Charles Sullivan (1899-1972) was a ubiquitous character actor in American films between 1925 and 1966, accumulating around 550 appearances on the big screen.
Notable appearances include King Kong (1933, where he was also Robert Armstrong’s stunt double), Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), The Roaring Twenties (1939), Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Glass Key (1942), State of the Union (1948) and The Last Hurrah (1958).
Sullivan can be seen, uncredited, in fourteen MGM musicals: Dancing Lady, Student Tour, San Francisco, Sweethearts, At the Circus, Born to Sing, Swing Fever, Music for Millions, Easy to Wed, Living in a Big Way, Big City, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, Rose Marie and It’s Always Fair Weather.
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:
The figures of 350+ film and TV appearances by Harry Wilson (1897-1978) is made more impressive by the fact that Wilson worked almost entirely in the sound era, when the turnover of pictures was not so great as in the silent days.
British-born Wilson dubbed himself ‘the ugliest man in movies’ (though there was competition), and he was many studios’ go-to actor for convicts and criminal henchmen. He features with Mike Mazurki in Some Like it Hot (1959) as one of George Raft’s goons.
Wilson appeared uncredited in no fewer than fifteen MGM musicals, across more than thirty years and four decades. In the 1930s he made A Lady’s Morals, The Bohemian Girl, A Day at the Races, Let Freedom Ring and The Wizard of Oz (as a Winkie Guard). In the 40s, Wilson was in Go West, Born to Sing, Swing Fever, Luxury Liner and Take Me Out to the Ball Game.
His 1950s appearances were in Million Dollar Mermaid, It’s Always Fair Weather, Guys and Dolls and Merry Andrew. And finally, in 1963, Wilson played a roustabout in Billy Rose’s Jumbo.
As if Wilson was not busy enough making his own films, he worked for fifteen years as Wallace Beery’s stand-in.
Bit player Kenneth Koch Gibson (1898-1972) spent a lot of time being paid to party. He was in fourteen MGM musicals, and in at least eight of them was a party guest or nightclub patron.
In a career stretching from 1921 to 1969, Gibson notched up approaching 300 screen appearances. He was actually the male lead in his first film, Big Town Ideas (1921), but by 1929 was generally uncredited. He became a regular bit player for Cecil B DeMille and Preston Sturges, and can be found in some excellent pictures, including This Gun for Hire (1942), The Big Sleep (1946), Sunset Boulevard (1950) and A Star is Born (1954).
Gibson’s musicals at Metro were: Madam Satan, New Moon (1940), Yolanda and the Thief, Luxury Liner, The Barkeleys of Broadway, Duchess of Idaho, The Toast of New Orleans, Rich, Young and Pretty, Singin’ in the Rain, Small Town Girl, Interrupted Melody, It’s Always Fair Weather, I’ll Cry Tomorrow and Ten Thousand Bedrooms.
William H O’Brien (1891-1981) made his first film in Australia in 1918, and in a Hollywood career lasting over fifty years he appeared in around 650 films, almost always without credit. These included Scarface (1931), The Thin Man (1934), Rebecca (1940), Citizen Kane (1941), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Ace in the Hole (1951), High Noon (1952), Some Like It Hot (1959) and, finally, Bedknobs and Brooksticks (1971).
With a filmography that long, it is little wonder O’Brien was in thirteen Metro musicals across a 36-year period, starting with Children of Pleasure in 1930 and ending with Made in Paris in 1966. In between came New Moon, A Night at the Opera, San Francisco, Nobody’s Baby, The Firefly, Two Girls on Broadway, Thousands Cheer, Two Sisters from Boston, The Glass Slipper, It’s Always Fair Weather and Merry Andrew.
Parisian Élysée Eugène Prieur-Bardin (1897-1971) emigrated to America as a teenager, but played many Frenchmen (and sundry other continentals) in a fifty-year career. He started out in The Great Secret (1917), a serial with jeopardy and super-villains, and concluded with one of James Coburn’s sixties’ Flint adventures.
