon has sweened”

    The next day, at the MGM studios, Elvira and Ma watch Larry film a musical number [It Must Be You]. Larry introduces them to director Fred Niblo. Elmer arrives, but cannot get through the studio gates. He finally sneaks in with a crowd of extras. Elmer is chased by a studio guard and accidentally sets off an explosion on an outdoor set, before running onto a sound stage where Lionel Barrymore is directing. He ruins a take, then runs onto the stage where Larry is filming and gets involved in a musical number. 

    The guard catches him, but Larry and Elvira intercede. They persuade Niblo to give Elmer a small part in the picture, but it all goes badly wrong. Larry sends Elmer to the transportation department so he can get a ride home, and Elmer ends up getting a job as a driver. 

    His first job is driving Elvira and Larry home from a party; they do not realize Elmer is the driver. He overhears Larry inviting Elvira to go to his house. While Larry sets about seducing Elvira, Elmer, who thinks Larry is asking her to marry him,rushes to fetch Ma. Elmer and Ma arrive to find Elvira in tears. Elmer tackles Larry and they both end up unconscious. Elvira and Ma leave. Larry is ashamed, and he and Elmer become friends. They discover they used to know each other when Larry was Heiny Schwartz, the butcher’s son, back in Kansas. 

    Larry arranges for Elmer to try another part in the picture, and apologizes to Elvira. Meanwhile, Ma unexpectedly wins a part in the picture. Elmer and Ma perform a comic skit in the musical comedy [Oh King, Oh Queen]. Elvira admires Elmer, but has given up on the idea of acting herself; she never wanted to come to Hollywood, it was all Ma’s idea. She could never be happy making-believe all her life. Elmer tells Elvira that a certain movie star loves her very much and only needs a little encouragement; Elvira thinks he means Larry. 

    Ma Plunkett (Trixie Friganza) and Elmer perform ‘Oh King, Oh Queen’

    In another scene from the musical, Elmer is trying to take the girl back to his home in Brooklyn [The Free And Easy]. Elmer is considered a great comedian and offered a contract by the studio, but he is dismayed to learn that Elvira and Larry are getting married. Elvira watches as the final scene of the picture is filmed [The Free and Easy; It Must Be You], while Elmer gazes sadly at her and despairs.   

  • Carl Pierson

    Carl Leo Pierson (1891-1977) edited several hundred films during his long career, almost all of which would be categorized as ‘B’ pictures. Indicative of this is the fact that his best-known work is Reefer Madness (1936), the ‘notorious exploitation shocker’.

    Only six years earlier, Pierson had been in the refined setting of Metro’s Culver City studio, editing Montana Moon.

  • William Daniels

    William H Daniels (1901-70) was one of the most eminent cinematographers working during Hollywood’s Golden Age. The American Cinematographer website refers to his “inconspicuously perfect execution”. Daniels’s career lasted fifty years, from silent cinema to the self-conscious kookiness of Move (1970).

    Daniels started out as a camera operator at Universal, but followed Erich Von Stroheim to MGM, where he shot Foolish Wives (1922), Greed and The Merry Widow (both 1925). He then, famously, became Greta Garbo’s cinematographer of choice, shooting sixteen of her pictures. 

    Daniels worked with many major directors, including Clarence Brown, Frank Borzage, Raoul Walsh, George Cukor, Anthony Mann, Ida Lupino and Jules Dassin  In 1950 he won an Oscar for Dassin’s The Naked City.

    Daniels was photographing musicals for MGM for over thirty years, starting with Montana Moon in 1930 and ending with Billy Rose’s Jumbo in 1962.  In between came Broadway to Hollywood, Naughty Marietta, Rose-Marie, Broadway Melody of 1938, New Moon, For Me and My Gal and Girl Crazy.

  • Frank Butler

    Frank Russell Butler (1889-1967) was a prominent screenwriter, though his most successful days were at Paramount rather than MGM. 

    Born in  England, Butler started out as an actor at Famous Players-Lasky in 1920, writing his first scenario the following year. His acting career ended with silent cinema, and he directed only one film for Hal Roach: Flying Elephants, with Laurel and Hardy before they had established their comedy duo characters.

