The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: The Cuban Love Song

  • Purv Pullen

    Some careers cannot be categorized in a few words. Almy Purves Pullen (1909-92) imitated birds and animals. But he did it in the most impressive way possible.

    After various jobs, including a stint as a radio presenter, Pullen started as a voice actor, providing bird and animal noises for Walt Disney, in 1931. He whistled for Cock Robin in Who Killed Cock Robin? (1935), and worked on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). As a change of pace, he played a whistling saw in Pinocchio (1940), and was back to birds for Sleeping Beauty (1959). During this period, as well as providing sounds for Disney shorts, he also worked for Max Fleischer on Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons.

    Pullen provided the voice of Cheeta in Tarzan pictures and was a coyote in DeMille’s The Crusades (1935).

    In 1945, Pullen began working with Spike Jones and his City Slickers, and was renamed Dr Horatio Q Birdbath (the ‘Q’ stood for quinine, because he was hard to take). And on the side, Pullen had a nightclub act as a ventriloquist, with a dummy named Johnny and an invisible dog.

    Purv Pullen’s connection with MGM musicals is that, in 1931, he provided monkey noises for The Cuban Love Song. 

  • Harry Strang

    Harry R Strang (1892-1972) had the sort of career Hollywood was built on: thirty-six years and more than 500 appearances as a tough-guy  character actor.

    Strang trained at AADA and made his professional debut on the stage in 1910. His career in the theatre was interrupted by the First World War, in which he served with the marines. He then returned to the stage, working much of the time with stock companies.

    Harry Strang was one of the many stage actors who found work in Hollywood after the introduction of sound, and he was frequently cast in military roles that would have benefitted from his own wartime experience. His many appearances included parts in Hell’s Angels (1930), The Seas Beneath (1931, becoming part of John Ford’s Stock Company), What Price Hollywood? (1932), King Kong (1933), The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), Gone With the Wind (1939), Saboteur (1942), Laura (1944), Detour (1945), The Lady from Shanghai (1945), White Heat (1949), Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956) and The Last Hurrah (1958).

    Strang was in five Metro musicals: The Cuban Love Song (as a marine sergeant), San Francisco, Born to Dance, New Moon and Thousands Cheer. 

    When you have made eight films with John Ford and also worked with Hawks, Capra, Lang and Welles, you can definitely say you have had a career. A very active career in small parts was lucrative enough for Strang to maintain two homes after he retired in 1965, where he could pursue life as an avid birdwatcher.

  • George Kuma

    Mystery surrounds the actor named George Kuma. According to IMDb, he played the “Japanese Tattoo Artist” at the beginning of The Cuban Love Song. There are no other credits, but it is stated that he was born in Hawaii in 1900. The AFI Catalog concurs about Cuban Love Song, but cites one other appearance, in the same year, a Fu Manchu tale called Daughter of the Dragon (1931).

    The United States Federal Census for 1930 certainly confirms that a George Kuma, born in Hawaii in 1900, was living in California at the time of the census, so he could have made two screen appearances in the following year. Or he might not have. 

  • John George

    Four feet and two inches tall, Tutie (or possibly Tufie) Fatella (1898-1968) emigrated with his family from Syria to the United States in around 1911. By the age of 18, he was in Hollywood, starting out on a career as a character actor that would last almost fifty years and about 250 performances.

    George’s first film is believed to have been Bobbie of the Ballet (1916), which starred Lon Chaney. In the 1920s he worked regularly with both Chaney and director Tod Browning, being particularly memorable as Cojo in the macabre The Unknown (1927). He also featured in Rex Ingram’s The Prisoner of Zenda (1922) and Scaramouche (1923).

    In the sound era, George played a scientist in both Browning’s Dracula and its Spanish version, Drácula (both 1931). He renewed his acquaintance with Bela Lugosi in Edgar G Ulmer’s The Black Cat (1934). Later appearances included The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), Canyon Passage (1946) and a cameo in the Lon Chaney biopic Man of a Thousand Faces (1957). George’s last big screen appearance was in One-Eyed Jacks (1963), but he continued working in television. 

    Amongst John George’s many roles were eleven in MGM musicals, all uncredited: The Cuban Love Song, Babes in Toyland, Rose-Marie, San Francisco, Let Freedom Ring, At the Circus, Du Barry Was a Lady, Two Sisters from Boston, Big City, Singin’ in the Rain and Deep in My Heart.

  • Palau Brothers

    Orquesta Hermanos Palau consisted of a core of five brothers: Manolo, Felipe, Luis, Rafael and Raimundo (dates all unknown), and was one of the most popular dance bands in Cuba during the 1930s and 40s. They were, in fact, part of a musical dynasty, dating back to the 1850s and through to today.

