The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: The Big Store

  • Kay Deslys

    Kathleen Marjorie Herbert (1899-1974) began performing in British music halls before moving to the United States, where she first worked in vaudeville and the legitimate theatre.

    Deslys made her screen debut in Tarnish (1924), and notched up around 75 appearances over the next twenty-eight years. She was in Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925), establishing her frequent persona as the heroine’s more rotund friend. She later became a regular at the Hal Roach Studios. She played a variety of roles in six Laurel and Hardy pictures, including as Ollie’s wife in Should Married Men Go Home? (1928). She also made regular appearances with Charley Chase.

    Deslys later appeared, uncredited, in You Can’t Take It With You (1938), Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941). playing it straight as a jail matron in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), and Pat and Mike (1952, her last film).

    Kay Deslys acted, without credit, in three MGM musicals: The Devil’s Brother (with Laurel and Hardy), The Big Store and Singin’ in the Rain.

  • Henry Armetta

    Enrico Armetta (1888-1945) left Sicily aged 14, as a stowaway on a boat bound for New York. He managed to avoid being sent back, and was working as a valet at the Lambs Club when actor Raymond Hitchcock got him a job in the chorus of a musical.

    Armetta worked for stock companies and on Broadway for a few years, and also appeared in a handful of films for New York-based companies. In 1920, he made his way to Hollywood, and established a career playing stereotypical Italians in pictures such as Fantômas (1920) and A Girl in Every Port (1928).

    Armetta’s career as a supporting player really took off with the coming of sound, when there was a demand for actors who could do ethnic accents, and he became a familiar face in about 150 films as various Luigis, Giuseppes and Tonys. He had featured roles in two of John M Stahl’s greatest melodramas, Imitation of Life (1934) and Magnificent Obsession (1935), while also playing uncredited barbers, waiters and street vendors.

    Henry Armetta had a featured role in The Devil’s Brother, and appeared in a further five MGM musicals: The Cat and the Fiddle (as the taxi driver), The Merry Widow (uncredited as the lascivious Turk at Maxim’s), Everybody Sing, The Big Store and Anchors Aweigh.  

  • Sandy Roth

    Sandy Roth

    Sanford Lewton Rothenberg (1887-1943) started out as an actor in some of Harold Lloyd’s Lonesome Luke pictures, and had a very minor career in occasional roles until 1933. 

    Roth arguably made a much greater mark as an assistant director at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, working on a number of the studio’s musicals. He first carried out that role in 1922, and went on to support Buster Keaton and Charles Reisner on Steamboat Bill Jr (1928). He was also AD on Frank Borzage’s The Mortal Storm (1940).

    Roth’s Metro musicals were The Hollywood Revue of 1929, Flying High, Student Tour, Everybody Sing, Go West, The Big Store, This Time for Keeps, Thousands Cheer and Bathing Beauty.

  • Lee Kohlmar

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    German-born Lee Kohlmar (1873-1946) started out in live theatre and made his screen debut in 1915. He worked throughout the silent period, occasionally as director. 

    Most of Kohlmar’s sound roles were uncredited, and these included Children of Pleasure  and, his final film, The Big Store.

  • 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

  • Conrad A Nervig

    Conrad Albinus Nervig (1889-1980) started out as a lab assistant at Goldwyn Pictures in 1922 and merged with it into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer a couple of years later. He remained under contract for thirty years. 

    Nervig goes down in history as the recipient of the first Academy Award for editing, which he won for Eskimo (1933). He won again in 1950 for his work on King Solomon’s Mines. 

    Musicals edited by Nervig were Devil-May-Care, Call of the Flesh, The Night is Young, Maytime, Honolulu, Hullabaloo, The Big Store, I Married an Angel, No Leave, No Love, The Merry Widow (1952 version) and The Affairs of Dobie Gillis.

    Nervig did military service before joining the film industry, and served briefly on USS Cyclops immediately before its mysterious disappearance with all hands in 1918.

  • Charles F Reisner

    Charles Francis Reisner (1887-1962) was an actor and director who might best be described as ‘competent’. Yet he managed, in both careers, to be associated with some very impressive projects. Reisner acted with Chaplin in A Dog’s Life (1918), The Kid (1921) and The Pilgrim (1923), and also worked for him as a gag writer. And he was the named director on Keaton’s masterpiece, Steamboat Bill Jr (1928). In fact, it was Reisner who came up with the original story idea, and who was literally on his knees praying while Keaton performed the stunt where the house fell down around him.

    Reisner’s career at MGM was less prestigious, though he was considered a capable pair of hands. This is why he was brought in to rescue The Hollywood Revue of 1929 when Christy Cabanne’s work was judged to be lacking by Irving Thalberg. 

    From there Reisner moved straight on to directing Chasing Rainbows, to which he also contributed dialogue. He then directed Love in the Rough and was working on The March of time when it was abandoned. His next completed musical was Flying High.

    Reisner did uncredited writing for Hollywood Party and was one of its eight directors. He directed Student Tour, then took a break from musicals after a busy couple of years. He returned in 1941 to direct The Big Store, the last and least of the Marx Brothers’ films for Metro.

    In 1943 Reisner made Swing Fever, and ended his career in MGM musicals with Meet the People.

  • Nacio Herb Brown

    Nacio Herb Brown (1896-1964) was hired by MGM in 1928 to write scores for sound pictures; it was at a point when synchronized music was still perceived by many as the most promising feature of the new system. 

    Brown was paired with lyricist Arthur Freed to produce songs for the studio’s first all-talking picture, The Broadway Melody. Their partnership continued for many years as the contributed numbers to The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (in which he and Freed appeared onscreen), Marianne, Lord Byron of Broadway, Montana Moon, Dancing Lady, Going Hollywood, Student Tour, Broadway Melody of 1936, A Night at the Opera, San Francisco, Broadway Melody of 1938, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, Ice Follies of 1939, Babes in Arms, Two Girls on Broadway, Hullabaloo, Little Nellie Kelly, Lady Be Good, Born to Sing, Presenting Lily Mars, Meet Me in St Louis, Three Little Words, Pagan Love Song, Singin’ in the Rain and The Affairs of Dobie Gillies.

    Brown also worked with other lyricists on It’s a Great Life, Ziegfeld Girl, The Big Store, Swing Fever, Holiday in Mexico, On an Island With You, The Kissing Bandit and Seven Hills of Rome.

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