Robert Watson Knucher (1888-1965) started out in vaudeville as a teenager, and also toured the United States with a travelling medicine show. He moved up through appearing in shows at Coney Island, to a Broadway debut in 1918, where he continued to work.
Watson made his first film in 1925 in That Royle Girl, a minor work by D W Griffith. He went on to appear, usually uncredited, in around ninety pictures, including: China Seas (1935), Captains Courageous (1937), The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1943, and one of nine pictures in which he played Adolf Hitler), The Big Clock (1948, and a rare credited role as one of the employees at Janoth Publications), A Foreign Affair (1948, and Hitler again) and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962, his last film and playing Hitler).
Bobby Watson acted in five MGM musicals, though he was credited only in the first, playing the press agent Thompson in Going Hollywood. The uncredited appearances were in Born to Dance, Singin’ in the Rain (as the diction coach in ‘Moses Supposes’), The Band Wagon and Deep in my Heart.
Of all Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s great musical stars, Frederick Austerlitz (1899-1987) was technically the first. He did not star for the studio until 1940, but he made his first appearance seven years earlier, in Dancing Lady, playing himself. He stands alongside Gene Kelly as the two greatest dancer-choreographers in cinema.
After a very successful stage career, dancing with his sister Adele, Fred Astaire sought a Hollywood career after Adele got married and retired. He was 34 when he signed with RKO, who immediately loaned him to MGM, for Dancing Lady.
In the years that followed, Astaire and a new partner, Ginger Rogers, made nine pictures at RKO, a number of which are considered the high points of the 1930s musical. Astaire innovated in a number of areas, not least his insistence that dances be photographed with full-length shots, without cutaways to the face or feet.
When the Rogers partnership ended in 1939 with The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, Astaire starred for the first time at MGM, dancing with Eleanor Powell in Broadway Melody of 1940.
Then came perhaps Astaire’s most successful post-Rogers collaboration, when he danced in two pictures with the much-underrated Rita Hayworth at Columbia. He was back at MGM in 1945, dancing with Gene Kelly for the only time in Ziegfeld Follies, then starring in Vincente Minnelli’s strange Yolanda and the Thief.
After an attempted retirement, Astaire was lured back to MGM to replace the injured Gene Kelly in Easter Parade, after which he was reunited with Rogers in The Barkeleys of Broadway. He made five more musicals at Metro during the next ten years: Three Little Words, Royal Wedding (in which he danced on the ceiling), The Belle of New York (in which he danced on clouds), The Band Wagon (in which he and Cyd Charisse performed ‘Dancing in the Dark’ for the ages) and Silk Stockings (the final film in which he danced like Fred Astaire).
Astaire turned to straight acting from 1959, with the exception of Finian’s Rainbow (1968), where he anguished over Francis Ford Coppola’s inept style of shooting dance numbers. He made his final film in 1981.
Canadian Glen Walters (1901-97) made one of her earliest appearances with Greta Garbo in Flesh and the Devil (1936). Her final acting role was in the television series Kung Fu (1973). You do not get careers like that any more.
In close to 100 film appearances, Walters would seem to have gained only one role with an onscreen credit, in Henry King’s She Goes to War (1929), and, for some unknown reason, in the only surviving version of the picture, only her first name is given. But she was an exceptionally tall woman, and it is unmistakably her.
For this reason, it is usually easy to spot Walters in her background roles in films such as The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Swamp Water (1941), The Southerner (1942), Unconquered (1947), All the King’s Men (1947), Adam’s Rib (1949) and The Night of the Hunter (1955).
Walters appeared in three MGM musicals: Stage Mother, Summer Stock and, most noticeably, in the ‘A Shine on Your Shoes’ number in The Ban Wagon.
Edwin Booth Willis (1893-1963) worked on the design of over 800 MGM pictures, in a career lasting a little over thirty years. He was nominated for Academy Awards 32 times, and won on eight occasions. In broad terms, Willis was an art director, but his specialism was set decoration and the bulk of his credits were in this capacity.
