Category: Films
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In Gay Madrid
In Gay Madrid is a strange title for a film that is almost entirely set in Santiago, over 300 miles from Madrid, typical of MGM’s cavalier attitude to naming its earliest musicals. It is a campus musical with a Spanish setting, like Good News with duelling.
The film reunited Ramon Novarro and Dorothy Jordan immediately after Devil-May-Care (they would work together once more in Call of the Flesh). Novarro was by now proving himself a very competent actor in talking pictures, though his accent sometimes throws off his line readings. His early scene with Claude King, playing his father, is nicely underplayed to comedic effect.
Ricardo (Ramon Novarro) enquires why Carmina (Dorothy Jordan) does not like him Jordan’s performance is less satisfying, all played on one note and with long pauses. But then most of her scenes are stolen by the much lovelier performances of Novarro and Beryl Mercer, playing her aunt.
The worst piece of casting is Lottice Howell as Goyita. Howell’s voice is okay, but she is nobody’s idea of a seductive nightclub singer. It is unsurprising that this was her last musical outing for MGM.
Robert Z Leonard’s direction is much more confident than it was in Marianne, with a less static camera. He continues the tendency, begun in Devil-My-Care, for Ramon Novarro’s musical films to be integrated. With the exception of Lotice Howell’s opening nightclub number, all of the songs are performed in non-theatrical settings to non-diegetic music, and arise naturally from the actions of the characters. All have lyrics that reflect on or develop the narrative.
One of the best sequences is the garden scene where Ricardo helps his friend (a large young man with the unlikely name of Corpulento) to serenade a girl. The action takes place within a large three-dimensional space and Leonard’s camera placement ensures that we always know where we are and whose point of view we are seeing.
Ricardo sings and plays while Corpulento (Bruce Coleman) mimes The Ahlert-Turk and Stothart-Grey partnerships provided the words and music, with the latter pair being joined by Xavier Cugat, who would later make a successful series of appearances in front of the camera.
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Xavier Cugat
Francesc d’Assís Xavier Cugat Mingall de Bru i Deulofeu (or Xavier Cugat i Mingall for short, 1900-1990), was one of the more idiosyncratic performers to work on musicals at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, reliably introducing an element of camp to every film he appeared in.
Born in Catalonia, Cugat and his family emigrated first to Cuba, and then to the United States in 1915. His beginnings in show business were as a classical violinist. He took time out to work as a cartoonist, and then formed his own band, which ended up performing at the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles. Specializing in Latin music, Cugat, clutching his signature chihuahua while conducting or performing, became known as the ‘King of Rumba’.
Cugat’s first involvement in a Metro musical was behind the scenes, working with Herbert Stothart and Clifford Grey on a couple of numbers for In Gay Madrid. Fourteen years later he made his debut on screen for Metro (having made a few musicals at Paramount), in Two Girls and a Sailor. Here, as on every other occasion, he played a fictionalized version of the band leader Xavier Cugat.
Cugat appeared in four Esther Williams vehicles: Bathing Beauty, On an Island with You, This Time for Keeps and Neptune’s Daughter. He also supported Jane Powell in Holiday in Mexico, A Date with Judy and Luxury Liner, and showed up in No Leave, No Love.
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Edwin Justus Mayer
Edwin Justus Mayer (1896-1960) was a journalist and occasional playwright who, quite enterprisingly, wrote an autobiography when he was 25 and had achieved very little. From 1927 to 1945 he worked on a number of Hollywood films; in his own words, “I never gave up the stage, the stage gave me up. The pictures gave me a living and the theatre wouldn’t. I see no shame in using your professional weapons to make a living.” His crowning achievement was his final screenplay, for Lubitsch’s To Be Or Not to Be (1945).
Mayer had earlier been one of the three writers credited with the script for In Gay Madrid.
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Salisbury Field
Edward Salisbury Fields (1878-1936) was, amongst other things, a popular playwright, several of whose comedies were adapted into films.
In the early 1930s Fields undertook writing projects for various Hollywood studios. Amongst these was a contribution to the screenplay for MGM’s In Gay Madrid.
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Robert Ober
Robert Howard Ober (1881-1950) was an actor with considerable stage experience when he started taking screen roles in the early 1920s. His most notable appearance was as John Gilbert’s brother in King Vidor’s The Big Parade (1925).
Although he never directed a film, Ober does appear to have been assigned some directorial tasks by MGM, one of which was to shoot retakes for In Gay Madrid after Robert Z Leonard had moved on to his next film.
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In Gay Madrid
Robert Z Leonard Director Robert Ober Director (uncredited) Bess Meredyth Dialogue and continuity Salisbury Field Dialogue and continuity Edwin Justus Mayer Dialogue and continuity Fred E Ahlert Composer Roy Turk Lyricist Herbert Stothart Composer Xavier Cugat Composer Clifford Grey Lyricist Robert Z Leonard Producer Oliver T Marsh Cinematographer William S Gray Editor Cedric Gibbons Art Director Douglas Shearer Sound Recording Director Ralph Shugart Sound Recording Engineer (uncredited) Adrian Costume Designer -
In Gay Madrid
Cast
Ramon Novarro Ricardo Dorothy Jordan Carmina Lottice Howell Goyita Claude King Marques de Castelar Eugenie Besserer Doña Generosa (as Eugenia Besserer) William V. Mong Rivas Beryl Mercer Doña Concha Nanci Price Jacinta Herbert Clark Octavio David Scott Ernesto George Chandler Enrique Bruce Coleman Corpulento Nicholas Caruso Carlos Tom Costello Man at Duel (uncredited) John Miljan Armada – the Torero (uncredited) Oscar Rudolph Student Trading Coat for Banquet (uncredited) Philip Sleeman Cantina Patron (uncredited) -
Philip Sleeman
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.
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Beryl Mercer
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.
