The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Assistant Directors

  • Sandy Roth

    Sandy Roth

    Sanford Lewton Rothenberg (1887-1943) started out as an actor in some of Harold Lloyd’s Lonesome Luke pictures, and had a very minor career in occasional roles until 1933. 

    Roth arguably made a much greater mark as an assistant director at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, working on a number of the studio’s musicals. He first carried out that role in 1922, and went on to support Buster Keaton and Charles Reisner on Steamboat Bill Jr (1928). He was also AD on Frank Borzage’s The Mortal Storm (1940).

    Roth’s Metro musicals were The Hollywood Revue of 1929, Flying High, Student Tour, Everybody Sing, Go West, The Big Store, This Time for Keeps, Thousands Cheer and Bathing Beauty.

  • Charles Dorian

    Charles Dorian (1891-1942) was a vaudeville performer who acted in films between 1915 and 1920. 

    From 1920 onwards, Dorian worked as an assistant director, latterly at MGM, where he worked on The Rogue Song and Reckless.

    Dorian won an Academy Award in the Best Assistant Director category in 1934.

  • Jack Mintz

    Jack Mintz (1895-1983) had a varied career in the film world that took him from Monty Banks in 1926 to Troy Donahue in 1963.

    Mintz worked as an assistant director, including on MGM musicals Free and Easy and The Cuban Love Song. He was also a contributing writer on The Wizard of Oz and Presenting Lily Mars. He also worked from time to time as a dialogue coach and assistant to the producer.

    Mintz was, for a period in the 1940s, in charge of purchasing for Poverty Row studio Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), which must have involved handing budgets of dozens of dollars.

  • Robert A Golden

    Robert Joseph Anthony Golden (1897-1942) started out as an assistant director on Harold Lloyd pictures, including Dr Jack (1922) and Safety Last! (1923). He is also known to have worked as Lloyd’s double.

    Golden’s subsequent work as AD, often uncredited, included seven MGM musicals, beginning with Hallelujah in 1929. This was followed by Dancing Lady, The Great Ziegfeld, A Day at the Races, The Girl of the Golden West, The Great Waltz and Ziegfeld Girl.

    Golden directed one picture, a Polly Moran comedy called Honeymoon, in 1928.

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