The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Going Hollywood

  • Wallace Beery

    Wallace Fitzgerald Beery (1885-1949) shares with Edward G Robinson the honour of being the 1930s’ most unlikely-looking star/leading man. Beery was, during his heyday, successfully marketed by MGM as a lovable slob, but seems to have been disliked by virtually everyone he worked with, for his constant upstaging and unpleasant behaviour. Jackie Cooper, who worked with him four times when a child actor, claimed they, after Beery died, they “couldn’t find eight guys to carry his casket”.

    Wallace Beery was that rare entertainer who actually did run away from home to join the circus. A few years later he began stage work, singing in comic operas, and then on Broadway and in summer stock. 

    He made his first film, for Essanay, in 1913, the first of more than 200 appearances. He also directed a number of shorts for Essanay and for Nestor Pictures between 1913 and 1919.

    Beery specialized in playing villains during the 1920s, though one of his more prominent roles was as King Richard in Fairbanks’s Robin Hood (1922).  And in 1925 he was cast as Professor Challenger in First National’s The Lost World. 

    MGM signed Beery as a character actor, but he unexpectedly became a leading man after being teamed with Marie Dressler in Min and Bill (1930). He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for The Champ (1931), tying with Fredric March (who had actually received a higher number of votes). 

    Beery appeared three times in MGM musicals. In A Lady’s Morals, he had a supporting role as P T Barnum. In Going Hollywood, he features in archival footage at a premiere. And in A Date with Judy, his penultimate picture, he was top billed as Elizabeth Taylor’s dad.

  • Bud Geary

    Sigsbee Maine Geary (1898-1946) was a character who made over 250 screen appearances, almost all without credit. His credited roles were at the start of his career, and included Will Scarlett in Robin Hood (1922), where he was billed as Maine Geary.

    During the sound era, Geary played in mostly low-budget pictures and serials (including many westerns), and maintained a parallel career as a stunt performer. Geary was the prison guard escorting James Cagney to the electric chair in Angels with Dirty Faces (1939), and a storm trooper in The Great Dictator (1940).

    Bud Geary had uncredited roles in seven MGM musicals: Madam Satan, Flying High, Stage Mother, Going Hollywood, A Night at the Opera, San Francisco and Ship Ahoy. 

  • Wilbur Mack

    George Frear Runyon (1873-1964) made his stage debut aged 16 and achieved success in vaudeville doing comedy double acts with both his first and second wives. The act can be seen in a Vitaphone short called An Everyday Occurrence (1929).

    Mack made his first film in 1925 and racked up well over 400 appearances. He started out in featured supporting roles, but the quality of his parts declined in the talking era. 

    Nonetheless, Mack made uncredited appearances in no fewer than twenty-two MGM musicals between 1930 and 1956: Love in the Rough, Going Hollywood, A Night at the Opera, San Francisco, A Day at the Races, Broadway Melody of 1938, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, Rio Rita, Thousands Cheer, Broadway Rhythm, Two Girls and a Sailor, Thrill of a Romance, Ziegfeld Follies, The Barkeleys of Broadway, Nancy Goes to Rio, The Great Caruso, The Band Wagon, Kiss Me Kate, Easy to Love, Athena, The Glass Slipper and The Opposite Sex. 

  • Frances Marion

    With a career that lasted more than thirty years, Marion Benson Owens (1888-1973) was undoubtedly one of the most important writers in American cinema, even though her name is not well known today. She worked with Anita Loos on a film for D W Griffith, then became a writer for pioneer filmmaker Lois Weber, developing into one of the most prolific and skilled screenwriters in Hollywood. 

    Some of the major pictures worked on by Marion include: The Big House (1930), for which she won an Academy Award; Garbo’s first talkie, Anna Christie (1931); The Champ (1931), bringing a second Academy Award; Dinner at Eight (1933); Camille (1936); and The Good Earth (1937), uncredited.

    Marion’s extensive work for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer included eight musicals. She co-wrote The Rogue Song, and immediately followed this with an uncredited contribution to In Gay Madrid. She wrote the screenplay for the 1930 version of Good News, and then worked without credit on Going Hollywood, Maytime, Rosalie, Presenting Lily Mars and, her swan song, The Pirate.

  • Jack Yellen

    Jacek Selig Jeleń (1892-1981) was born in what is now Poland but grew up in Buffalo, New York. First working as a reporter while writing songs on the side, he eventually partnered with Milton Ager, though working from time to time with other composers, including Sammy Fain and Lew Pollock. With the latter he wrote the immortal ‘My Yiddishe Momme’ in 1925 for Sophie Tucker.

