George Davis (1889-1965) was a prolific small-part actor for almost forty years. He appeared without credit in It’s a Great Life, played a groom in Devil-May-Care, was uncredited again in They Learned About Women, The Cuban Love Song and The Cat and the Fiddle. He appeared in The Merry Widow and played the same part, without credit, in the French version.
David showed up uncredited in Maytime, I Married an Angel, For Me and My Gal, Two Sisters from Boston, Words and Music, The Toast of New Orleans, Rich, Young and Pretty, An American in Paris, Lovely To Look At, the second version of The Merry Widow, Lili, Easy to Love, Interrupted Melody and Les Girls.
That’s twenty Metro musicals plus a French copy, with a single credited appearance.
Oscar C Apfel (1878-1938) was a successful Broadway director before moving into film direction. He made well over 100 films, and supervised Cecil B DeMille during his early days in Hollywood. He also pursued a secondary career as an actor, and that was what he continued after the introduction of sound.
He became a busy supporting player, and his MGM musical parts included Major Russart in Marianne and Mr Mandelbaum in It’s a Great Life. Both were uncredited.
Rosetta Duncan (1894-1959) and Vivian Duncan (1897-1986) did not come from a show business background, but became one of America’s top vaudeville acts. They got their start in 1911 as part of Gus Edwards’s Kiddies’ Revue and matured into a music-with-comedy act, writing much of their own material.
The sisters’ most popular routine was the unashamedly racist ‘Eva and Topsy,’ in which they transformed Harriet Beechers Stowe’s tragic characters into blackface comedy. Rosetta was always the comedian, while Vivian’s persona was the naive innocent.
It is said that the Mahoney sisters in The Broadway Melody were based on the Duncans, and the ebullient Hank and demure Queenie have both physical and temperamental similarities with Rosetta and Vivian. But the Mahoneys are self-evidently a second-rate act that belongs in the boondocks, while the Duncans were at the top of their profession, headlining on Broadway and in the West End.
Following the triumph of The Broadway Melody, Irving Thalberg decided to attempt to repeat the success by hiring the Duncans themselves, starring them in It’s a Great Life. Where Hank had lost Eddie to her sister, in the new version it is Casey who competes with Jimmy for the love of her sister, in a manner that is not entirely non-creepy.
The film succeeded with Duncan fans, but was no great money earner. After working on the abandoned The March of Time, the Duncan Sisters’ film career was over.
Babe and Casey Hogan are sisters who work in the sheet music department at the Mandelbaum & Weill store. Babe is sweet and naive, while Casey is a wisecracking broad who gets into trouble mocking the official store song [Smile, Smile, Smile] and is gently admonished by the manager, David Parker. Beneath all her joking, Casey feels responsible for Babe and is desperate to hold on to her job.
Babe is in love with their colleague, James “Jimmy” Dean, who has been given the job of organizing the store’s annual show. Jimmy asks Babe to marry him, but they are scared to tell Casey, who does not like Jimmy. On the night of the show, which opens with a fashion show What the Debutante Must Do], Jimmy sends the models on in the wrong order, ruining the number. Then he sends on a singer who does not know his words [I’m the Son of A–]. Jimmy and Babe perform together [Won’t You be My Lady Love], but Babe is too nervous to sing properly, so Casey turns it into a comic number. Casey and Babe perform an impromptu number [I’m Following You].
Babe (vivian Duncan) and Casey (Rosetta Duncan) perform their love duet while Jimmy (Lawrence Gray plays the piano
Mr Mandelbaum and Mr Weill, the store owners, arrive late and see the finale [Smile, Smile, Smile] and are horrified when Casey turns the store song into a joke. They fire Casey, Babe and Jimmy. David walks Casey home and tries to ask her to marry him, but she fails to understand. Babe and Jimmy arrive with Jimmy’s friend Benny Friedman. Benny is a vaudeville booker and offers Casey, Babe and Jimmy a job.
At a rehearsal studio, Casey and Jimmy argue constantly as they develop an act. [I’m Following You; It’s An Old Spanish Custom; Tell Me Dirty Maiden]. They are a hit, but Jimmy is annoyed that Casey cuts his piano solo. In their dressing room, Babe angrily tells Casey to stop picking on Jimmy.