His contributions to MGM musicals, all uncredited, spanned 27 years. They were in Chasing Rainbows, The Cat and the Fiddle, The Merry Widow, The Firefly, Thrill of a Romance, Yolanda and the Thief, On the Town, An American in Paris, Million Dollar Mermaid, Dangerous When Wet, Interrupted Melody, It’s Always Fair Weather and Silk Stockings.
Irving Guy Ries (1890-1963) was a successful silent cinematographer from a young age, who worked onThe Hollywood Revue of 1929 and then helped to establish MGM’s optical effects department.
It was here that he made his major contribution to some of MGM’s best musicals. Ries provided special effects on Anchors Aweigh (Gene Kelly dancing with Jerry), The Barkeleys of Broadway (dancing shoes), An American in Paris, The Belle of New York (Fred Astaire walking in the sky), Singin’ in the Rain, Dangerous When Wet, Give a Girl a Break, It’s Always Fair Weather and Invitation to the Dance.
None of which is as interesting as the fact that, when he travelled to Germany in 1915, his passport was copied by the authorities and later used by German spy Paul Hensel. When Hensel was executed by firing squad in the UK later that year, it was under the name Irving G Ries.
No one had a longer connection with MGM musicals than Arthur Freed (1894-1974), starting at the very beginning with The Broadway Melody in 1929 and ending in 1960 with Bells Are Ringing. Of course, his role changed significantly during that period.
Freed had not been working long as a lyricist at MGM when he and composer Nacio Herb Brown were assigned the task of producing the first bespoke score for a film musical. Following the success of The Broadway Melody, Freed’s songs were a mainstay of the studio’s musical output for a quarter of a century. He and Brown contributed numbers to The Hollywood Revue of 1929, Marianne, Lord Byron of Broadway, Montana Moon, Dancing Lady, Going Hollywood, Student Tour, Broadway Melody of 1936, San Francisco, Broadway Melody of 1938, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, Ice Follies of 1939, Babes in Arms, Two Girls on Broadway, Hullabaloo, Little Nellie Kelly, Lady Be Good, Born to Sing, Presenting Lily Mars, Meet Me in St Louis, Three Little Words, Pagan Love Song, Singin’ in the Rain and The Affairs of Dobie Gillies
He also worked without Brown on the 1930 Good News and on A Lady’s Morals, The Prodigal, Hollywood Party, A Night at the Opera, Strike Up the Band, Babes on Broadway, Bathing Beauty, Anchors Aweigh, Ziegfeld Follies, Yolanda and the Thief and Love Me or Leave Me.
During the 1930s Freed spent time on Metro’s sound stages, watching the staging of his songs and learning about the craft of creating film musicals. He also devoted time to ingratiating himself with studio head Louis B Mayer, making known his ambition to become involved in the production side of the process. Finally, in 1938, Mayer decided to give Freed his chance.
Arthur Freed initiated the filming of The Wizard of Oz and was its de facto producer, although only credited as associate producer; Mayer safeguarded the project by appointing the more experienced Mervyn LeRoy as producer.
Having shown what he could do, Freed was made a full producer and worked on 39 musicals and a handful of non-musicals during the next thirty years. The musicals were Babes in Arms, Little Nellie Kelly, Strike Up the Band, Lady Be Good, Babes on Broadway, For Me and My Gal, Panama Hattie, Cabin in the Sky, Du Barry Was a Lady, Girl Crazy, Best Foot Forward, Meet Me in St Louis, Yolanda and the Thief, The Harvey Girls, Ziegfeld Follies, Till the Clouds Roll By, Good News, Easter Parade, The Pirate, Summer Holiday, Words and Music, The Barkleys of Broadway, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, On the Town, Annie Get Your Gun, Pagan Love Song, An American in Paris, Royal Wedding, Show Boat, The Belle of New York, Singin’ in the Rain, The Band Wagon, Brigadoon, It’s Always Fair Weather, Kismet, Invitation to the Dance, Silk Stockings, Gigi and Bells Are Ringing.
The Freed Unit became MGM royalty and made most of the musicals upon which the studio’s current reputation rests. Opinions vary as to the extent to which Freed can take credit for this achievement, and the unit did produce a few duds. But, at the very least, Arthur Freed was the catalyst for a body of work of unrivalled sophistication and artistry.
