One online source claims that the real name of Jacques Vanaire (1888-1954) was August Jack van Roosendael who went to the United States to breed cattle. Whatever the truth of this, he was certainly a Belgian who spent a dozen or so years playing Frenchmen in Hollywood.
Vanaire appeared in about sixty films, including French language versions of studio films. They included Le spectre vert (1930, apparently the first French film made in Hollywood), Jewel Robbery (1932), Sylvia Scarlett (1936), Jezebel (1938), Ninotchka (1939), Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1941) and Holiday Inn (1942).
He was uncredited in five MGM musicals: The Cat and the Fiddle, The Merry Widow, Everybody Sing, Swiss Miss and I Married an Angel.
Edwin Booth Willis (1893-1963) worked on the design of over 800 MGM pictures, in a career lasting a little over thirty years. He was nominated for Academy Awards 32 times, and won on eight occasions. In broad terms, Willis was an art director, but his specialism was set decoration and the bulk of his credits were in this capacity.
After working as an art director for Tiffany Pictures in the 1920s, Willis worked exclusively for Metro, obtaining three types of credit: Associate Art Director (AAD), Interior Decorations (ID) and Set Decorator (SD). He did early work as SD on Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925).
Willis worked on some of the studio’s major critical and commercial successes, including Queen Christina (1933, for ID), The Thin Man (1934, as AAD), Anna Karenina (1935, as AAD, Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936, as AAD), Camille (1936, as AAD), The Good Earth (1937, as AAD), Captains Courageous (1937, as AAD), Boys’ Town (1938, as AAD), The Women (1939), Ninotchka (1939, as SD), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Waterloo Bridge (1940), Pride and Prejudice (1940), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Blossoms in the Dust (1941, winning an Oscar), Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1941), Woman of the Year (1942), Mrs Miniver (1942), Lassie Come Home (1943), Madame Curie (1943), Gaslight (1944, winning an Oscar), John Ford’s They Were Expendable (1944), The Yearling (1946, winning an Oscar), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), State of the Union (1948), Act of Violence (1948), Intruder in the Dust (1949), Little Women (1949, winning an Oscar), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The Red Badge of Courage (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful 1952, winning an Oscar), Julius Caesar (1953, winning an Oscar), Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956, winning an Oscar), Forbidden Planet (1956) and Lust for Life (1956).
Willis had a particularly extensive collaboration with Vincente Minnelli, decorating most of his musical and non-musical pictures
Edwin B Willis contributed to 153 musicals, around 70 per cent of MGM’s total output. It could be argued that this makes him the single most influential figure on the look of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical. The pictures were:
Edgar Allan Woolf (1881-1943) was a successful screenwriter, dramatist and songwriter whose fame now rests firmly on being co-writer of the screenplay for The Wizard of Oz. He and regular collaborator Florence Ryerson developed a draft produced by Noel Langley, introducing the character of Professor Marvel into the Kansas scenes.
After graduating from university, Woolf was briefly an actor before turning to writing material for vaudeville performers. He also wrote the book for the 1906 musical comedy Mam’zelle Champagne, which became infamous when a performance was interrupted by the murder of Stanford White, as depicted in The Girl on the Red Velvet Swing (1955).
After a quarter of a century writing for Broadway, Woolf, who had previously dabbled in screenwriting for silent films in New York,signed a contract to join MGM. Pictures he worked on included Freaks, Grand Hotel and John Ford’s Flesh (all 1932).
In addition to The Wizard of Oz, Woolf worked on seven other MGM musicals, beginning with Broadway to Hollywood, for which he also wrote a song. Subsequent pictures were Hollywood Party, The Night is Young, Everybody Sing and Ice Follies of 1939. After Oz came Babes in Arms and the posthumously-released Ziegfeld Follies.
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.
German-born Paul Alfred Marquardt (1889-1960) was a composer who worked for many years as an arranger at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and for other studios. Although rarely receiving an onscreen credit, Marquardt made a substantial contribution to MGM’s musical history.
He orchestrated the music for many non-musical films, including Anna Karenina (1935),Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936), Captains Courageous (1937), The Women (1939), Northwest Passage (1940), Rebecca (1940),Frank Borzage’s The Mortal Storm (1940), Woman of the Year (1942), Mrs Miniver (1942), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Red River (1948), The Thing from Another World (1951), High Noon (1952) and Friendly Persuasion (1957). Marquardt also composed original scores in the 1930s, including for The Sign of the Cross and A Farewell to Arms (both 1933). He worked on well over 350 films between 1930 and 1957.
The first of Marquardt’s 39 MGM musicals was The Cuban Love Song, collaborating with Charles Maxwell. This was followed by Dancing Lady, The Merry Widow, The Night is Young, Naughty Marietta, Reckless, Here Comes the Band, A Night at the Opera, The Great Ziegfeld, San Francisco. Maytime, A Day at the Races, The Firefly, Rosalie, Everybody Sing, The Girl of the Golden West, The Great Waltz, Sweethearts (in which he also appeared as a conductor), The Wizard of Oz (credited for orchestral and vocal arrangements), Babes in Arms, At the Circus, Balalaika, New Moon, Hullabaloo, Rio Rita, I Married an Angel, Seven Sweethearts, Presenting Lily Mars, Thousands Cheer, Ziegfeld Follies, Holiday in Mexico, Easter Parade, The Kissing Bandit, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, The Barkeleys of Broadway, That Midnight Kiss, Annie Get Your Gun, Royal Wedding and Show Boat.
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.
French-born Alphonse Martell (1890-1976) had a forty-year career as a character actor in Hollywood, making over 250 films and many television appearances.
In 1933, Martell became a Poverty Row auteur when he wrote and directed Tarnished Youth (also known as Gigolettes of Paris).
Martell played a variety of parts, but his speciality was waiters, in which role he made at least 80 appearances, as well as cropping up many times as a maitre d’.
Alphonse acted in twelve Metro musicals across three decades. A Lady’s Morals was followed by Student Tour, A Night at the Opera, Everybody Sing, Broadway Melody of 1940, I Married an Angel, Bathing Beauty, The Barkeleys of Broadway, Rich, Young and Pretty, Show Boat, Lovely To Look At and I’ll Cry Tomorrow.
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
Harry Rapf (1880-1949) joined MGM on its formation in 1924 and worked as one of the studio’s three production supervisors, under the direction of Irving Thalberg. His son Maurice claimed that Thalberg and his father disliked each other, but then Rapf seemed to struggle to be liked by anyone, especially writers. He is also credited with more Goldwynisms than Sam Goldwyn himself: “I woke up last night with a terrific idea for a movie–but I didn’t like it”. Nonetheless, he was one of the powerful inner circle at Metro.
Rapf did some uncredited work on The Broadway Melody and The Hollywood Revue of 1929, but his first credit on a feature musical was Broadway to Hollywood; it might have been The March of Time if it had not been abandoned. He was uncredited again on Hollywood Party and Student Tour, and next produced Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry and Everybody Sing.
Let Freedom Ring followed, and then Rapf inflicted The Ice Follies of 1939 on Joan Crawford, whom he had brought to Hollywood years earlier and had a relationship with.
Rapf’s final musical effort was on Swing Fever, uncredited.
