The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Meet the People

  • Sammy Fain

    Samuel E Feinberg (1902-89) was a successful composer of popular songs who worked extensively in Hollywood. He was nominated ten times for the Oscar for Best Song, winning twice for ‘Secret Love’ from Calamity Jane (1953) and for the title song from Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955). Fain also worked regularly for the Disney Studio.

    Fain contributed songs to fourteen MGM musicals, frequently for Joseph Pasternak productions. ‘Let a Smile be Your Umbrella’ was featured in It’s a Great Life. He later wrote numbers for I Dood It, Swing Fever, Two Girls and a Sailor, Meet the People and Thrill of a Romance.

    For Anchors Aweigh Fain composed ‘The Worry Song’ to accompany Gene Kelly dancing with Jerry Mouse. His work also features in Two Sisters from Boston, Holiday in Mexico, No Leave, No Love, The Unfinished Dance, This Time for Keeps, Three Daring Daughters and Made in Paris. From Rosetta Duncan to Ann-Magret in 37 years.

  • Charles F Reisner

    Charles Francis Reisner (1887-1962) was an actor and director who might best be described with the word ‘competent’. Yet he managed, in both careers, to be associated with some very impressive projects. Reisner acted with Chaplin in A Dog’s Life (1918), The Kid (1921) and The Pilgrim (1923), and also worked for him as a gag writer. And he was the named director on Keaton’s masterpiece, Steamboat Bill Jr (1928). In fact, it was Reisner who came up with the original story idea, and who was literally on his knees praying while Keaton performed the stunt where the house fell down around him.

    Reisner’s career at MGM was less prestigious, though he was considered a capable pair of hands. This is why he was brought in to rescue The Hollywood Revue of 1929 when Christy Cabanne’s work was judged to be lacking by Irving Thalberg. 

    From there Reisner moved straight on to directing Chasing Rainbows, to which he also contributed dialogue. He then directed Love in the Rough and was working on The March of time when it was abandoned. His next completed musical was Flying High.

    Reisner did uncredited writing for Hollywood Party and was one of its eight directors. He directed Student Tour, then took a break from musicals after a busy couple of years. He returned in 1941 to direct The Big Store, the last and least of the Marx Brothers’ films for Metro.

    In 1943 Reisner made Swing Fever, and ended his career in MGM musicals with Meet the People.

  • George Magrill

    George Magrill (1900-52) was a bit-part player and occasional stunt performer whose work spanned cute cartoon animals and a range of henchmen, hooligans and thugs. When you accumulate around 500 films on your cv, it’s inevitable that some of them will be MGM musicals; in Magrill’s case, thirteen of them.

    Magrill began with Marianne in 1929 and ended with Three Little Words in 1950. In between came New Moon, The Merry Widow, The Bohemian Girl, San Francisco, Rosalie, The Great Waltz, New Moon (again), Meet the People, Music for Millions, Yolanda and the Thief and Good News.    

  • Sammy Lee

    Sammy Lee (1890-1968), born Samuel Levy, was the first in a line of important choreographers at MGM, though he arguably achieved greater success on Broadway and at Twentieth Century-Fox.

    Lee is uncredited on The Broadway Melody, which he might have been quite happy about, given the rudimentary nature of the dance numbers. He had worked on Ziegfeld’s Follies in 1927, but this is not reflected in the style of the fictional Zanfield’s show. Lee and director Harry Beaumont could not, in this first-ever film musical, determine how to make a stage performance cinematic. Nor were the chorines of the quality Lee would have been used to on Broadway.

    Lee’s first onscreen credit was for ‘Dances and Ensemble’ in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, where he did his best with non-professional dancers Joan Crawford and Marion Davies. He also essayed a pre-Berkeley overhead shot of the chorus.

    Lee went on to stage dances for It’s a Great Life, Chasing Rainbows, Lord Byron of Broadway, They Learned About Women, Free and Easy, Children of Pleasure, Good News, Love in the Rough (which includes an al fresco number performed at a real golf club), A Lady’s Morals, Broadway to Hollywood and Dancing Lady.

    A move to Twentieth Century-Fox earned Lee Academy Award nominations for King of Burlesque (1936) and Ali Baba Goes to Town (1937). He was back at Metro for Honolulu, Hullabaloo, Cairo, Born to Sing, Meet the People and Two Girls and a Sailor.

    Lee had a parallel career as the director of a series of undistinguished shorts.

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