After working as an art director for Tiffany Pictures in the 1920s, Willis worked exclusively for Metro, obtaining three types of credit: Associate Art Director (AAD), Interior Decorations (ID) and Set Decorator (SD). He did early work as SD on Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925).
Willis worked on some of the studio’s major critical and commercial successes, including Queen Christina (1933, for ID), The Thin Man (1934, as AAD), Anna Karenina (1935, as AAD, Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936, as AAD), Camille (1936, as AAD), The Good Earth (1937, as AAD), Captains Courageous (1937, as AAD), Boys’ Town (1938, as AAD), The Women (1939), Ninotchka (1939, as SD), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Waterloo Bridge (1940), Pride and Prejudice (1940), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Blossoms in the Dust (1941, winning an Oscar), Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1941), Woman of the Year (1942), Mrs Miniver (1942), Lassie Come Home (1943), Madame Curie (1943), Gaslight (1944, winning an Oscar), John Ford’s They Were Expendable (1944), The Yearling (1946, winning an Oscar), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), State of the Union (1948), Act of Violence (1948), Intruder in the Dust (1949), Little Women (1949, winning an Oscar), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The Red Badge of Courage (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful 1952, winning an Oscar), Julius Caesar (1953, winning an Oscar), Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956, winning an Oscar), Forbidden Planet (1956) and Lust for Life (1956).
Willis had a particularly extensive collaboration with Vincente Minnelli, decorating most of his musical and non-musical pictures
Edwin B Willis contributed to 153 musicals, around 70 per cent of MGM’s total output. It could be argued that this makes him the single most influential figure on the look of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical. The pictures were:
James Kendall Brock (1901-63) was a sound recording engineer who spent most of his career at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and worked on sixteen musicals during that time.
Brock began, under the supervision of Douglas Shearer, on A Lady’s Morals. Here, as for most pictures, he was uncredited.
Barnes was the sound mixer on The Merry Widow and A Night at the Opera, then sound engineer on The Great Ziegfeld, Maytime, The Girl of the Golden West, Du Barry Was a Lady, On an Island With You, Easter Parade, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, The Band Wagon, Easy to Love, The Student Prince, Interrupted Melody, Merry Andrew and Gigi.
George Frear Runyon (1873-1964) made his stage debut aged 16 and achieved success in vaudeville doing comedy double acts with both his first and second wives. The act can be seen in a Vitaphone short called An Everyday Occurrence (1929).
Mack made his first film in 1925 and racked up well over 400 appearances. He started out in featured supporting roles, but the quality of his parts declined in the talking era.
Nonetheless, Mack made uncredited appearances in no fewer than twenty-two MGM musicals between 1930 and 1956: Love in the Rough, Going Hollywood, A Night at the Opera, San Francisco, A Day at the Races, Broadway Melody of 1938, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, Rio Rita, Thousands Cheer, Broadway Rhythm, Two Girls and a Sailor, Thrill of a Romance, Ziegfeld Follies, The Barkeleys of Broadway, Nancy Goes to Rio, The Great Caruso, The Band Wagon, Kiss Me Kate, Easy to Love, Athena, The Glass Slipper and The Opposite Sex.
Carleton Mortimer LeViness (1884-1964) first appeared as the Tragedian in a silent version of Nicholas Nickleby in 1912 and his last appearance was an uncredited bit as a man in the hallway of a newspaper office in The Great Race in 1963. He was in hundreds of films, mostly uncredited, and even spent the period 1914-16 as a director. It was an unobtrusively spectacular career.
