The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Hit the Deck

  • Edwin B Willis

    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:

    Broadway to Hollywood

    Stage Mother (ID)

    Dancing Lady (ID)

    Going Hollywood (ID)

    The Cat and the Fiddle (ID)

    Hollywood Party (ID)

    Student Tour (AAD)

    The Merry Widow (AAD)

    The Night is Young (AAD/SD)

    Naughty Marietta (AAD)

    Reckless (AAD)

    Broadway Melody of 1936 (AAD)

    Here Comes the Band (AAD)

    A Night at the Opera (AAD)

    Rose Marie (AAD)

    The Great Ziegfeld (AAD)

    San Francisco (AAD)

    Born to Dance (AAD)

    Maytime (AAD)

    A Day at the Races (AAD)

    Broadway Melody of 1938 (AAD)

    The Firefly (AAD)

    Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry (AAD)

    Rosalie (AAD)

    Everybody Sing (AAD)

    The Girl of the Golden West (AAD)

    Listen, Darling (AAD)

    The Great Waltz (AAD)

    Sweethearts

    Honolulu

    Let Freedom Ring

    Ice Follies of 1939

    The Wizard of Oz

    Babes in Arms

    At the Circus

    Balalaika

    Broadway Melody of 1940

    New Moon

    Strike Up the Band

    Hullabaloo (Associate Set Decorator, uncredited)

    Bitter Sweet

    Little Nellie Kelly

    Go West

    Free and Easy

    Ziegfeld Girl

    The Big Store

    Lady Be Good

    The Chocolate Soldier

    Smilin’ Through

    Babes on Broadway

    Born to Sing

    Ship Ahoy

    Rio Rita

    I Married an Angel

    Cairo

    Panama Hattie

    For Me and My Gal

    Seven Sweethearts

    Cabin in the Sky

    Presenting Lily Mars

    Du Barry was a Lady

    Best Foot Forward

    Thousands Cheer

    Swing Fever

    Girl Crazy

    Broadway Rhythm

    Two Girls and a Sailor

    Meet the People

    Bathing Beauty

    Meet Me in St Louis

    Music for Millions

    Thrill of a Romance

    Anchors Aweigh

    Ziegfeld Follies

    Yolanda and the Thief

    The Harvey Girls

    Two Sister from Boston

    Easy to Wed

    Holiday in Mexico

    No Leave, No Love

    Till the Clouds Roll By

    It Happened in Brooklyn

    Living in a Big Way

    Fiesta

    The Unfinished Dance

    Good News

    Summer Holiday

    On an Island With You

    The Pirate

    Easter Parade

    A Date with Judy

    Luxury Liner

    The Kissing Bandit

    Words and Music

    Take Me Out to the Ball Game

    The Barkeleys of Broadway

    Neptune’s Daughter

    In the Good Old Summertime

    That Midnight Kiss

    On the Town

    Nancy Goes to Rio

    Annie Get Your Gun

    Three Little Words

    Duchess of Idaho

    The Toast of New Orleans

    Summer Stock

    Two Weeks with Love

    Pagan Love Song

    Grounds for Marriage

    Royal Wedding

    The Great Caruso

    Excuse My Dust

    Rich, Young and Pretty

    Show Boat

    An American in Paris (winning an Oscar)

    The Strip

    Texas Carnival

    The Belle of New York

    Singin’ in the Rain

    Skirts Ahoy

    Lovely to Look At

    The Merry Widow

    Because You’re Mine

    Everything I Have is Yours

    Lili

    I Love Melvin

    Small Town Girl

    Dangerous When Wet

    The Band Wagon

    Latin Lovers

    The Affairs of Dobie Gillis

    Torch Song

    Kiss Me Kate

    Easy to  Love

    Rose Marie

    The Student Prince

    Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

    Brigadoon

    Athena 

    Deep in My Heart

    Jupiter’s Darling

    Hit the Deck

    The Glass Slipper

    Interrupted Melody

    Love Me or Leave Me

    It’s Always Fair Weather

    Kismet

    Meet Me in Las Vegas

    High Society

    The Opposite Sex

    Ten Thousand Bedrooms

    Silk Stockings

    Les Girls

  • Billy Rose

    William Samuel Rosenberg (1899-1966) became familiar to audiences in 1975 when he was played by James Caan in Funny Lady, a film about Fanny Brice, to whom Rose was married for nine years. In the mid-20th century, however, he was one of the biggest impresarios on Broadway.

    Rose started out as a stenographer, playing an important role during the First World War as a senior clerk at the War Industries Board. After the war, he started writing song lyrics, and eventually became the co-writer of many standards, including ‘It’s Only a Paper Moon’, ‘Don’t Bring Lulu’ and ‘Me and My Shadow’. It should be noted, however, that Rose was an enormously successful self-publicist, and doubt has been cast on the extent of his contribution in song-writing partnerships.

    Inevitably, given his ego, Rose moved into Broadway producing. One of his biggest hits was Jumbo (1936), which was filmed by MGM in 1962. Rose played no part in the production of the film, but a contractual requirement meant that it was titled Billy Rose’s Jumbo.

    As an impresario, Rose was known for glitz and vulgarity, but also for giving an early opportunity as choreographer to Gene Kelly, and for staging Carmen Jones in 1943 with an all-Black cast.

    Numbers co-written by Billy Rose were used in The Prodigal and Hit the Deck. 

  • Edward Eliscu

    Edward Eliscu (1902-98) was multi-talented, an actor, writer, producer and lyricist.

    After graduating from university, Eliscu became an actor, securing roles on Broadway. He began writing songs, and in 1929 teamed up with Vincent Youmans and Billy Rose to write the musical Great Day. This included the number ‘Without a Song’, which was sung beautifully by Lawrence Tibbett in MGM’s The Prodigal. 

    Eliscu also began contributing songs to film scores, after being invited to Hollywood by Nacio Herb Brown. He scored a hit with the first big Astaire and Rogers number, ‘Carioca’ in Flying Down to Rio. He also co-wrote a number in Hit the Deck.

    Eliscu’s stage revue Meet the People was a big success in Hollywood in 1939, “an exhortation to Hollywood to come out of its cocoon and realize what was going on in the rest of the world”. None of his work was retained in MGM’s 1944 film of the same name.

    Eliscu’s career in Hollywood ended when he was one of the many people named to HUAC by Martin Berkeley. But he continued to work productively back in New York. He served for five years as president of the Songwriters Guild of America.

  • Vincent Youmans

    Vincent Millie Youmans (1898-1946) was a prolific Tin Pan Alley composer. Not a lot of his work is remembered today, but he did write a handful of hardy perennials.

    At the level of individual songs, Youmans wrote the music for ‘I Want to Be Happy’ and ‘Tea for Two’. Of his stage musicals, No, No, Nanette (1927) has endured.

    Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer did not use a lot of Youman’s work, but he did compose the beautiful ‘Without a Song’ for The Prodigal. His 1927 Broadway hit Hit the Deck was filmed by MGM in 1955, with many of Youmans’s numbers retained.

    Probably the most frequently revived screen musical with Youmans’s music is RKO’s proto-Astaire/Rogers picture Flying Down to Rio (1933).

  • Clifford Grey

    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. 

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