Although born in Camberwell, Philip Sleeman (1891-1953) spent much of his film career playing Arabs and other eastern characters with names like Sheik Abdullah Pasha.
Sleeman made two appearances in Metro musicals, on both occasions having a good time. He was a patron in a cantina in In Gay Madrid and partying on the zeppelin in Madam Satan.
British-born Beryl Mercer (1882-1939) was a successful stage actor who had small roles in more than fifty pictures. Her place in film history depends on two maternal roles: as the mother of Lew Ayres’s character in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and as the mother of James Cagnet in Public Enemy (1931).
In Gay Madrid was Mercer’s only appearance in an MGM musical.
British actor Claude Ewart King appeared on stage and in silent films in the UK, making his screen debut in 1912. After serving in the First World War, he emigrated to America, successfully continuing to work in both fields.
King’s most significant American credit was probably as Roger Balfour, whose murder and resurrection were the focus of Tod Browning’s lost film London After Midnight (1927).
King played Ramon Novarro’s disapproving father in In Gay Madrid, and followed this with uncredited appearances in Maytime and Broadway Serenade. His final MGM musical was the 1940 version of New Moon, where he played Monsieur Dubois.
Numbers
| Let Me Give You Love (?)* | Fred E Ahlert, Roy Turk (?) | Lottice Howell |
| Santiago | Herbert Stothart, Xavier Cugat, Clifford Grey | Ramon Novarro and chorus |
| Smile While We May | Fred E Ahlert, Roy Turk | Ramon Novarro and chorus |
| Into My Heart | Fred E Ahlert, Roy Turk | Ramon Novarro |
| Dark Night | Herbert Stothart, Xavier Cugat, Clifford Grey | Ramon Novarro |
* Edwin M Bradley names the film’s opening song as ‘Let Me Give You Love,’ though nothing in the lyrics suggest this as the title. Bradley would seem to have taken the name from contemporary press reports.
Synopsis
In a Madrid nightclub, playboy Ricardo watches Goyita sing [Give Me All Your Love (?)] while the women at another table gossip about him. Ricardo rushes backstage and embraces Goyita.
Meanwhile, Almadar, the self-proclaimed “greatest torero in all Spain”, arrives at the nightclub and demands that Goyita sing for him. Going backstage to fetch her, Almadar finds her in Ricardo’s arms. They quarrel and, back amongst the diners, a fight ensues.
Ricardo arrives home the next morning and tells the butler that he has been with the police all night. He gets into bed fully clothed to hide from his father, the Marques de Castelar, but the Marques sees through the ruse. Ricardo claims to have been in a taxi accident, but his father already knows the truth from the newspaper. Tired of his son’s behaviour, the Marques tells him he must leave Madrid and continue his law studies at the university at Santiago de Compostela. He is to board at the best student accommodation, the House of Troy.
Later, students arrive at the House of Troy [Santiago]. They see all Ricardo’s luggage and are told it belongs to the Marques of Castelar. They carry it to his room and three of them ransack the contents. Ricardo finds them going through his things, but they are reassured when he tells them he is not the Marques de Castelar. The students find his fur coat, which they decide to pawn, with Ricardo’s encouragement. Octavio comes in to complain about the noise, and says he will have nothing to do with Ricardo because of his bad reputation.
Then Ernesto Rivas arrives with an invitation for Ricardo from his father. Ricardo explains to his housemates that the Marques is his father, and assures them that he was amused by what they did. Octavio insults him and leaves.
Ricardo objects to having a picture in his room, until he learns it is Antonio, who died bravely in an illegal duel. He learns that the motto of the house is Above All, Honour [Santiago].
Later, Ricardo is to visit Senor Rivas and his daughter, Carmina, who has been told about his reputation by Octavio. Her aunt, Doña Concha, tells her there is nothing wrong with a few wild oats. Ricardo arrives with Ernesto and hears Carmina playing the harp. She asks him if he will not find Santiago dull compared to Madrid. Later, when they are talking alone, Ricardo wonders why Carmina does not like him. She tells him that standards of conduct are different in Santiago.