    In 1931, the band travelled to Hollywood with Ernesto Lecuona, to perform in MGM’s The Cuban Love Song.

  • Enesto Lecuona

    Ernesto Lecuona y Casado (1896-1963) was a popular and prolific Cuban pianist and composer. Something of a prodigy, he wrote his first song aged 11, and graduated from the National Conservatory of Havana when he was seventeen.

    Lecuona travelled the world as a concert pianist, as well as writing around 600 compositions. He wrote film music, but only made one film appearance, performing ‘The Peanut Vendors Song ‘, with the Palau Brothers Orchestra, in The Cuban Love Song.

    Lecuona left Cuba for America after the 1959 revolution, before moving to Spain.

  • Philip Cooper

    Like many another child actor, the career of Philip Finis Cooper (1920-88) was short and sweet. He worked with top Hollywood directors, including Howard Hawks, Victor Felming and William A Wellman, but was in only six pictures, and only two credited roles.

    Cooper made his debut as the son found by Lawrence Tibbett at the end of The Cuban Love Song.

  • Hale Hamilton

    Hale Rice Hamilton (1880/83-1942) made his Broadway debut alongside James K Hackett in 1901. After making a couple of short films in 1915, he appeared in his first feature, The Winning of Beatrice (1918), for Metro Pictures. Until 1929, he maintained a dual career, on Broadway and in films. He was also an occasional dramatist.

    Hamilton was a character actor, usually credited in a featured role. His most notable appearance was probably as Tom Buchanan in the first screen version of The Great Gatsby (1926). He was also in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), playing Paul Muni’s brother.

    Hale Hamilton appeared in one MGM musical, The Cuban Love Song.

  • Louise Fazenda

    Actors who started out in silent comedies of the 1910s tended to accumulate a lot of titles in their IMDb entries. Louise Marie Fazenda (1895-1962), after one appearance in a western, made her first comedy short for Universal in 1913, and went on to accumulate over 260 credits.

    Fazenda moved to Mack Sennett at Keystone in 1915, where she came to specialize in slapstick country girls and rubes. She ran Mabel Normand a close second as the studio’s top female comedian, moving to the top when Normand left. Fazenda did a lot of work with Roscoe Arbuckle, Ben Turpin and Ford Sterling.

    Fazenda herself left Keystone in 1921 and spent some time in vaudeville. After returning to Hollywood, she worked for various studios and combined more serious films with comedies, rarely the star but always in prominent supporting roles. She did star, alongside W C Fields, in the 1928 production of Tillie’s Punctured Romance, and played Hilda in Michael Curtiz’s Noah’s Ark (also 1928).

    Fazenda married the Warner Bros executive Hal B Wallis in 1927 (his nickname around the lot became ‘the Prisoner of Fazenda’) and much of her work in the sound era was for the Warners. Her last film was The Old Maid (1939).

    Louise Fazenda made only one appearance in an MGM musical, but it was an excellent piece of work, as Jimmy Durante’s wife Elvira in The Cuban Love Song.

  • Karen Morley

    The Hollywood career of Mildred Linton (1909-2003) is a cause for both anger and celebration. It was ended suddenly by the wickedness of the House Un-American Activities Committee and its stool pigeons. But it was carried out on her own terms by a person of great integrity.

    Morley dropped out of UCLA to begin acting on the stage. This led to a job offer from MGM director Clarence Brown, and then a contract with the studio. She played a variety of roles, in films good and bad, working on eight pictures in 1931 alone, one of which was the understanding fiancée/wife in The Cuban Love Song. In a very different type of role, she was a big hit as the slinky and opportunistic Poppy in Scarface (1932).

    Socially and politically progressive, Morley sought out, as best she could as a contract player, roles that interested her, such as Pendie in Gabriel Over the White House (1933), and Mary in King Vidor’s Our Daily Bread (1934). She also refused parts she considered to be offensive.

    Morley was not cut out to be chattel at a studio and, declining the amorous inclinations of Louis B Mayer, she broke her contract with MGM and never signed another. It would be fair to say that the quality of her roles suffered.

    She spent some time away from Hollywood, working with the progressive Tobacco Workers’ Union in North Carolina. After returning to film work, she became one of the few progressive activists in the Screen Actors Guild. This, more than anything else, made her an obvious target for HUAC.

    At a hearing in 1952, Morley invoked the Fifth Amendment, refusing to confirm or deny that she had been a member of the Communist Party. Her career was then over. She never made another film, and even struggled to find stage work in the East. In 1954, much to her own amazement it would seem, she found herself the American Labor Party’ candidate for Lieutenant Governor of New York.

    Karen Morley lived to an advanced age, maintained her principles and, to the last, considered Elia Kazan a fink.  

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