    Yellen and Ager moved to Hollywood in 1929 and wrote songs for Chasing Rainbows and They Learned About Women. 

    ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’ was first heard in Chasing Rainbows’ before becoming the anthem of Roosevelt’s Democratic Party. It was used as incidental music in many other MGM pictures, including the musicals Going Hollywood,Here Comes The Band,  Broadway Melody of 1938 and The Ice Follies of 1939.  

    Yellen also worked as a screenwriter.

  • Milton Ager

    Like many other Tin Pan Alley alumni, Milton Ager (1893-1979) started out as a song plugger before turning to composition himself. He eventually partnered with lyricist Jack Yellen, with whom he wrote a Broadway show in 1920. One of their biggest hits was ‘Ain’t She Sweet’ in 1927.

    After moving to Hollywood, Ager and Yellen contributed songs to Chasing Rainbows, They Learned About Women. Later on, Ager wrote a number with Joseph McCarthy for Listen, Darling.

    ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’ was first heard in Chasing Rainbows’ before becoming the anthem of Roosevelt’s Democratic Party. It was used as incidental music in many other MGM pictures, including the musicals Going Hollywood,Here Comes The Band,  Broadway Melody of 1938 and Ice Follies of 1939.  

  • Frank Sullivan

    Francis Starbuck Sullivan (1896-1972) worked in silent cinema as both cinematographer and editor, but restricted himself to the latter after 1928. Before retiring in 1962, he worked at various times with Fritz Lang, Josef Von Sternberg, Frank Borzage, George Cukor (Oscar nominated for The Philadelphia Story in 1940), George Stevens and Joseph H Lewis.

    Sullivan’s MGM musical assignments were So This is College, It’s a Great Life, Going Hollywood and Babes in Arms.

    Some sources also assert he contributed as a writer to Ziegfeld Follies, but this may have been the New Yorker  humourist of the same name.

  • Sam McDaniel

    Samuel Rufus McDaniel (1886-1962) started his show business career singing with his three sisters, including the subsequently renowned Hattie. Like most Black actors, his Hollywood career was largely limited to servants and railway porters, though he was notable as Doc (a cook) in Captains Courageous (1937), even if his name was misspelt in the credits.

    McDaniel’s MGM musical appearances were Hallelujah, Going Hollywood, Music for Millions and Living in a Big Way.

  • Robert Montgomery

    The mature roles undertaken by Robert Montgomery (real name Henry) (1904-1981) include the killer Danny in Night Must Fall (1937), a naval commander in They Were Expendable (1945) and Philip Marlowe in The Lady in the Lake (1947). It is easy to forget that he started out playing a jock named Biff in So This is College and predominantly worked in light comedies.

    By no means a gifted singer, Montgomery still performed in three early MGM musicals. As well as So This Is College, he made Free and Easy and Love in the Rough  in quick succession, then called it a day with musicals, apart from archive footage of him at a premiere in Going Hollywood.

    Later in life Montgomery asserted that So This Is College had shown him that making a picture is a “great co-operative project”. This is arguably more true of musicals than any other type of film.

  • Adrian

    The costumes he designed for The Wizard of Oz, which included the iconic ruby slippers, were unquestionably the high point of the career of Adrian Adolph Greenburg (1903-59), known simply as Adrian. But his designs were included in hundreds of MGM features, mostly between 1928 and 1941, including 34 other musicals. These included eleven Jeanette MacDonald pictures: The Cat and the Fiddle, The Merry Widow, Naughty Marietta, Rose-Marie, San Francisco, Maytime, The Firefly, The Girl of the Golden West, Sweethearts, New Moon and Bitter Sweet.

    Adrian was very active during 1929-31, designing for Marianne, Devil-May-Care,The Rogue Song, Montana Moon, In Gay Madrid, Madam Satan, New Moon andThe Cuban Love Song.

    Dancing Lady reunited Adrian with Joan Crawford a year after the white mousseline de soie dress he created for her in Letty Linton (1932) was copied commercially and sold over 500,000 units.

    Going Hollywood, Hollywood Party, Reckless, Broadway Melody of 1936, The Great Ziegfeld, Born to Dance, Broadway Melody of 1938, The Great Waltz and Honolulu led up to the triumph ofThe Wizard of Oz. Adrian then worked on Balalaika, Broadway Melody of 1940, Ziegfeld Girl andThe Chocolate Soldier before leaving MGM in 1941 to open his own fashion business.

    He continued to freelance for a variety of studios and returned to Metro for a final musical, the aptly-named Lovely to Look At.

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