The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Good News (1930)

  • Good News (1930)

    Good News is the archetypal college musical with the outcome of a football game at its heart. There were many such in the early 1930s, including MGM’s own So This Is College, but Good News was the one based on a big Broadway hit. Indeed, it is the first MGM musical to be unequivocally based on a stage show; earlier efforts such as The Rogue Song bore little resemblance to their alleged theatrical progenitors.

    Beef (Delmer Daves), Bobbie (Gus Shy), Babe (Bessie Love) and a 1920s jalopy

    The studio brought out a couple of the original production stars to recreate their roles, but it would have been better if they had looked elsewhere. Mary Lawlor, as heroine Connie, is totally lacking in showbiz pizzazz, her whole performance as drab and uninteresting as Connie’s life is meant to be at the start of the picture.

    Gus Shy as Bobbie, on the other hand, takes pizzazz to the level of irritation, indulging in far too much overly-theatrical schtick. He is most bearable when teamed with the always-reliable Bessie Love, making the last of her four MGM musicals.

    Bessie Love’s dancing has come a long way since The Broadway Melody as she and Gus Shy declare ‘Gee, I’d Like to Make You Happy’

    For once, no histrionics are required from Love and she makes the most of her comedy role as the vampish Babe, always appearing to be making up her dialogue as she goes along. She also has an excellent dance number with Shy, ‘Gee, But I’d Like to Make You Happy’.

    Stanley Smith replaced the previously-announced Charles Kaley as Tom Marlowe. He is not as wooden as Kaley would have been, but is otherwise dull. The break-out star of Good News is Dorothy McNulty (later known as Penny Singleton), who gives everything to ‘The Varsity Drag’ and ‘Good News’. The former, in particular, represents a new high for MGM in the staging of showstopper numbers, with its athletic dancing and use of animation and special effects. 

    Flo (Dorothy McNulty) is down on her heels and up on her toes, doing the Varsity Drag

    Good News suffered at the time from being released as the public was becoming bored with musicals, and several songs were filmed but not included in the final cut: fifteen songs were announced, but only eight made it.

    Sadly, we can no longer view Good News in its entirety as the last reel is missing. But I think we all know that a happy ending with a final clinch are inevitable. 

  • Larry Shay

    Lawrence Fredrick Schaetzlein (1897-1988) was a prolific songwriter with one immortal classic to his name. In 1928 he co-authored that paean to optimism, ‘When You’re Smiling (the Whole World Smiles With You)’.

    Shortly before MGM appointed him Music Director, Shay co-wrote ‘Gee, But I’d Like to Make You Happy’ for the 1930 Good News.

  • George Waggner

    George Waggner (1894-1984), or george waGGner as he sometimes, and inexplicably, chose to credit himself, is best known as a writer, director and producer. 

    Wagner produced and directed Universal’s The Wolf Man (1941), establishing himself in the horror pantheon. He also produced Cobra Woman (1944), the once-in-a-lifetime joining of Robert Siodmak with Maria Montez.

    Much earlier in life, Waggoner worked as an actor (up against Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik (1921) and songwriter.

    In the latter capacity, Waggoner teamed with J Russel Robinson to write ‘I Feel Pessimistic’ for the 1930 version of Good News.

  • J Russel Robinson

    Joseph Russel Robinson (1892-1963) was a member of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and a notable jazz composer. He co-wrote the standard ‘Singin the Blues’, which was recorded by Bix Beiderbecke.

    In the 1930s Robinson turned to songwriting, including for the screen. The title song for Portrait of Jennie’ (1948), with lyrics by Gordon Burge, became a hit record for Nat ‘King’ Cole.

    Robinson co-wrote ‘I Feel Pessimistic’ for the 1930 version of Good News. 

  • Ray Henderson

    Raymond Brost (1896-1970) was a Tin Pan Alley composer whose many hits included ‘Has Anybody Seen My Girl’ and Shirley Temple’s ‘Animal Crackers in My Soup’.

    Perhaps the highpoint of Brown’s career was the six years he spent from 1925 in partnership with Buddy G DeSylva and Lew Brown. Their Broadway show Good News (1927) was filmed twice by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The pictures retained some, though not all, of the original show’s numbers, including ‘The Varsity Drag’. 

  • Lew Brown

    Louis Brownstein (1893-1958) became a Tin Pan Alley songwriter in 1912, but his career reached a new level when he partnered with Buddy G DeSylva and Ray Henderson in 1925. They wrote many standards, including ‘Sonny Boy’ (for Al Jolson) and ‘Sunny Side Up’, as well as the Broadway hit Good News (1927).

    Several of the original numbers from Good News were retained in Metro’s two film versions, including ‘The Best Things in Life are Free’.

  • Buddy G DeSylva

    George Gard DeSylva (1895-1950) had two distinct careers, which overlapped. He was originally a Tinpan Alley songwriter, teaming up in 1925 with Lew Brown and Ray Henderson to become one of the most successful songwriting partnerships of the time. They wrote many hit songs, including the standards ‘April Showers’, ‘Button Up Your Overcoat’ and ‘Look for the Silver Lining’. They also scored a major success with the musical Good News (1927) and other Broadway shows. 

    At the same time, DeSylva was a Hollywood producer, initially with Fox and later, and most significantly, at Paramount, where he oversaw, amongst others, some of Preston Sturges’s best films.

    When MGM made its two versions of Good News, they retained some, but by no means all, of the songs from the original show.

  • Edgar J MacGregor

    Edgar J MacGregor (1878-1957) was an actor who became a highly-successful theatre director, usually on Broadway, from 1910 through to the late 1940s. His successes included Good News (1927), Funny Face (1927), DuBarry Was a Lady (1939), Panama Hattie (1939) and several editions of Earl Carroll’s Vanities.

    MacGregor’s screen career was less auspicious. He travelled to Hollywood in 1930 to work on the screen version of Good News, co-directing with Nick Grinde. He never directed another film.

  • Nick Grinde

    Harry A Grinde (1893-1979) was a vaudeville performer who found work as a director at MGM in the late twenties. From then until 1945 he directed around sixty generally low budget features for a variety of studios.

    Early on, Metro occasionally used Grinde to work in partnership with tyro directors who had joined the studio directly from theatre work. For example, he co-directed The Bishop Murder Case (1930) with Broadway director David Burton.

    Another such was Good News, which Grinde co-directed with Edgar J MacGregor, director of the original broadway production.

    Grinde did not direct any additional musicals at Metro, being far more at home with westerns and thrillers, though he did, out of left field, write the screenplay for Babes in Toyland.

  • Good News

    The Crew

    Nick GrindeDirector
    Edgar J MacGregorDirector (as Stage Director)
    Frances MarionScenario
    Joseph FarnhamDialogue
    Buddy G DeSylvaLyricist
    Ray HendersonComposer
    Lew BrownLyricist
    Nacio Herb BrownSongwriter
    Arthur FreedSongwriter
    J Russel RobinsonSongwriter
    George WaggnerSongwriter
    Larry ShaySongwriter
    George WardSongwriter
    Reggie MontgomerySongwriter
    Percy HilburnCinematographer
    William LeVanwayEditor
    Cedric GibbonsArt Director
    Douglas ShearerSound Recording Director
    Russell FranksSound Recording Engineer (uncredited)
    David CoxCostume Design
    Sammy LeeChoreography
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