Leviness’s MGM musical appearances were The Broadway Melody, Hollywood Party, Reckless (in all three he played a guest at a party), Nobody’s Baby (for a change of pace, he played an elevator passenger), A Day at the Races (another party guest), Ship Ahoy (as a passenger), Presenting Lily Mars (as a tired man–must have been all the partying), Two Girls and a Sailor (nightclub patron), Music for Millions (theatregoer), Thrill of a Romance (hotel guest), Yolanda and the Thief (as a man who says tally-ho), On an Island With You (desk clerk), The Barkeleys of Broadway (guest at a country house), In the Good Old Summertime (patronizing a supper club), The Toast of New Orleans (eating in a restaurant this time), The Great Caruso (opera-goer, naturally), Small Town Girl (back to being a party guest), The Band Wagon (an investor), Easy to Love (maiitre d’), The Student Prince (churchgoer), Athena (another party guest) and Ten Thousand Bedrooms (another nightclub patron).
Twenty-two films: Carl M Leviness definitely did his bit for the MGM musical.
No one had a longer connection with MGM musicals than Arthur Freed (1894-1974), starting at the very beginning with The Broadway Melody in 1929 and ending in 1960 with Bells Are Ringing. Of course, his role changed significantly during that period.
Freed had not been working long as a lyricist at MGM when he and composer Nacio Herb Brown were assigned the task of producing the first bespoke score for a film musical. Following the success of The Broadway Melody, Freed’s songs were a mainstay of the studio’s musical output for a quarter of a century. He and Brown contributed numbers to The Hollywood Revue of 1929, Marianne, Lord Byron of Broadway, Montana Moon, Dancing Lady, Going Hollywood, Student Tour, Broadway Melody of 1936, San Francisco, Broadway Melody of 1938, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, Ice Follies of 1939, Babes in Arms, Two Girls on Broadway, Hullabaloo, Little Nellie Kelly, Lady Be Good, Born to Sing, Presenting Lily Mars, Meet Me in St Louis, Three Little Words, Pagan Love Song, Singin’ in the Rain and The Affairs of Dobie Gillies
He also worked without Brown on the 1930 Good News and on A Lady’s Morals, The Prodigal, Hollywood Party, A Night at the Opera, Strike Up the Band, Babes on Broadway, Bathing Beauty, Anchors Aweigh, Ziegfeld Follies, Yolanda and the Thief and Love Me or Leave Me.
During the 1930s Freed spent time on Metro’s sound stages, watching the staging of his songs and learning about the craft of creating film musicals. He also devoted time to ingratiating himself with studio head Louis B Mayer, making known his ambition to become involved in the production side of the process. Finally, in 1938, Mayer decided to give Freed his chance.
Arthur Freed initiated the filming of The Wizard of Oz and was its de facto producer, although only credited as associate producer; Mayer safeguarded the project by appointing the more experienced Mervyn LeRoy as producer.
Having shown what he could do, Freed was made a full producer and worked on 39 musicals and a handful of non-musicals during the next thirty years. The musicals were Babes in Arms, Little Nellie Kelly, Strike Up the Band, Lady Be Good, Babes on Broadway, For Me and My Gal, Panama Hattie, Cabin in the Sky, Du Barry Was a Lady, Girl Crazy, Best Foot Forward, Meet Me in St Louis, Yolanda and the Thief, The Harvey Girls, Ziegfeld Follies, Till the Clouds Roll By, Good News, Easter Parade, The Pirate, Summer Holiday, Words and Music, The Barkleys of Broadway, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, On the Town, Annie Get Your Gun, Pagan Love Song, An American in Paris, Royal Wedding, Show Boat, The Belle of New York, Singin’ in the Rain, The Band Wagon, Brigadoon, It’s Always Fair Weather, Kismet, Invitation to the Dance, Silk Stockings, Gigi and Bells Are Ringing.
The Freed Unit became MGM royalty and made most of the musicals upon which the studio’s current reputation rests. Opinions vary as to the extent to which Freed can take credit for this achievement, and the unit did produce a few duds. But, at the very least, Arthur Freed was the catalyst for a body of work of unrivalled sophistication and artistry.
