The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Hollywood Party

  • 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

  • Edgar Allan Woolf

    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.

  • Edwin Maxwell

    Irish-born Edwin Maxwell (1886-1948) emigrated to America as a child and made his first stage appearance aged seven. This led to a long career in the theatre and on screen. He made one silent film, but began to concentrate on films in 1929. He never abandoned the stage, however, and toured the country in the 1940s in the road show version of Life With Father.

    Maxwell was a character actor, often credited, sometimes not. Some of his most notable roles included: the Chief of Detectives in Scarface (1932), the chief villain in Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), the first Secretary of War in Duck Soup (1933), corrupt Will Vickery in Fury (1936), John T Stuart in Young Mr Lincoln (1939), the jeweller in Ninotchka (1939) and the inept state psychiatrist in His Girl Friday (1940).

    Edwin Maxwell appeared in four Metro musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Hollywood Party, The Great Ziegfeld and the 1940 version of New Moon, his only credited role.

  • Muriel Evans

    Muriel Adele Evanson (1910-2000) was spotted in Hollywood aged 16 and given her first part in Mademoiselle Modiste (2926). While still at school, she worked for years in bit parts and did some acting for stock companies. 

    In 1929, Evans played the female lead in Joyland, a Lupino Lane comedy short. After a short break from acting to get married and divorced, she worked for MGM and Hal Roach, including a role in Laurel and Hardy’s Pack Up Your Troubles (1932).

    From then on, Evans’s career was a combination of small, often uncredited, appearances in ‘A’ pictures such as Queen Christina (1933) and Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and, much more frequently, leading roles in’B’ westerns. She was a regular leading lady for Buck Jones and for John Wayne during his wilderness years.

    By 1940, Evans had more or less retired from screen acting, though she did continue to do radio work. Much later, she worked as a nurse at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital, where she also lived out her final years.

    Muriel Evans was in three MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Dancing Lady and Hollywood Party.

  • Moe Howard

    Moses Harry Horwitz (1897-1975) was the senior stooge in the Three Stooges, at least after the split with Ted Healy, with whom they had performed as, well, Ted Healy and his Stooges. Moe was always a little less stupid than his two comrades, and meted out punishment when it was (and also when it was not) needed.

    Moe made his earliest films, for Vitagraph, as a teenager in the 1900s, but these were apparently destroyed in a fire. He and his brother Shemp then undertook a variety of show business jobs, until they teamed up with Healy in the early 1920s. This partnership was on and off over the years, and eventually Shemp was replaced by brother Curly. 

    Healy and the stooges appeared in several MGM pictures before Healy struck out on his own again and Larry, Moe and Curly became the Three Stooges. Moe Howard, along with Larry Fine, appeared in all 190 of the Three Stooges’ shorts and all twelve features.

    Moe was in three MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Dancing Lady and Hollywood Party.

  • Curly Howard

    Jerome Lester Horwitz (1903-52) was, by general consent, the greatest of the six performers who, at various times, comprised the Three Stooges. His brother Moe and vaudeville performer Larry Fine were permanent presences in the trio, but Curly, somewhat reluctantly, took over when  original member Shemp Howard decided to leave. 

    Curly Howard had been a watcher-on of his brothers’ performances when they were a part of the act called Ted Healy and his Three Stooges, and was drafted in when Shemp grew tired of working with the difficult Healy. He was required to cut his hair down to the scalp, something he hated for the rest of his life.

    But Curly was considered the most naturally gifted comedian in the act, and introduced many of its best-loved bits of business: the mock-Brooklyng pronunciation (“Soitanly!), the manic laugh (“Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk”) and much of the physical buffoonery, which he could improvise at will.

    Curly appeared in almost 100 Three Stooges shorts between 1933 and 1947, when ill-health, culminating in a stroke, ended his career.

    The Three Stooges never made their own feature film during Curly’s tenure, but he did make brief appearances in three MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Dancing Lady and Hollywood Party.

