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.
Karl Max Schneefuss (1892-1962), who worked under the name Charles Maxwell, started his career at MGM as assistant to William Axt, compositing additional music for Marianne.
Most of Maxwell’s career in musicals was spent as an orchestrator, in which capacity he worked on The Cuban Love Song, Dancing Lady,The Cat and the Fiddle,The Merry Widow, Naughty Marietta, Here Comes the Band , A Night at the Opera, Rose-Marie,The Great Ziegfeld, San Francisco, The Firefly and New Moon.
The costumes he designed for The Wizard of Oz, which included the iconic ruby slippers, were unquestionably the high point of the career of Adrian Adolph Greenburg (1903-59), known simply as Adrian. But his designs were included in hundreds of MGM features, mostly between 1928 and 1941, including 34 other musicals. These included eleven Jeanette MacDonald pictures: The Cat and the Fiddle, The Merry Widow, Naughty Marietta, Rose-Marie, San Francisco, Maytime, The Firefly, The Girl of the Golden West, Sweethearts, New Moon and Bitter Sweet.
Adrian was very active during 1929-31, designing for Marianne, Devil-May-Care,The Rogue Song, Montana Moon, In Gay Madrid, Madam Satan, New Moon andThe Cuban Love Song.
Dancing Lady reunited Adrian with Joan Crawford a year after the white mousseline de soie dress he created for her in Letty Linton (1932) was copied commercially and sold over 500,000 units.
Going Hollywood, Hollywood Party, Reckless, Broadway Melody of 1936, The Great Ziegfeld, Born to Dance, Broadway Melody of 1938, The Great Waltz and Honolulu led up to the triumph ofThe Wizard of Oz. Adrian then worked on Balalaika, Broadway Melody of 1940, Ziegfeld Girl andThe Chocolate Soldier before leaving MGM in 1941 to open his own fashion business.
He continued to freelance for a variety of studios and returned to Metro for a final musical, the aptly-named Lovely to Look At.
The Boy Wonder Irving Thalberg (1899-1937) was the creative engine room of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from the studio’s creation in 1925 until his early death. In twelve years he supervised over 400 pictures, including virtually all of its prestige productions, without ever choosing to take an on-screen credit.
Thalberg had some level of involvement with most of MGM’s musical output from The Broadway Melody in 1929 until A Day at the Races, on which he was working at the time of his death; it was he who brought the Marx Brothers to Metro, reviving their flagging careers at the cost of comedic purity.
Thalberg effectively launched the musical genre as the driving force behind The Broadway Melody. He showed his inclination for experimentation-within-limits by okaying Hallelujah even though King Vidor warned him it would make no money.
Thalberg brought Grace Moore and Lawrence Tibbet from the Metropolitan Opera and gifted stardom to Jeanette MacDonald. He persuaded Luise Rainer to take the small role in The Great Ziegfeld that won her an Oscar.
Although business-oriented, Thalberg was prepared to devote time and money to producing high-quality work, and he made profits as a result. His impact on the early development of the MGM musical is impossible to quantify, but a philosophy of excellence can certainly be seen in the work that followed, especially in the golden age of the early 1950s.
