Very little seems to be on record about Anton Stevenson (1906-80) other than that he was born, lived for seventy-four years, and worked on the editing of two films while in his twenties.
One of the films was Hallelujah.
Category: Films
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Hugh Wynn
Hugh Wynn (1897-1936) was a respected MGM editor whose career was cut short by his tragically early and sudden death.
Wynn’s most prestigious assignment was The Big Parade (1925), after which he worked regularly with King Vidor, including on Hallelujah.
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William S Gray
William Sylvester Gray (1896-1946) was an editor at MGM whose career-high was an Oscar nomination for The Great Ziegfeld.
Gray’s other musicals were The Hollywood Revue of 1929, In Gay Madrid and Everybody Sing.
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Sam S Zimbalist
Samuel S Zimbalist (1901-58) is the only producer to posthumously receive the Oscar for Best Picture, when it was awarded to Ben Hur (1959). This made him, at that time, the producer of the second and third highest-grossing pictures in history. The film placed third was Zimbalist’s Quo Vadis (1951), while first place was, of course, held by Gone With the Wind (1939).
This was a long way from Zimbalist’s beginnings in the industry, as an office boy at Metro Studios. He took up editing, becoming a full-fledged editor in 1925 with MGM’s first version of The Wizard of Oz.
In 1929, Zimbalist had his first brush with the Academy Awards when he edited The Broadway Melody.
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J Clifford Brooke
Clifford Brooke (1873-1951) may (or may not) be the J Clifford Brooke who is credited with staging a sequence in Devil-May-Care. The AFI Catalogue says no, while IMDb says yes.
Brooke was a British stage actor, well-known on Broadway as both performer and director, who belatedly worked in Hollywood. His first credited role was in The Sea Hawk (1940)
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Conrad A Nervig
Conrad Albinus Nervig (1889-1980) started out as a lab assistant at Goldwyn Pictures in 1922 and merged with it into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer a couple of years later. He remained under contract for thirty years.
Nervig goes down in history as the recipient of the first Academy Award for editing, which he won for Eskimo (1933). He won again in 1950 for his work on King Solomon’s Mines.
Musicals edited by Nervig were Devil-May-Care, Call of the Flesh, The Night is Young, Maytime, Honolulu, Hullabaloo, The Big Store, I Married an Angel, No Leave, No Love, The Merry Widow (1952 version) and The Affairs of Dobie Gillis.
Nervig did military service before joining the film industry, and served briefly on USS Cyclops immediately before its mysterious disappearance with all hands in 1918.
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Merritt B Gerstad
Merritt Brindley Edward Gerstad (1900-74) started out as a cinematographer at Universal, where he worked with Tod Browning and Lon Chaney. He followed Chaney to MGM, where they collaborated on Mockery and London After Midnight (both 1927). He later reunited with Browning on Freaks (1932).
Gerstad shot a number of musicals for Metro before moving on to Warner Bros. They were: Devil-May-Care, Call of the Flesh, Flying High and, as a big finish, A Night at the Opera.
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Dimitri Tiomkin
Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin ((1894-1979) was one of the most celebrated Hollywood composers of all time. He was nominated for Oscars 22 times, and won on four occasions: The High and the Mighty (1954), High Noon (winning for both Best Score and Best Song), and The Old Man and the Sea (1958).
Tiomkin’s contributions to MGM’s musicals were easrly in his career and more modest. He wrote ballet music for Devil-May-Care and The Rogue Song, in both of which the choreography was by Tiomkin’s wife, Albertina Rasch. He also collaborated with Raymond B Egan on the song ‘Blue Daughter of Heaven’ for Lord Byron of Broadway.
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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.
