The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Nobody’s Baby

  • Norbert Brodine

    Norbert F Brodine (1896-1970) had a forty-four year career as a cinematographer, working predominantly with Loretta Young in television for the last few years, for which he won an Emmy. He was credited on more than 130 pictures. 

    Having worked as an army photographer during the First World War, Brodine started out in Hollywood as a stills photographer, before shooting his first film for Goldwyn Pictures in 1919.

    Brodine worked prolifically throughout the 1920s and 30s, including repeatedly for Hal Roach. He shot Libeled Lady (1936) for MGM, as well as Topper (1937), Topper Takes a Trip (1938) and Topper Returns (1941).

    But Brodine did his best work after joining Twentieth Century-Fox in 1943: The House on 92nd Street (1945), 13 Rue Madeleine, Kiss of Death (both 1947) and The Desert Fox (1949) for Henry Hathaway; I Was a Male War Bride (1949) for Howard Hawks; and Thieves’ Highway (1949) for Jules Dassin.

    Brodine shot three MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Nobody’s Baby and Swiss Miss. In addition, he was the cinematographer on the French-language version of A Lady’s Morals, titled Jenny Lind and filmed on the same sets as the original in 1931.

  • Alexander Pollard

    British actor Alexander Pollard emigrated to the United States during the 1920s, and made his first film in 1928. He went on to make close to 200 screen appearances, all of them uncredited. He was a utility character actor, invariably cast as some kind of domestic or public functionary: over two thirds of his roles were as butlers or waiters.

    Pollard ran the luncheon counter where Fay Wray got her much-needed meal in King Kong (1933). He was a waiter hired by Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man (1934). He was a guest at the sinister party in Saboteur (1942). And in The Woman in the Window (1944) he played the club waiter who wakes up Edward G Robinson (twice).

    Pollard was in eight MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, A Night at the Opera, Nobody’s Baby, Lady Be Good, Ship Ahoy, Thrill of a Romance, Easy to Wed and Words and Music.

  • Broderick O’Farrell

    George William Broderick O’Farrell (1882-1955) had the rare privilege of making his first film in his hometown (Angelenos excluded, of course). Portland in Oregon was home to the American Lifeograph Company, the brainchild of some local filmmakers. It only produced about five pictures in as many years (1915-20), but still gave O’Farrell his break in The Golden Trail (1920), which was co-directed by Jean Hersholt. The company’s facilities were also used by other filmmakers.

    O’Farrell eventually relocated to Los Angeles, and by 1949 had appeared in more than 200 films. He was in some very good features, but always uncredited.

    He turned up in seven MGM musicals. Love in the Rough was followed by Flying High, Nobody’s Baby, Born to Sing, Ship Ahoy, Music for Millions and Two Sisters from Boston.

  • Hal Roach

    Most of the names synonymous with silent film comedy are performers: Keaton, Chaplin, Lloyd, and Laurel and Hardy. But they are joined by two producer-directors: Mack Sennett and Harold Eugene Roach (1892-1992).

    Roach began working as an extra in Hollywood in 1912, and produced his first comedy shorts in 1915, in partnership with his friend Harold Lloyd. He worked with Lloyd until 1923, and went on to establish the Laurel and Hardy team. Roach wrote, produced and sometimes directed hundreds of comedy shorts and features.

    In 1928, the Hal Roach studio began releasing its films through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which is how he became connected with its early musical pictures. In 1930, MGM wanted to add comic relief to The Rogue Song, so Roach directed additional sequences featuring Stan and Ollie as members of Lawrence Tibbetts band of outlaws.

    In 1933, the Hal Roach Studio and MGM co-produced The Devil’s Brother, a Laurel and Hardy musical that Roach directed. He also worked as an uncredited director on Swiss Miss and The Bohemian Girl (which he co-wrote), and produced Babes in Toyland and Nobody’s Baby.

  • William H O’Brien

    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.

  • Larry Steers

    Lawrence Wells Steers (1888-1951) appeared in around 550 films during his thirty-year career, sometimes credited, more often not.

    Twenty-seven of those uncredited roles were in Metro musicals, starting in 1930 with Lord Byron of Broadway. Steers was subsequently in Stage Mother, Dancing Lady, Hollywood Party, Reckless, Here Comes the Band, The Great Ziegfeld, Nobody’s Baby, The Great Waltz, At the Circus, Broadway Melody of 1940, Ziegfeld Girl, Lady Be Good, Two Girls and a Sailor, Meet the People, Ziegfeld Follies (giving the hattrick of MGM Ziegfeld titles), Yolanda and the Thief, Holiday in Mexico, No Leave, No Love, Till the Clouds Roll By, A Date with Judy, The Barkeleys of Broadway, That Midnight Kiss, Annie Get Your Gun, Duchess of Idaho, The Toast of New Orleans and The Great Caruso.

  • Tom Dugan

    Tom Dugan (1889-1955) was an Irish actor who appeared in well over 250 Hollywood films. He started out at the tail-end of the silent era, and featured in the first full-length talking picture, Lights of New York (1928). Two of his many appearances stand out. In Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not To Be (1942) he is the first character seen, the Polish actor Bronski wandering down a city street disguised as Adolf Hitler. And in On the Town he played the sentimental Officer Tracy, who passes around the hat for the three sailors and their girls.

    Dugan’s other MGM musicals were They Learned About Women, San Francisco (uncredited), Nobody’s Baby, Easy to Wed (uncredited), as Pooch in the 1947 Good News, Take Me Out to the Ball Game and The Belle of New York (uncredited).

  • Carl M Leviness

    Carleton Mortimer LeViness (1884-1964) first appeared as the Tragedian in a silent version of Nicholas Nickleby in 1912 and his last appearance was an uncredited bit as a man in the hallway of a newspaper office in The Great Race in 1963. He was in hundreds of films, mostly uncredited, and even spent the period 1914-16 as a director. It was an unobtrusively spectacular career.

    Leviness’s MGM musical appearances were The Broadway Melody, Hollywood Party, Reckless (in all three he played a guest at a party), Nobody’s Baby (for a change of pace, he played an elevator passenger), A Day at the Races (another party guest), Ship Ahoy (as a passenger), Presenting Lily Mars (as a tired man–must have been all the partying), Two Girls and a Sailor (nightclub patron), Music for Millions (theatregoer), Thrill of a Romance (hotel guest), Yolanda and the Thief (as a man who says tally-ho), On an Island With You (desk clerk), The Barkeleys of Broadway (guest at a country house), In the Good Old Summertime (patronizing a supper club), The Toast of New Orleans (eating in a restaurant this time), The Great Caruso (opera-goer, naturally), Small Town Girl (back to being a party guest), The Band Wagon (an investor), Easy to Love (maiitre d’), The Student Prince (churchgoer), Athena (another party guest) and Ten Thousand Bedrooms (another nightclub patron). 

    Twenty-two films: Carl M Leviness definitely did his bit for the MGM musical.

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