The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Assistant Directors

  • Joseph M Newman

    Joseph Max Newman (1909-2006) was a highly-respected assistant director who worked his way up to become a mediocre director.

    Newman started out in the film industry as an office boy, then a clerk. His first assignments as assistant director were in 1933, when worked on eight MGM productions, including Dinner at Eight, directed by George Cukor. He worked for Cukor again on David Copperfield (1934), for which he was nominated for the Assistant Director Academy Award.

    MGM allowed him to start directing shorts in 1938, alongside his work as AD on features. His first full-length picture was Northwest Rangers (1942), Metro’s version of a ‘B’ movie.

    Newman directed around 45 low-budget features before moving to television. His most high-profile picture This Island Earth (1955), though its more interesting aspects are attributable to Jack Arnold, who reshot some of Newman’s footage.

    Seven MGM musicals had Newman as AD: Stage Mother, Going Hollywood, The Merry Widow, Rose-Marie, San Francisco (another Oscar nomination), Maytime and The Firefly. Some sources claim that he directed the famous  ‘Donkey Serenade’ sequence in The Firefly.

  • John Waters

    John Waters (1893-1965) was one of the few people (men) to receive an Academy Award for Best Assistant Director; it was only presented for five years.

    Waters joined the film industry as a young man, and many of his credits from the 1910s are thought to be missing. The earliest suggested by IMDb is The Shadow of a Doubt, produced by the Equitable Motion Pictures Corporation, which was based in New York. 

    In 1926, Famous Players-Lasky signed Waters as a director, and he made about a dozen pictures for them over the next couple of years, functioning as producer on at least one, Two Flaming Youths (1927).

    Waters joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1928, and stayed for nearly thirty years. Pictures he worked on included Viva Villa! (1934), Ninotchka (1939, as second unit director) and The Desperate Hours (1955, as second unit director).

    Waters was AD on Broadway to Hollywood and second unit director on Let Freedom Ring, The Big Store and Annie Get Your Gun.

  • 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.

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial
RSS
Facebook
X (Twitter)
WhatsApp
Copy link
URL has been copied successfully!