The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Rosalie

  • Frances Marion

    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.

  • Blanche Sewell

    Blanche Irene Sewell (1898-1949) died far too young, but had become one of the most talented of all Hollywood editors and a seminal influence on the MGM musical style . After training under pioneer Viola Lawrence, Sewell became a full-fledged editor at MGM in 1925 and spent the rest of her career there.

    She was the sister-in-law of Walt Disney, and it is generally accepted that she tutored him on the principles of editing and was very influential, in particular, on the form of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

    Sewell cut some of Metro’s most memorable pictures of the 1930s, including Grand Hotel, Red Dust and Queen Christina. In the 1940s, she edited twenty films, fourteen of which were musicals. 

    Sewell’s involvement with musicals began in 1930 with Children of Pleasure, after which she cut Naughty Marietta, Broadway Melody of 1936, Rose-Marie, Born to Dance, Broadway Melody of 1938, Rosalie and Listen Darling.

    In 1939, Sewell was chosen to edit The Wizard of Oz, and it was claimed that this was in the hope she could bring to it some of the magic that Disney had produced in Snow White.

    After this cameBroadway Melody of 1940, Go West, Ziegfeld Girl, Ship Ahoy, Panama Hattie, Seven Sweethearts, Du Barry Was a Lady, Best Foot Forward, Bathing Beauty, Easy to Wed, It Happened in Brooklyn, Fiesta andThe Pirate. Sewell’s last work, shortly before her death, was on Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

  • Sidney Bracey

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    Sidney Bracy [sic] (1877-1942) was a stage actor in his native Australia before moving to America and commencing his film career in 1909. Later in life he tended to be cast as authority figures and servants, including upwards of 54 butlers and a variety of valets and chauffeurs. 

    Four of Bracey’s MGM musical appearances were as butlers: Children of Pleasure, A Lady’s Morals, Hollywood Party and San Francisco. He also showed up uncredited in Broadway to Hollywood, The Firefly and Rosalie.

  • Herbert Stothart

    Herbert Pope Stothart (1885-1949) is a composer whose name is less familiar today than, say, Dimitri Tiomkin or Max Steiner, but in Hollywood’s golden age he was ranked alongside them for his work at MGM.

    Stothart had a successful career writing stage musicals, most notably Rose-Marie, but was invited to join Metro in 1929. He signed a contract and stayed there for the rest of his life. 

    Scores by Stothart were prominent in some of the studio’s most important pictures of the 1930s and 40s. These included Queen Christina (1933), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Camille (1936), The Good Earth (1937), Pride and Prejudice (1940), Mrs Miniver (1942), They Were Expendable (1945) and The Yearling (1946). In all, Stothart wrote over 100 scores.

    Stothart worked on many of MGM’s musicals. He and Clifford Grey wrote the songs for Devil-May-Care and contributed numbers to Montana Moon, The Rogue Song, In Gay Madrid, The Florodora Girl, Call of the Flesh, New Moon and Madam Satan. 

    He worked with other lyricists on A Lady’s Morals, The Cuban Love Song, Here Comes the Band, Maytime, The Firefly (composing ‘The Donkey Serenade’), Broadway Serenade, Balalaika, The Chocolate Soldier and I Married an Angel.

    Stothart was the musical director on some of these films and also on The Cat and the Fiddle, Lubitsch’s The Merry Widow, The Night is Young, Naughty Marietta, Reckless, San Francisco, Rosalie, The Girl of the Golden West, Sweethearts, The Wizard of Oz (picking up an Oscar), New Moon, Bitter Sweet, Rio Rita, Thousands Cheer, Ziegfeld Girl, Cairo, Thousands Cheer, Kismet, The Unfinished Dance. Musical direction usually involved writing incidental music.

    And, of course, Metro produced two versions of Stothart’s greatest stage success, Rose-Marie, and he worked on the first version.

  • Albertina Rasch

    Albertina Rasch (1891-1967) was an important component of early MGM musicals. She provided dance direction for seven pictures, which normally featured her eponymous ballet troupe, as well as acting in two others.

    Rasch trained at the State Opera House in Vienna, and pursued a career there before relocating to the United States when she was around 18. She was involved in spectacular productions at the 5,000-seat New York Hippodrome and performed as prima ballerina with a number of companies. Rasch also acquired vaudeville experience.

