The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Films

  • Dave O’Brien

    For someone who died aged 57, David Poole Fronabarger (1912-69) produced an astonishing body of work; he must have been one of the hardest-working people in Hollywood. He appeared in around 240 feature films and shorts. He contributed to at least 50 screenplays and won an Emmy in 1961 for writing for The Red Skelton Show. And he directed about 65 shorts. He even did some stunt work at the beginning of his career.

    O’Brien is probably best known as the lead performer in many Pete Smith Specialties, the series of comedy shorts produced by Pete Smith for MGM from 1935 to 1955. He also directed some of them as David Barclay. The acting in the Pete Smith films was always silent, with Smith himself providing narration. O’Brien was one of the last great adepts at silent cinema, with a particular skill at falls. 

    Dave O’Brien was in five Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals. In the 1930s he was uncredited in Good News, Madam Satan, Flying High and Student Tour. Two decades later he was Ralph the stage manager in Kiss Me Kate.

  • Al Norman

    Samuel Newman (1906-99) was, as the nickname ‘Rubber Legs’ might suggest, a dancer of the eccentric variety, in the manner of Ray Bolger.

    Al Norman found his greatest success in vaudeville and nightclubs, and occasionally in Broadway revues, but he also made a number of film appearances, usually as a speciality performer. The sheer weirdness of his act can be seen at its best in Universal’s King of Jazz (1930), but soon after that he turned up at MGM in Good News.

  • Buster Crabbe

    Clarence Linden Crabbe II (1908-83) was an Olympic swimmer who used his good looks and athletic prowess to maintain a long career as a minor film star. 

    Most of Crabbe’s films were ‘B’ westerns, but he was also the only actor to play Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and Tarzan. The first of these kept his name alive for many years thanks to repeated Saturday morning television re-runs.

    Buster Crabbe’s first screen appearance was as a student in Good News.

  • Abe Lyman

    Abraham Simon (1897-1957) was a drummer who ended up leading his own orchestra. One of his regular singers in the 1920s was Charles Kaley, who starred in Lord Byron of Broadway.

    Lyman was also a songwriter, his biggest hit being the standard ‘I Cried for You’, co-written with Gus Arnheim and with lyrics by Arthur Freed. It was sung by Judy Garland in Babes in Arms.

    Abe Lyman and his Orchestra made their screen debut in Syncopated Symphony (1928), a Vitaphone short. Out of a dozen or so subsequent film appearances, two were in Good News and Madam Satan.

    Lyman gave up music in the late forties to become a restaurateur. 

  • Harry Earles

    Kurt Fritz Schneider (1902-85) was a member of the Doll Family, four siblings all affected by dwarfism. For more than forty years, starting in the 1910s, they toured the United States, appearing in circuses and sideshows. 

    Earles made a number of films, most memorably a starring role in Todd Browning’s Freaks (1932). His sister Daisy was also in Freaks, and they both appeared as Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz. 

    Earles had earlier made a brief appearance in Good News.

  • Vera Marshe

    Vera Merle Marsh (1905-84) was a vaudeville performer who hit the big time in 1932 when understudying Adele Astaire in The Band Wagon (1931). Adele Astaire left the show when she got married, leaving Vera Marsh (as she was then known) to dance with brother Fred in the remaining performances. Marshe also performed regularly in a comedy duo with Sterling Holloway.

    Marshe’s screen career was lengthy, though not auspicious. One of her few leads was opposite Eddie Foy Jr in Nearly Naked (1933), a comedy set in a nudist camp.

    A few years earlier she had made a brief appearance in Good News and was ‘Call of the Wild’ in Madam Satan. 

  • Helyn Virgil

    What  can be said about Helyn Virgil (19??-??)? She spelled her name funny. She had no known relationship with the Roman poet. And she made a credited appearance in the 1930 Good News as ‘Girl’.

    That’s it.

  • Penny Singleton

    Mariana Dorothy McNulty (1908-2003) found fame at a very young age. As ‘Little Dorothy’, she sang in silent picture houses, then toured in vaudeville as part of the Kiddie Kabaret.

    Later in life she became a labour activist, twice elected resident of the American Guild of Variety Artists and, in 1967, leading a successful month-long strike by performers at the Radio City Music Hall.

    In between all this was an acting career irrevocably associated with the Blondie and Dagwood films produced by Columbia. She and Arthur Lake appeared in all 28 pictures between 1938 and 1950. 

    Earlier in her career, when she was still known as Dorothy McNulty, she performed the first screen version of ‘The Varsity Drag’ in Good News, and immediately afterward had a featured role in Love in the Rough.

  • Frank McGlynn

    Frank McGlynn (1866-1951) played Abraham Lincoln in at least twelve feature films and shorts. And in the Sonja Henie musical Second Fiddle, and in a picture called Are We Civilized?, he played actors playing Abraham Lincoln. It was always useful in Hollywood to have a speciality.

    McGlynn had trained for the bar, but took up acting in 1896, playing supporting roles with a variety of stock companies. He appeared in a short film as early as 1910, and played Lincoln for the first time in 1915. This led to him being cast in the lead in the Broadway production of Abraham Lincoln (1918).

    McGlynn amassed over 140 screen credits, three of which were MGM musicals. After the featured role of Professor Kenyon in Good News, he appeared without credit in Broadway Melody of 1938 and Girl of the Golden West.

  • Billy Taft

    Information is scarce about the actor Billy Taft (1908-95). His film career appears to have lasted from 1929 to 1940, and to have consisted of around fourteen credits. Two of these were MGM musicals: Good News and Swiss Miss. 

    Billy Taft’s most enduring performance was probably duetting with Ruby Keeler in the ‘Sittin’ on the Backyard Fence’ number in Footlight Parade (1933).

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