At the next theatre, Babe and Jimmy are late for rehearsal. David comes to see Casey. His second attempt at proposing is interrupted when Babe and Jimmy arrive. Casey fires Jimmy from the act, but Babe says she is going too; she and Jimmy are married. Casey is devastated and breaks up the act. Casey sends David away, because she has to get used to being alone now [Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella on a Rainy Day].
Casey realizes how much her sister loves Jimmy
Jimmy announces a new act, Dean and Hogan, but they flop and are fired after one performance. They vow to stick together [I’m Following You]. Casey, meanwhile, is performing a single act, but Benny tells her it is not as good without her sister.
Benny arranges for her to meet Babe and Jimmy at his office, where they all pretend to be doing better than they actually are. Casey is concerned that Babe is coughing and instructs Jimmy how to look after her.
Casey continues to play low-class venues [Ach, du lieber Augustin]. Babe becomes ill and, in her delirium, calls out for Casey, who hears her voice while performing elsewhere in the city.
David calls in to see Casey and finally tells her he loves her. He is leaving that evening to run the Mandelbaum and Weill store in Paris, and he asks Casey to marry him. She says yes, but just then Jimmy arrives. He tells Casey that Babe is very ill and needs her. Jimmy knows that Babe loves him, but that he will never mean as much to her as Casey does. Casey tells David that she loves him, but she has to stay with Babe and look after her.
Casey goes to Babe, who is still delirious, imagining they are performing at the Palace [Hoosier Hop; I’m Sailing on a Sunbeam!]. Babe recovers when she sees Casey and learns that she and Jimmy will work together again without arguing.
Oscar Rudolph (1911-91) was a bit-part actor who went on to a career as a prolific director of television episodes.
After appearing as a freshman who loses his trousers in So This Is College, he played another student in In Gay Madrid, a cook in It’s a Great Life and a peasant in Maytime.
Little seems to be known about David Cox (1906-19??), who designed costumes at MGM before moving to work with Dolly Tree at Fox in 1932. He is, nonetheless, a featured artist at the Victoria & Albert Museum, where a costume designed for Bessie Love to wear in The Broadway Melody is among the exhibits.
Cox also designed for The Hollywood Revue of 1929, It’s a Great Life, Chasing Rainbows, Call of the Flesh, Good News and Love in the Rough.
Albert Isaac Boasberg (1891-1937) played a number of roles in his short career but was essentially a gag writer. In that capacity he worked with many of the major vaudeville and radio stars of the day, including Jack Benny, Bob Hope, and Burns and Allen. In Hollywood, he also wrote for and, on occasion, directed dozens of shorts and features, most notably Battling Butler (1926) and The General (1927) with Buster Keaton.
Boasberg contributed to seven MGM musicals. He co-wrote So This Is College, (and also composed song lyrics, then worked on It’s a Great Life and Chasing Rainbows. Free and Easy reunited him, in less auspicious circumstances, with Keaton, and he provided additional dialogue for The Florodora Girl.
Back in his comfort zone, Boasberg script-doctored for the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera, and then wrote most of the scripted jokes for A Day at the Races. Joe Adamson, in his book about the Marx Brothers, wrote of Boasberg that his “monumental ingenuity at packing sentences with insanities was matched only by his monumental indifference to the logical progression of a plotline”.
During his years at MGM, Samuel Grosvenor Wood (1883-1949) was a thoroughgoing studio man, one of Louis B Mayer’s favourite directors because, if Mayer told him to change something, he changed it.
Wood was a reliable journeyman director who was eventually assigned to pictures that were beyond his creative abilities. Sam Wood and Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls was not a match made in heaven, given the director’s extreme conservatism, but Paramount gave him the job anyway.
Earlier on, Wood provided unfussy, if uninspired, direction on So This Is College, It’s a Great Life (which he also produced) and They Learned About Women. He also did uncredited work on The Cat and the Fiddle and Hollywood Party.
There were few directors at Metro less suited to work with the Marx Brothers, yet Wood was assigned both A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races.
