Category: Films
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Oscar Hammerstein II
Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein (1895-1960) was one of the biggest names in 20th-century musicals, both literally and metaphorically.
Hammerstein and two of his main collaborators, Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers, were key to the development of the integrated musical, whereby songs are woven into the plot rather than being simply musical interpolations. In the world of film musicals, there were attempts to achieve this as early as 1930, but it is undeniable that Hammerstein’s work as lyricist, librettist and producer were hugely influential.
Oscar Hammerstein’s career can be divided into distinct halves. During the first part, he partnered with a variety of composers, including Kern (Show Boat, 1927), Rudolf Friml (Rose-Marie, 1924) and Sigmund Romberg (The Desert Song, 1926). Then, in 1943, he joined with Rodgers to produce Oklahoma!. This was the first in a series of seminal musicals, including Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949) and The Sound of Music (1959), most of which were filmed (with varying degrees of success).
MGM did not adapt any of Hammerstein’s work with Rodgers, but did film The New Moon (written in 1927 with Romberg) twice, as it did with Rose-Marie. The studio made one of the several versions of Show Boat. Hammerstein songs were also featured in The Night is Young , The Great Waltz and the Romberg biopic Deep in My Heart.
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Sigmund Romberg
Zsigmund Rosenberg (1887-1951) was a Hungarian-born composer and one of the most celebrated composers of operettas for the American stage.
Romberg arrived in New York in 1909 and eventually found work playing the piano in cafes and restaurants. He published a few songs and came to the attention of the Shubert brothers, who commissioned him to write material for their Broadway revues. He wrote for a number of shows starring Al Jolson.
In the 1920s, Romberg wrote three classic operettas in the Viennese style–The Student Prince (1924), The Desert Song (1926) and The New Moon (1928)–working with various lyricists, including Oscar Hammerstein II. He also wrote film scores and adapted his own work for the screen.
MGM made two versions of New Moon (dropping the definite article) and also adapted Rosalie, Maytime and The Student Prince. He also contributed music to The Night is Young and The Girl of the Golden West.
In 1954, Romberg was the subject of an MGM musical-biopic, Deep in My Heart, which drew extensively on his back catalogue.
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Cyril Hume
Former journalist and occasional novelist Cyril Joseph Hume (1900-1966) had a fairly workaday career as a Hollywood screenwriter. The high point of the 1930s was adapting Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) and contributing to several of its sequels, and co-writing Flying Down to Rio (1933).
Then, in 1956, came Hume’s annus mirabilis. He wrote the screenplay for the science-fiction classic Forbidden Planet, and followed it up by co-writing the estimable Nicholas Ray picture Bigger Than Life.
Early in his career, Hume contributed dialogue to New Moon.
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New Moon (1930)
The Crew
Jack Conway Director Sam Wood Director (uncredited) Sylvia Thalberg Adaptation Frank Butler Adaptation Cyril Hume Dialogue Sigmund Romberg Composer Oscar Hammerstein II Lyricist Herbert Stothart Composer Clifford Grey Lyricist William Axt Composer Paul Bern Producer Oliver T Marsh Cinematographer Margaret Booth Editor Cedric Gibbons Art Director George Westmore Makeup Artist Douglas Shearer Sound Recording Director -
Hedwiga Reicher
Hedwig [sic] Reicher (1884-1971) was a German actor who made her Broadway debut in 1909. Two years later she played Ellida in the American premiere of Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea (1888).
Reicher did not make her first screen appearance until 1925, and only ever had small roles in about twenty films. Her most prominent part was playing Janet Gaynor’s mother in Frank Borzage’s Lucky Star (1929).
The following year, she had a bit part in New Moon.
In 1913, Reicher played Columbia, the personification of the United States, in the allegorical tableau featured in the Woman Suffrage Procession held in Washington DC.
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Nina Quartero
Gladys Quartaro (1908-85) was a New York-born Italian whose Mediterranean looks led to a career playing characters named Consuelo, Maria, Lola, Anita, Chiquita and Rosita.
Quartero made her debut aged 18 with a bit part in D W Griffith’s The Sorrows of Satan (1926). One of her more prominent roles was with John Wayne in Arizona (1931), playing Conchita. She acted for about seventeen years, making her final appearance (again with Wayne, but this time as Carmencita) in The Lady Takes a Chance (1943). She retired after marrying her third husband.
Nina Quartero made a brief appearance in the first New Moon.
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David Mir
A 1931 newspaper article described Vladimir Lasareff (1886-1962) as a “former prince of royal Russian Blood [who] today earns a livelihood in slapstick comedy roles”.
Mir, who was cousin to the prince who murdered Rasputin, had fled Russia during the October Revolution. Finding himself in Hollywood, he renewed a pre-Revolution acquaintance with the writer Elinor Glyn and was given a part in His Hour (1924), which she wrote and directed with King Vidor. This meant John Gilbert had to play a Russian nobleman alongside the real thing.
Mir worked on a number of other Glyn pictures, even designing costumes for The Only Thing (1925).
Mir worked steadily as a supporting player during the last years of silent cinema, but the parts began to dry up after the introduction of sound. His last appearance was a bit in Artists and Models Abroad (1938).
In 1930, Mir was probably the only genuine Russian aboard the New Moon.
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Lew Meehan
James Llewellyn Meehan (1890-1951) began his film career in 1919 and was in nearly 250 pictures, mostly without credit. The majority of these were westerns, though generally of the ‘B’ kind; the rare exceptions included Cimarron (1931), Annie Oakley (one of eight westerns he made in 1935) and Fritz Lang’s The Return of Frank James (1940).
The 1930 version of New Moon was Meehan’s sole appearance in an MGM musical.
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Babe London
Anyone who grew up watching Laurel and Hardy shorts on television would recognize Jean Glover (1901-80) as Dulcy, who struggles against all the odds (plus Stan) to elope with Ollie in Our Wife (1931).
London had made her screen debut aged 18, and made over fifty silent pictures, working with Chaplin, Keaton, Langdon and Fields. Most of her roles focussed on her size. When health issues in the 1940s forced her to lose a lot of weight, the quality of the parts offered declined.
She continued acting in small roles until Sex Kittens Go to College in 1960. Then, in the 1960s, she developed a second career as an artist. Her paintings of silent stars became very popular, and she put on a solo exhibition called ‘From Pratfalls to Portraits’.
Babe London appeared in two Metro musicals, the first New Moon and No Leave, No Love.
