The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: The Night is Young

  • Oscar Hammerstein II

    Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein (1895-1960) was one of the biggest names in 20th-century musicals, both literally and metaphorically.

    Hammerstein and two of his main collaborators, Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers, were key to the development of the integrated musical, whereby songs are woven into the plot rather than being simply musical interpolations. In the world of film musicals, there were attempts to achieve this as early as 1930, but it is undeniable that Hammerstein’s work as lyricist, librettist and producer were hugely influential.

    Oscar Hammerstein’s career can be divided into distinct halves. During the first part, he partnered with a variety of composers, including Kern (Show Boat, 1927), Rudolf Friml (Rose-Marie, 1924) and Sigmund Romberg (The Desert Song, 1926). Then, in 1943, he joined with Rodgers to produce Oklahoma!. This was the first in a series of seminal musicals, including Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949) and The Sound of Music (1959), most of which were filmed (with varying degrees of success). 

    MGM did not adapt any of Hammerstein’s work with Rodgers, but did film The New Moon (written in 1927 with Romberg) twice, as it did with Rose-Marie. The studio made one of the several versions of Show Boat.  Hammerstein songs were also featured in The Night is Young , The Great Waltz and the Romberg biopic Deep in My Heart.

  • Sigmund Romberg

    Zsigmund Rosenberg (1887-1951) was a Hungarian-born composer and one of the most celebrated composers of operettas for the American stage.

    Romberg arrived in New York in 1909 and eventually found work playing the piano in cafes and restaurants. He published a few songs and came to the attention of the Shubert brothers, who commissioned him to write material for their Broadway revues. He wrote for a number of shows starring Al Jolson.

    In the 1920s, Romberg wrote three classic operettas in the Viennese style–The Student Prince (1924), The Desert Song (1926) and The New Moon (1928)–working with various lyricists, including Oscar Hammerstein II. He also wrote film scores and adapted his own work for the screen.

    MGM made two versions of New Moon (dropping the definite article) and also adapted Rosalie, Maytime and The Student Prince. He also contributed music to The Night is Young and The Girl of the Golden West.

    In 1954, Romberg was the subject of an MGM musical-biopic, Deep in My Heart, which drew extensively on his back catalogue.

  • Max Barwyn

    Max Barwyn (1884-1955) made his first screen appearance in 1926 and went on to over 70 more. He was one of those supporting players who looked like he belonged in the service industries, and played waiters more than two dozen times. From left-fields, just for a change, he was cast as Napoleon Bonaparte in Brigadier Gerard (1927), which may have equipped him for his multiple roles as a maitre d’. 

    Barwyn acted in nine MGM musicals, starting with the 1930 New Moon.  He was then in Dancing Lady, The Night is Young, Broadway Melody of 1936, Rose-Marie, Sweethearts, Bitter Sweet, The Chocolate Soldier (a rare credited role) and Rhapsody.

  • Albert Conti

    Albert Maroica Blasius Franz Maria, Ritter Conti von Cedassamare (1887-1967) came from Austrian aristocracy and was born and raised in an area that is now in Italy.

    After serving in the First World War, Conti emigrated to America in 1919. He worked in a series of manual jobs, then responded to an advertisement by Erich Von Stroheim, who was seeking an Austrian military officer to act as technical adviser on The Merry-Go-Round (1923). He was given a part in the film, and this launched his career as an actor who would make well over 100 films.

    Conti worked on several other Von Stroheim pictures, and otherwise played character roles, frequently continental and often military, as in Morocco (1930) and The Black Cat (1934). He was often uncredited.

    Conti played the Empire Officer in Madam Satan and appeared without credit in The Night is Young.

  • 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.

  • Herbert Stothart

    Herbert Pope Stothart (1885-1949) is a composer whose name is less familiar today than, say, Dimitri Tiomkin or Max Steiner, but in Hollywood’s golden age he was ranked alongside them for his work at MGM.

    Stothart had a successful career writing stage musicals, most notably Rose-Marie, but was invited to join Metro in 1929. He signed a contract and stayed there for the rest of his life. 

    Scores by Stothart were prominent in some of the studio’s most important pictures of the 1930s and 40s. These included Queen Christina (1933), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Camille (1936), The Good Earth (1937), Pride and Prejudice (1940), Mrs Miniver (1942), They Were Expendable (1945) and The Yearling (1946). In all, Stothart wrote over 100 scores.

    Stothart worked on many of MGM’s musicals. He and Clifford Grey wrote the songs for Devil-May-Care and contributed numbers to Montana Moon, The Rogue Song, In Gay Madrid, The Florodora Girl, Call of the Flesh, New Moon and Madam Satan. 

    He worked with other lyricists on A Lady’s Morals, The Cuban Love Song, Here Comes the Band, Maytime, The Firefly (composing ‘The Donkey Serenade’), Broadway Serenade, Balalaika, The Chocolate Soldier and I Married an Angel.

    Stothart was the musical director on some of these films and also on The Cat and the Fiddle, Lubitsch’s The Merry Widow, The Night is Young, Naughty Marietta, Reckless, San Francisco, Rosalie, The Girl of the Golden West, Sweethearts, The Wizard of Oz (picking up an Oscar), New Moon, Bitter Sweet, Rio Rita, Thousands Cheer, Ziegfeld Girl, Cairo, Thousands Cheer, Kismet, The Unfinished Dance. Musical direction usually involved writing incidental music.

    And, of course, Metro produced two versions of Stothart’s greatest stage success, Rose-Marie, and he worked on the first version.

  • Ramon Novarro

    José Ramón Gil Samaniego (1899-1968) was a Mexican actor who became a star of silent cinema after his villainous turn in The Prisoner of Zenda (1922) and a phenomenon with his heroics in Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925). Handsome, even beautiful, he combined the roles of swashbuckler with the tag of ‘Latin Lover,’ especially following the death of Rudolph Valentino. 

    Novarro had a light but effective speaking voice and his transition to talking pictures was straightforward. Much earlier, he had worked as a singer, and MGM came up with the idea of having him record a theme song (‘Pagan Love Song’) for The Pagan (1929). The public liked it, so it was no great leap to cast Novarro in a musical feature, Devil-May-Care, where he was able to combine his newly-revealed skill with some of his practised swordplay. 

    Novarro went on to star in four more musicals: In Gay Madrid, Call of the Flesh, The Cat and the Fiddle (partnered with Jeanette MacDonald, and the best of his musical outings) and The Night is Young. He also co-wrote one of the songs in Call of the Flesh and directed the French and Spanish versions of the picture.

    Homophobia brought Novarro’s MGM stardom to an end. His sexuality was no secret in the business and the subject of public speculation. His contract was terminated when he refused to enter into a ‘lavender marriage’. He continued to work elsewhere as a supporting player, until his tragic and violent death during a robbery in 1968.

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