The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: New Moon (1930)

  • Frank Butler

    Frank Russell Butler (1889-1967) was a prominent screenwriter, though his most successful days were at Paramount rather than MGM. 

    Born in  England, Butler started out as an actor at Famous Players-Lasky in 1920, writing his first scenario the following year. His acting career ended with silent cinema, and he directed only one film for Hal Roach: Flying Elephants, with Laurel and Hardy before they had established their comedy duo characters.

    Butler signed on as a writer at Metro in 1929, and worked on four musicals during his time there. He worked with regular collaborator Sylvia Thalberg on Montana Moon and New Moon. He subsequently worked on two scripts for films involving Laurel and Hardy, Babes in Toyland and The Bohemian Girl.

    Returning to Paramount, Butler wrote frequently for Bob Hope, including four of the Road pictures. He was nominated for the Oscar in 1942 for two very different screenplays, Road to Morocco and war drama Wake Island. He won two year later for Going My Way (1944).

  • Sylvia Thalberg

    It is hard to avoid describing Sylvia Thalberg (1907-88) as the younger sister of Irving Thalberg and the wife of MGM producer Lawrence Weingarten, though she would, quite understandably, not have welcomed it. Becoming the youngest writer at Hollywood’s biggest studio in 1927 inevitably attracted accusations of nepotism. This, along with writing a novel, led to her leaving Metro in 1933.

    Having published the novel, Thalberg signed a contract with Paramount in 1935. Her last, uncredited, work on a screenplay was in 1937.

    While at MGM, Thalberg worked on two musicals, Montana Moon and New Moon, both times with regular collaborator Frank Butler. Her brother’s opinion of his sister was, according to Douglas Shearer, “talented but lazy”. But that’s brothers for you.

  • Virginia Sale

    Virginia Sale (1899-1992) was a trained character who maintained a career on stage and screen for almost fifty years. Her first film role was as Fifi in French Leave (1927), but she soon began to specialize in playing older women, though still in her twenties. She played many mothers, aunts and spinsters.

    Sale cropped up in three MGM musicals: Lord  Byron of Broadway, the 1930 New Moon and Strike Up the Band.

  • Jack Conway

    Hugh Ryan Conway (1886-1952) was an actor and director in silent films from around 1910. From 1925 he was under contract as a director at Metro-Goldwyn Mayer.

    Conway was a solid journeyman director, though few of his pictures are likely to end up on any Greatest Ever lists. He worked with most of MGM’s major stars of the 1930s, with particular success on Jean Harlow and Clark Gable assignments such as Libelled Lady and Too Hot to Handle. His largest-scale achievement was A Tale of Two Cities (1935).

    Conway only worked on three musicals: They Learned About Women (with Sam Wood), the 1930 New Moon and Let Freedom Ring.

  • 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. 

  • Herbert Stothart

    Herbert Pope Stothart (1885-1949) is a composer whose name is less familiar today than, say, Dimitri Tiomkin or Max Steiner, but in Hollywood’s golden age he was ranked alongside them for his work at MGM.

    Stothart had a successful career writing stage musicals, most notably Rose-Marie, but was invited to join Metro in 1929. He signed a contract and stayed there for the rest of his life. 

    Scores by Stothart were prominent in some of the studio’s most important pictures of the 1930s and 40s. These included Queen Christina (1933), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Camille (1936), The Good Earth (1937), Pride and Prejudice (1940), Mrs Miniver (1942), They Were Expendable (1945) and The Yearling (1946). In all, Stothart wrote over 100 scores.

    Stothart worked on many of MGM’s musicals. He and Clifford Grey wrote the songs for Devil-May-Care and contributed numbers to Montana Moon, The Rogue Song, In Gay Madrid, The Florodora Girl, Call of the Flesh, New Moon and Madam Satan. 

    He worked with other lyricists on A Lady’s Morals, The Cuban Love Song, Here Comes the Band, Maytime, The Firefly (composing ‘The Donkey Serenade’), Broadway Serenade, Balalaika, The Chocolate Soldier and I Married an Angel.

    Stothart was the musical director on some of these films and also on The Cat and the Fiddle, Lubitsch’s The Merry Widow, The Night is Young, Naughty Marietta, Reckless, San Francisco, Rosalie, The Girl of the Golden West, Sweethearts, The Wizard of Oz (picking up an Oscar), New Moon, Bitter Sweet, Rio Rita, Thousands Cheer, Ziegfeld Girl, Cairo, Thousands Cheer, Kismet, The Unfinished Dance. Musical direction usually involved writing incidental music.

    And, of course, Metro produced two versions of Stothart’s greatest stage success, Rose-Marie, and he worked on the first version.

  • Karl Dane

    Rasmus Karl Therkelsen Gottlieb (1886-1934) was a Danish-born comedian who found fame supporting John Gilbert in Vidor’s The Big Parade (1925). Under contract to MGM, he formed a successful comedy partnership with George K Arthur, but things became difficult with the introduction of sound, as Dane had a strong accent. His contract was terminated and he took his own life a few years later. At the urging of Jean Hersholt, MGM paid for his burial.

    Dane made an appearance with Arthur in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and had small parts in Montana Moon, Free and Easy and New Moon. 

  • 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.    

  • John Carroll

    The actor born Julian La Faye (1906-79) became a successful second-tier star, notably alongside John Wayne in Flying Tigers (1942). He started his film career playing bits in MGM musicals: Marianne (doughboy), Devil-May-Care (Bonapartist), The Rogue Song (Bandit) and New Moon Russian soldier).

    After developing his career, Carroll returned as straight man to the Marx Brothers in Go West, and went on to feature prominently in Lady Be Good, Rio Rita and Fiesta.

    Carroll’s last appearance was in Orson Welles’s film maudit The Other Side of the Wind (1975, released 2018).

  • William Axt

    William Axt (1888-1959) was a composer and conductor who joined the MGM music department in 1929 and went on to write hundreds of scores. He composed for a number of musicals, mostly early in his career: Marianne, It’s a Great Life, Devil-May-Care, Chasing Rainbows,The Rogue Song, Free and Easy, Call of the Flesh, Madam Satan, Hollywood Party, The Great Ziegfeld,  Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, Everybody Sing and Listen, Darling. 

    Axi’s work was also taken off the shelf for use as stock music in New Moon, Student Tour, Balalaika and Little Nellie Kelly .

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