Octavio arrives and Ricardo learns that he is Carmina’s fiance. Ricardo explains that he is unable to stay for dinner because of a prior engagement at a student dinner. Ernesto has also been invited, but Octavio reveals the dinner is to be held in a wine shop and Rivas tells his son not to go.
Later, at the dinner, Ricardo is telling his friends how provincial and self-satisfied Carmina is when Ernesto enters and overhears. Ricardo rushes after him and persuades him that, in fact, he likes Carmina very much, but that she hurt his vanity. They return to the table [Smile While We May].
In Madrid, Goyita receives a letter from Ricardo, asking her to come to Santiago.
Later, at a costume ball, Ricardo helps his friend Corpulento serenade a girl [Into My Heart], but gives away the deception when he is distracted by seeing Carmina. He sings to her and she is pleased, though pretends not to be. Ernesto tells Ricardo that his sister thought the serenade was wonderful. At Ernesto’s insistence, Ricardo dances with Carmina. He takes her into the garden and asks if they can be friends. Carmina agrees, and when Octavio comes to remind her they are to dance, she refuses to go in.
Octavio tries to provoke a quarrel with Ricardo, and Carmina decides to go home. Ricardo prevents Octavio from following her and pushes him into a fountain.
Back in her room, Carmina turns a picture of Octavio face down. Ricardo sits on the branch of a tree outside her room and serenades her [Dark Night]. On her balcony, he rips off Octavio’s betrothal bracelet, declares his love for Carmina and compels her to say she loves him before he will let her return to her room.
Doña Concha, who was chaperoning Carmina, returns from the ball and hears Ricardo singing outside. Carmina refuses to admit she likes Ricardo and says he followed her home, to which Doña Concha replies that that shows how interested he is. She tells Carmina that Octavio is not a suitable husband, but that Ricardo is. Carmina says Ricardo is too sure of himself and her aunt advises her to make him less sure of himself by playing hard to get.
Much later, Ricardo complains to Ernesto that all his letters to Carmina are returned unopened, and Ernesto tells him she pretends to be out when he calls at the house. To Ricardo’s surprise, Goyita arrives at the house; he has forgotten he invited her. Then, the Marques de Castelar’s car pulls up outside. Ricardo hides Goyita in his wardrobe. Ricardo has told his father in a letter that he is really in love with Carmina and the Marques approves. Inside the wardrobe, Goyita does not like what she is hearing.
The Marques has brought a betrothal bracelet for Carmina. Ricardo tries to persuade his father to go for a walk and the Marques reveals he has already been to the Rivas house and seen Carmina. He has arranged the marriage with her father, but Ricardo tells him he is no longer sure that Carmina is in love with him. The Marques laughs this off. Ricardo tells Goyita to stay in his room while he goes out with his father.
Carmina is getting ready to greet Ricardo when he and the Marques arrive. She continues to be off-hand with him. Back in Ricardo’s room, Goyita is spotted by Octavio.
Senor Rivas sends Ricardo to meet Carmina in the garden, where she finally acknowledges she loves him; she is wearing his bracelet. Octavio arrives during dinner and tells Rivas about Goyita. Ricardo is called to the library, after which the Marques hears shouting. Octavio states that Ricardo has come straight from the arms of a disreputable woman and says he can prove it. They all go to Ricardo’s room, where Goyita is waiting in her underskirt. She tells the Marques she is there because Ricardo asked her to come. Carmina hears everything and returns Ricardo’s bracelet. The Marques will not listen to any explanation, and leaves. Ernesto slaps Ricardo, meaning there must be a duel.
The next morning, Carmina learns about the duel and rushes to stop it, but she is too late. Ricardo fires into the air and is wounded himself. Carmina spurns Ricardo until she sees that he is hurt, when she begs his forgiveness and tells him she loves him. Later, Ricardo and Carmina are married [Santiago].
Opinion
It is impossible to give an opinion on the merits of The Rogue Song, a film no one has seen in its entirety for many years. Its status as the only ‘lost’ MGM musical, combined with its status as Laurel and Hardy’s only colour picture, has made it one of the holy grails of lost films. To date, about 22 minutes of footage has been unearthed around the world, less than a quarter of the total 103 minutes. Fortunately, the audiotrack has survived in its entirety. This, combined with the continuity script, has enabled YouTube provider Unreeled8 to produce a quasi-restoration of The Rogue Song, combining the soundtrack, surviving footage, stills, posters and AI into a simulacrum of the original film.
