The Numbers
| Just for Today | Herbert Stothart, Clifford Grey | Ramon Novarro |
| Dance | Unknown | Ramon Novarro, Renée Adorée |
| Not Quite Good Enough For Me | Herbert Stothart, Clifford Grey | Ramon Novarro |
| Cavatina from L’Elisir d’Amore | Donizetti, Romani | Ramon Novarro, Ernest Torrence, Mathilde Comont |
| Questa o quella from Rigoletto | Verdi, Piave | Ramon Novarro |
| Lonely | Herbert Stothart, Ramon Novarro, Clifford Grey | Ramon Novarro |
| Ah! fuyez, douce image from Manon | Massenet, Meilhac, Gille | Ramon Novarro |
Leo Herbert White (1873-1948) was born in Germany, raised in England and emigrated to America. His stage career had begun in the UK, but he made his first screen appearance in 1911.
White worked as an actor and occasional director in silent comedy, including many collaborations with Charles Chaplin, with whom he worked for the last time on The Great Dictator (1940).
By the end of his career White had contributed to almost 500 films, eight of which were MGM musicals (all uncredited). He started out in The Florodora Girl, followed by Call of the Flesh, The Devil’s Brother, Broadway to Hollywood, Stage Mother and The Cat and the Fiddle. He was one of the hirsute Russian aviators in A Night at the Opera, and bowed out with Broadway Melody of 1938.
John Colton (1887-1946) was a successful playwright who was enticed to Hollywood by MGM in 1927, to write titles for some of their last silent films. This was not taxing work, with Colton’s name in the credits being more valuable than anything he wrote.
The Broadway hit Rain, co-written by Colton with Clemence Randolph, was filmed by MGM in 1928 as Sadie Thompson, but the author was not invited to work on it. Other films based on Colton’s plays were The Shanghai Gesture (1941) and Hitchcock’s Under Capricorn (1949).
Colton contributed to conventional screenplays after the introduction of sound, including for three MGM musicals: The Rogue Song, Call of the Flesh and The Cuban Love Song. All three lent themselves to the interest in exotic settings that Colton demonstrated in his plays.
Gertrude Lamson (1874-1965) was a stage actress with an international reputation who specialized in tragic roles, including Hedda Gabler and Camille.
O’Neil began her film career in 1913, playing Mercedes in a version of The Count of Monte Cristo co-directed by Edwin S Porter. With her stage background, she made an easy transition to sound films, and was fourth-billed in Academy Award-winning Cimarron (1931).
She also featured in three Metro musicals, playing Princess Alexandra in the lost The Rogue Song, wealthy Mrs Vibart (the hero’s mother) in The Florodora Girl and the Mother Superior in Call of the Flesh.
Nance O’Neil attracted press attention in the 1900s when she formed an intimate friendship with Lizzie Borden. That salacious interest is maintained on the internet today.
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.
Merritt Brindley Edward Gerstad (1900-74) started out as a cinematographer at Universal, where he worked with Tod Browning and Lon Chaney. He followed Chaney to MGM, where they collaborated on Mockery and London After Midnight (both 1927). He later reunited with Browning on Freaks (1932).
Gerstad shot a number of musicals for Metro before moving on to Warner Bros. They were: Devil-May-Care, Call of the Flesh, Flying High and, as a big finish, A Night at the Opera.
Percival Davis (1887-1941) was a prolific lyricist and librettist for the West End and Broadway. His many stage musicals and revues included The Bing Boys are Here and Mr Cinders (1928), from which ‘If You were the Only Girl in the World’ and ‘Spread a Little Happiness’ became standards.
Like many other songwriters, Grey was invited to Hollywood in 1929, where he worked on the early sound masterpiece, The Love Parade (1929) at Paramount.
At MGM he wrote regularly with Herbert Stothart in the 1930s, contributing numbers to Devil-May-Care, Montana Moon, The Rogue Song, In Gay Madrid, The Florodora Girl, Call of the Flesh, New Moon and Madam Satan.
Grey’s lyrics for ‘Like Monday Follows Sunday’ featured in Everything I Have is Yours and Hit the Deck was based on his stage musical from 1927.
As late as 2010 The Guardian was still perpetuating the myth that Clifford Grey was also an Olympic bobsleigher and winner of a gold medal. This arises from a confusion with athlete Clifford ‘Tippi’ Gray (1892-1968), who also dabbled in songwriting.
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.
Dorothy Jordan (1906-88) made her film debut in Black Magic (1929), one of the many experiences stage actors and dancers to find employment in Hollywood with the advent of sound. After playing Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew (1929), she starred opposite Ramon Novarro in his talking debut in Devil-May-Care.
Jordan and Novarro were teamed again in two more musicals, In Gay Madrid and Call of the Flesh. She was also female lead to Robert Montgomery in Love in the Rough.
Jordan retired in 1933 after marrying producer Merian C Cooper, returning later only in occasional supporting roles. She made notable appearances in two of John Ford’s greatest films: The Sun Shines Bright (1953), where she was the sex worker whose life and death are central to two plot lines; and as John Wayne’s sister-in-law, who meets a tragic end, in The Searchers (1956)
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.