    In the early twenties she established the Albertina Rasch Dancers and played a part in the development of syncopated American Ballet such as ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ (1925).

    At MGM, Rasch developed the insertion of ‘ballet spectacles’ into the studio’s musicals, something she had begun on Broadway. She and her dancers first appeared in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, which was followed by Devil-May-Care, Broadway Melody of 1936 (the ‘Lucky Star’ ballet involving Eleanor Powell), Rosalie, The Girl of the Golden West, The Great Waltz and Sweethearts. She also worked on the abandoned The March of Time.

    Rasch acted in The Rogue Song and appeared without credit in The Firefly. 

    Rasch was married to composer Dimitri Tiomkin.

  • George Magrill

    George Magrill (1900-52) was a bit-part player and occasional stunt performer whose work spanned cute cartoon animals and a range of henchmen, hooligans and thugs. When you accumulate around 500 films on your cv, it’s inevitable that some of them will be MGM musicals; in Magrill’s case, thirteen of them.

    Magrill began with Marianne in 1929 and ended with Three Little Words in 1950. In between came New Moon, The Merry Widow, The Bohemian Girl, San Francisco, Rosalie, The Great Waltz, New Moon (again), Meet the People, Music for Millions, Yolanda and the Thief and Good News.    

  • Beatrice Hagen

    Beatrice Hagen (1917-99) claimed a minor place in film history by providing the voice of Snow White in the French version of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). As well as being a Disney voice actor (she played Mickey’s nephews), she was a ubiquitous chorus girl in musicals from a number of studios.

    For MGM, Hagen made uncredited appearances in The Broadway Melody, Hollywood Party, The Merry Widow, Naughty Marietta, Broadway Melody of 1936, The Great Ziegfeld, Born to Dance, Maytime, Broadway Melody of 1938, Rosalie, Ziegfeld Girl, Babes on Broadway, Thousands Cheer, The Harvey Girls and Texas Carnival. 

  • Leonard Smith

    Leonard Smith (1894-1947) photographed his first film in 1915 and spent most of his career at Metro. He was nominated four times for an Academy Award, finally winning for The Yearling shortly before his death. Smith was best known for his Technicolor work, but most of the thirteen musicals he worked on were in black and white. 

    In the 1929-30 period Smith shot So This Is College, They Learned About Women and Free and Easy. 

    After a seven-year break he worked uncredited on A Day at the Races and Rosalie, photographed Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, then shot the Marx Brothers next two pictures, At the Circus and Go West.

    There followed Ship Ahoy and uncredited work on I Married an Angel and Seven Sweethearts. Finally, Smith photographed Best Foot Forward and Broadway Rhythm in colour.

  • Max Davidson

    Max Davidson (1875-1950) was a German-born actor who found regular work in Hollywood as comedic Jews, including a rare lead role in Pleasure Before Business (1927).

    Davidson has a bit in So This Is College as Moe Levine, the bemused tailor at the other end of Eddie’s fake call to a girl. He also made uncredited appearances in The Cat and the Fiddle and Rosalie.

  • Oliver T Marsh

    Oliver Taylor Marsh (1892-1941) was an MGM company man for most of his career, and arguably achieved his greatest successes with some of the nineteen musicals he photographed, most of which were directed by Robert Z Leonard and W S Van Dyke.

    Marsh’s earliest efforts were Marianne, In Gay Madrid and The Florodora Girl. He protographed the 1930 New Moon and also worked uncredited on the 1940 remake. He returned to the genre after the 1932 hiatus and shot Dancing Lady. The following year he worked with Lubitsch on The Merry Widow and moved immediately from the sublime to the sublimely ridiculous Laurel and Hardy in Babes in Toyland.

    Marsh photographed the Oscar-winning The Great Ziegfeld and the destruction of San Francisco in the film of the same name. Maytime was the first of his five MacDonald-Eddy operettas, and he also worked with MacDonald on The Firefly and with Eddy on Rosalie. The Girl of the Golden West was followed by an Academy Award, with Allen Davey, for their Technicolor work on Sweethearts. 

    Following the ridiculous Ice Follies of 1939, Marsh was with Jeanette MacDonald again for Broadway Serenade. He rounded off his career with Broadway Melody of 1940, Bitter Sweet (again Oscar-nominated for Technicolor) and Lady Be Good, made shortly before his untimely death.

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