Category: Films

Irving Thalberg

The Boy Wonder Irving Thalberg (1899-1937) was the creative engine room of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from the studio’s creation in 1925 until his early death. In twelve years he supervised over 400 pictures, including virtually all of its prestige productions, without ever choosing to take an on-screen credit.

Thalberg had some level of involvement with most of MGM’s musical output from The Broadway Melody in 1929 until A Day at the Races, on which he was working at the time of his death; it was he who brought the Marx Brothers to Metro, reviving their flagging careers at the cost of comedic purity.

Thalberg effectively launched the musical genre as the driving force behind The Broadway Melody. He showed his inclination for experimentation-within-limits by okaying Hallelujah even though King Vidor warned him it would make no money.

Thalberg brought Grace Moore and Lawrence Tibbet from the Metropolitan Opera and gifted stardom to Jeanette MacDonald. He persuaded Luise Rainer to take the small role in The Great Ziegfeld that won her an Oscar.

Although business-oriented, Thalberg was prepared to devote time and money to producing high-quality work, and he made profits as a result. His impact on the early development of the MGM musical is impossible to quantify, but a philosophy of excellence can certainly be seen in the work that followed, especially in the golden age of the early 1950s.

January 7, 2026
Ransom Rideout

In 1928 Ransom Rideout (1889-1975) had some success in New York with Goin’ Home, a melodrama about miscegenation in which, regrettably, the central character was played by an actor in blackface.This may or may not have qualified him to contribute dialogue to Hallelujah, which stands as his sole contribution to the cinema.

January 7, 2026
Richard Schayer

Richard Schayer (1880-1956) helped to write over 100 films during a forty-year career, and perhaps staked his claim to a place on the lower levels of immortality by co-writing the treatment that became Universal’s The Mummy (1932).

While at MGM, Schayer worked on four of the studio’s early musicals. He wrote the treatment for Hallelujah, developing King Vidor’s basic idea. In the same year he adapted a French play from 1851 into the Roman Novarro swashbuckler Devil-May-Care. He then displayed his versatility by scripting Free and Easy for Buster Keaton and turning a recent Crane Wilbur play into Children of Pleasure.

By 1932, Schayer was a member of the Laemmles’ team at Universal.

January 7, 2026
Wanda Tuchock

Writing the scenario forHallelujah was the only MGM musical credit for Wanda Tuchock (1898-1985), though she did script Youth Will Be Served (1940) for 20th Century-Fox. Tuchock worked in most of the other major genres during her career, and was also one of only three women credited as a Hollywood director during the 1930s (the others being Dorothy Arzner and the less well-known Dorothy Davenport).

January 6, 2026
King Vidor

King Vidor (1894-1982) was celebrated throughout his career at MGM and later as a maker of ‘prestige’ pictures. This applies to Hallelujah, his only musical and a film celebrated (and criticized) for many things other than its musical performances. Hallelujah stands alongside The Crowd (1928), The Champ (1931), The Citadel (1938) and War and Peace (1956) as a film for which Vidor was nominated for the Best Director Oscar (he never won).

January 6, 2026

Hallelujah

Principal Crew

King Vidor	Director
Wanda Tuchock	Scenario
Richard Schayer	Treatment
Ransom Rideout	Dialogue
King Vidor	Story
Marian Ainslee	Titles: in sound version, uncredited
King Vidor	Producer
Irving Thalberg	Producer (uncredited)
Gordon Avil	Cinematographer
Hugh Wynn	Editor
Anton Stevenson	Editor (uncredited)
Cedric Gibbons	Art Director
Douglas Shearer	Sound
Irving Berlin	Songwriter/composer
Eva Jessye	Musical Director (uncredited)
Henrietta Frazer	Wardrobe
Robert A Golden	Assistant Director

January 6, 2026

Victoria Spivey

It is typical of the unfathomable decisions sometimes made by MGM in its early musicals that it cast Victoria Spivey (1906-76) in a non-singing role in Hallelujah!. In her day job Spivey was a notable blues singer and songwriter who went on to work with artists ranging from John Lee Hooker to Bob Dylan, and whose personality bore no resemblance to Missy Rose. Hallelujah! was her only acting credit.

January 5, 2026
Harry Gray

Very little is known about Harry Gray. It is probable he was born in the 1840s and lived the first decades of his life as an enslaved person. He was apparently working as a porter when he was cast as the patriarch in Hallelujah, joining a number of other non-professional actors. Gray has two subsequent credits, but remains something of a mystery.

January 5, 2026
William Fountaine

Hallelujah was the last of the handful of films made by William Fountaine (1897-1945), starting with the lead in Oscar Micheaux’s Uncle Jasper’s Will (1922). He was forthright about his refusal, along with other performers, to speak the racist language originally included in Hallelujah!‘s screenplay.

January 4, 2026
Nina Mae McKinney

Nina Mae McKinney (1913-67) was one of the many Black performers–talented and beautiful–whose careers were stifled by Hollywood racism.

After relocating from South Carolina to New York, McKinney was only 15 when she was cast in the all-Black Broadway musical revue Blackbirds of 1928. Her performance was noted by King Vidor, who subsequently cast her as the female lead in Hallelujah. She replaced his original choice, who was rejected by Irving Thalberg as lacking sex appeal.

McKinney received glowing reviews for her performance as Chick and it secured her a five-year contract with MGM, but no further roles of substance. She made an uncredited appearance as a singer in They Learned About Women, and eventually walked out on MGM. Richard Watts of The New York Herald Tribune wrote at the time that her “exile from the cinema is the result entirely of narrow and intolerant racial matters.”

She made only a few films thereafter, perhaps most notably as Paul Robeson’s queen in Sanders of the River (1935) and as Rozelia in Pinky (1949).

January 4, 2026