Franz Lehár (1870-1948), born in what is now Hungary, was one of the most popular composers of operettas in the first half of the twentieth century.
Lehár’s best-known work, The Merry Widow (1905), was filmed three times by MGM, once as a silent film in 1925, and twice in musical form, in 1934 and 1952.
Some of the music from Lehár’s Gypsy Love (1910) is used in The Rogue Song. The musical is sometimes described as an adaptation of the operetta, but their two stories have no similarities.
With a career that lasted more than thirty years, Marion Benson Owens (1888-1973) was undoubtedly one of the most important writers in American cinema, even though her name is not well known today. She worked with Anita Loos on a film for D W Griffith, then became a writer for pioneer filmmaker Lois Weber, developing into one of the most prolific and skilled screenwriters in Hollywood.
Some of the major pictures worked on by Marion include: The Big House (1930), for which she won an Academy Award; Garbo’s first talkie, Anna Christie (1931); The Champ (1931), bringing a second Academy Award; Dinner at Eight (1933); Camille (1936); and The Good Earth (1937), uncredited.
Marion’s extensive work for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer included eight musicals. She co-wrote The Rogue Song, and immediately followed this with an uncredited contribution to In Gay Madrid. She wrote the screenplay for the 1930 version of Good News, and then worked without credit on Going Hollywood, Maytime, Rosalie, Presenting Lily Mars and, her swan song, The Pirate.
John Colton (1887-1946) was a successful playwright who was enticed to Hollywood by MGM in 1927, to write titles for some of their last silent films. This was not taxing work, with Colton’s name in the credits being more valuable than anything he wrote.
The Broadway hit Rain, co-written by Colton with Clemence Randolph, was filmed by MGM in 1928 as Sadie Thompson, but the author was not invited to work on it. Other films based on Colton’s plays were The Shanghai Gesture (1941) and Hitchcock’s Under Capricorn (1949).
Colton contributed to conventional screenplays after the introduction of sound, including for three MGM musicals: The Rogue Song, Call of the Flesh and The Cuban Love Song. All three lent themselves to the interest in exotic settings that Colton demonstrated in his plays.
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.
Crew
| Lionel Barrymore | Director |
| Hal Roach | Director (uncredited) |
| Wells Root | Idea |
| John Colton | Screenplay |
| Frances Marion | Screenplay |
| Herbert Stothart | Composer |
| Franz Lehar | Composer |
| Clifford Grey | Lyricist |
| Dimitri Tiomkin | Composer |
| William Axt | Composer |
| Paul Bern | Producer (uncredited) |
| Irving Thalberg | Producer (uncredited) |
| Percy Hilburn | Cinematographer |
| Charles Edgar Schoenbaum | Cinematographer |
| Margaret Booth | Editor |
| Cedric Gibbons | Art Director |
| Adrian | Costume Designer |
| Douglas Shearer | Sound Recording Engineer |
| Paul Neal | Sound Recording Engineer |
| Albertina Rasch | Choreographer |
| Westmore, George | Makeup Artist (uncredited) |
Frankie Genardi (1922-2010) was a child actor who made his debut, aged five, in Frank Borzage’s 7th Heaven (1927). He retired at seventeen.
Genardi’s two Metro musicals were The Rogue Song and New Moon.
Horace Allen Morgan (1892-1956) was a studio electrician who became an actor when director Romaine Fielding decided he needed a “fat boy” for a character part in Teasing a Tornado (1915). He went on to be a regular supporting player in silent comedies, working with Buster Keaton on Three Ages (1923) and Sherlock Jr (1924). He played similar roles to Oliver Hardy in his pre-Laurel days.
Morgan was in two Metro musicals. He was in The Rogue Song, and then actually appeared with Oliver Hardy in the uncredited role of Old King Cole in Babes in Toyland.
Wallace Archibald MacDonald (1891-1978) was a Canadian actor who pursued a successful career in Hollywood from 1912. The quality of his roles deteriorated after the introduction of sound, so he moved into producing in 1937. The films he made were ‘B’ pictures, but one of them was the excellent My Name is Julia Ross (1945), directed by Joseph H Lewis.
MacDonald the actor cropped up in two MGM musicals. He was Hassan in The Rogue Song and first mate of the zeppelin in Madam Satan.
Florence Silverlake (1904-80) had a long career that took her from playing Edgar Kennedy’s long-suffering wife in a series of comedy shorts in the early thirties to a part in The Day of the Locust (1975), which was set in the early thirties.
One of Lake’s earliest roles was as the tragic Nadja in The Rogue Song.
Florence Lake was the older sister of Arthur Lake, Blondie’s very own Dagwood.
Elsa Alsen (1880-1975) was a German opera star who relocated permanently to the United States in 1928. She was a soprano, and best-known for her performances in Wagner.
During a trip to Hollywood, where she sang at the Hollywood Bowl, Alsen played Lawrence Tibbett’s mother in The Rogue Song. Ironically, she does not appear to have sung a note in the film.