The loss of The Rogue Song is sad for many reasons, not the least because it was the first all-Technicolor musical made at the studio now synonymous with Technicolor musicals. It was also the first to feature a great singer, rather than crooners like Charles King and Lawrence Gray. Edwin M Bradley has described the challenge posed to Douglas Shearer’s sound department by the power of Tibbett’s voice. The engineers found they had to put the microphone fifteen feet away from Tibbett in order to capture his singing voice correctly. (As a sidenote, when Tibbett recorded the medley for the flogging sequence [see below], he was stripped to the waist and tied to posts in the recording studio.)
The available evidence suggests that The Rogue Song was a rummy sort of musical. Not many musicals, for example, have rape and suicide as significant plot elements, or a scene in which the hero sings a medley of songs while being publicly whipped (“The lash cries for blood!”). It may have been these melodramatic aspects that led Irving Thalberg to assign the direction of this important picture to the otherwise entirely unsuitable Lionel Barrymore.
The melodrama, combined with plodding direction, raised alarm bells after four weeks’ shooting, prompting the producers to inject some comic relief. This came in the form of Laurel and Hardy, the most unlikely of all Caucasian bandits. They feature in nine sequences, all directed by Hal Roach and separately from the rest of the picture (Stan and Ollie only worked for two days with the other actors).
Ostensibly based on Franz Lehár’s operetta Gypsy Love (1910), the plot has been completely changed and very little of Lehár’s music retained. The new songs are by Herbert Stothart and Clifford Grey.
The Rogue Song got good reviews and grossed over $1.1 million worldwide, but turning only a small profit because of its high production costs. Lawrence Tibbett, who sings all the film’s eight songs, appears to give a good performance by the standards of the day; he was nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award.
In 1977, Margaret Booth (1898-2002) received an honorary Oscar in tribute to her 62-year Hollywood career, during most of which she was arguably the industry’s greatest editor. Remarkably, she carried on working for another eight years.
Like many major Hollywood figures, Booth started out with D W Griffith, working as a negative cutter. She subsequently worked for Louis B Mayer, transferring with him to the new Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio. She was appointed as Supervising Editor in 1939, and stayed there until her shameful dismissal in 1986. During that time, as Booth described it, she worked only in the projection room, never the cutting room (though it is believed she did uncredited cutting on Ben Hur (1959). She has been described as “the final arbiter on every picture the studio made”.
The first MGM musical edited by Margaret Booth was The Rogue Song. This was followed by New Moon, The Cuban Love Song, Dancing Lady, Reckless. After that, she technically supervised the editing of every musical, but made a particularly significant contribution to The Wizard of Oz and Gigi.
As late as 1982, aged 84, Booth worked as supervising editor on the Columbia-released musical Annie.
Charles Edgar Schoenbaum (1893-1951) was a hard-working cinematographer whose earliest credit seems to be working for Cecil B DeMille at Paramount in 1917, but who spent much of his career at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He was sometimes credited as Charles E Schoenbaum, and even C Edgar Schoenbaum.
His work was not greatly celebrated–his sole Academy Award nomination was for Little Women in 1949–but he was valued for his work ethic.
Schoenbaum worked on five MGM musicals over a twenty-year period, from The Rogue Song in 1930 to Duchess of Idaho in 1950. In between came Here Comes the Band and the second version of Good News. He was also drafted in by Rouben Mamouian to replace Charles Rosher on Summer Holiday.
German-born Paul Levy (1889-1932) was an unsuccessful actor who worked as a stage manager on Broadway before relocating to Hollywood. After some writing and directing, he settled at MGM and became assistant to Irving Thalberg, and then a production supervisor.
Bern’s sole involvement in musicals was as the uncredited producer of The Rogue Song.
Bern is best remembered today for all the wrong reasons. A few months after marrying star Jean Harlow in 1932, he was found dead from gunshot wounds under mysterious circumstances.