  • Tenen Holtz

    Alex Elihu Tenenholtz (1887-1971) was a stalwart of Yiddish theatre, both in pre-revolutionary Russia and in his adopted home in the United States. In 1925 he established a Yiddish theatre company with Cecilia Adler, the half-sister of Luther and Stella, and in 1926 was offered a contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 

    In one of his early films, The Mask of Comedy (1926), he appeared with Norma Shearer, and over the next few years he acted with most of Hollywood’s top women actors: Marion Davies (The Cardboard Lover [1928]), Marie Dressler (Bringing Up Father [1928]), Joan Crawford (The Duke Steps Out [1929]), Blanche Sweet (The Woman Racket [1930]), Loretta Young (Three Girls Lost [1931]), Kay Francis (British Agent [1934]) and Carole Lombard (Nothing Sacred [1937]).

    Holtz also appeared uncredited in three MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Hollywood Party and Let Freedom Ring. 

    When Hotz’s career was reduced to Poverty Row productions in the late 30s, he took up chicken farming instead. He returned to acting, predominantly on television, in 1959.

  • Ruth Channing

    Eva Louise Moynahan (1904-92) only appeared in about ten films before giving up her career so she could, as was normal at the time, ‘devote herself to her family’. But she was able to look back on a career that connected her, albeit without credit, with a few memorable pictures.

    Channing had wanted to be a dancer, but an injury put paid to that, and she devoted herself to acting instead. After gaining experience on the stage, she was cast in Working Girls (1931), a minor but engaging picture directed by Dorothy Arzner. 

    In 1934, Channing appeared in two solid MGM classics, The Thin Man and the musical The Merry Widow. She had previously been in two other of the studio’s musicals: Broadway to Hollywood and Hollywood Party.

    By 1935, her career was over.

  • Eddie Quillan

    Edward Quillan (1907-90) was a kind of cutprice forerunner to Mickey Rooney. As a child, he also performed in vaudeville with his parents. He was still a child when he signed a contract to make comedy shorts for Mack Sennett. He was a leading man throughout the 1930s, and moved down to ‘B’ pictures later. His film career lasted a respectable 58 years.

    Quliian’s career took off in 1929, when he starred in The Godless Girl for Cecil B DeMille. He featured prominently in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and was one of Alice Brady’s sons in John Ford’s Young Mr Lincoln (1939). He worked again for Ford in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), as treacherous Connie Rivers.

    Quillan always worked steadily, making his last feature film in 1979, and also making many television appearances. But his last film role of note was as Sandy in Brigadoon.

    He was in two MGM musicals during his 1930s heyday, Broadway to Hollywood and Hollywood Party.

  • Jimmy Durante

    James Francis Durante (1893-1980) had what in Britain might be called a Marmite personality: some people loved him, others hated him. For some, a little went a long way. (Personally, I’m a fan.) But what is undeniable is that Jimmy Durante had the longest career of any performer starring in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals. It began in 1931, ended in 1962, and included eleven pictures across all four decades.

    Durante started out in show business playing ragtime piano, and developed humour out of the musical performance. This led to vaudeville, and then radio, with time spent as part of a three-man comedy act. 

    He made his film debut in 1930, at Paramount’s New York studios. By the following year he was in Hollywood, working for Metro. Jimmy Durante, throughout his career, moved seamlessly between films, Broadway, radio, records and, later on, television. In 1934, for example, he made films in New York because he was appearing on Broadway in Jumbo, which he would film twenty-eight years later.

    Durante was sometimes the leading man in films; for instance, Palooka (1934), where he got top billing over Lupe Velez. More often, however, he was third or fourth billed, providing comic support.

    Durante’s first MGM musical, this time billed below Lupe Velez, was The Cuban Love Song. This was followed by Broadway to Hollywood and Hollywood Party (playing versions of himself), then Student Tour, Two Girls and a Sailor, Music for Millions, Two Sisters from Boston, It Happened in Brooklyn, This Time for Keeps, On an Island with You and, finally, Billy Rose’s Jumbo.

    Durante’s last big screen appearance was in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), but he continued to work on television. 

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