    Butler signed on as a writer at Metro in 1929, and worked on four musicals during his time there. He worked with regular collaborator Sylvia Thalberg on Montana Moon and New Moon. He subsequently worked on two scripts for films involving Laurel and Hardy, Babes in Toyland and The Bohemian Girl.

    Returning to Paramount, Butler wrote frequently for Bob Hope, including four of the Road pictures. He was nominated for the Oscar in 1942 for two very different screenplays, Road to Morocco and war drama Wake Island. He won two year later for Going My Way (1944).

  • Sylvia Thalberg

    It is hard to avoid describing Sylvia Thalberg (1907-88) as the younger sister of Irving Thalberg and the wife of MGM producer Lawrence Weingarten, though she would, quite understandably, not have welcomed it. Becoming the youngest writer at Hollywood’s biggest studio in 1927 inevitably attracted accusations of nepotism. This, along with writing a novel, led to her leaving Metro in 1933.

    Having published the novel, Thalberg signed a contract with Paramount in 1935. Her last, uncredited, work on a screenplay was in 1937.

    While at MGM, Thalberg worked on two musicals, Montana Moon and New Moon, both times with regular collaborator Frank Butler. Her brother’s opinion of his sister was, according to Douglas Shearer, “talented but lazy”. But that’s brothers for you.

  • Mal St Clair

    Andrew Sarris summarized the career of Malcolm St Clair (1897-1952) thus: his silent films fizzed and his sound films fizzled, it was as simple and tragic as that.

    St Clair was an important writer-director of the silent era, primarily in the field of comedy. Starting out as an actor-writer-director with Mack Sennett, he went on to co-direct a couple of shorts with Buster Keaton, from whom he learned a great deal about comedy technique. St Clair also made a series of more sophisticated comedies at Paramount in the mid-twenties, including the original adaptation of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928), co-written by Anita Loos herself.

    As Sarris suggests, the quality of St Clair’s pictures declined with the advent of sound, though he continued to work until 1948. One of his early sound films was the MGM musical Montana Moon, which he produced and directed.

    One of St Clair’s more interesting later assignments was directing the silent era comedy sequences for Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), including restaging some of his earlier work.

  • Paul Neal

    Paul Neal (1896-1969) began working in Douglas Shearer’s sound department at MGM in 1929, and went on to record and mix sound for a variety of studios. He worked with a range of important filmmakers, including John Ford (The Whole Town’s Talking, 1935), Frank Borzage (History is Made at Night, 1937), William Wyler (Wuthering Heights, 1939) and Henry Hathaway (The Dark Corner, 1946).

    Neal recorded sound on five Metro musicals: Montana Moon, The Rogue Song, The Cuban Love Song, Dancing Lady and The Cat and the Fiddle.

  • Montana Moon

    Crew

    Malcolm St ClairDirector
    Sylvia ThalbergStory and Continuity
    Frank ButlerStory and Continuity
    Joseph FarnhamDialogue
    Arthur FreedLyricist
    Nacio Herb BrownComposer
    Herbert StothartComposer
    Clifford GreyLyricist
    Malcolm St ClairProducer (uncredited)
    William DanielsCinematographer
    Carl PiersonEditor
    Leslie F WilderEditor (uncredited)
    Cedric GibbonsArt Director
    AdrianCostume Designer
    Douglas ShearerSound Recording Director
    Paul NealSound Recording Engineer (uncredited)

  • Phil Dunham

    British-born Phil Dunham (1885-1972) made his first screen appearance in 1914 and was in over 260 films. He had a parallel career as a screenwriter and worked on some of the ‘race’ pictures that featured all-Black casts. These included The Duke is Tops (1938), in which Lena Horne made her debut, and Gang Smashers (1938), which featured MGM alumna Nina Mae McKinney.

    Dunham had uncredited roles in six Metro musicals, beginning with Montana Moon. The others were It Happened in Brooklyn, The Unfinished Dance, Annie Get Your Gun, Singin’ in the Rain and Easy to Love.   

  • Mary Carlisle

    Gwendolyn Witter (1914-2018) played bits in three MGM musicals (Montana Moon, Children of Pleasure and Madam Satan) before moving on to more substantial roles at Paramount, often paired with Bing Crosby,

    Carlisle retired in 1943 and lived for another 75 years.

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