The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Cinematographers

  • Norbert Brodine

    Norbert F Brodine (1896-1970) had a forty-four year career as a cinematographer, working predominantly with Loretta Young in television for the last few years, for which he won an Emmy. He was credited on more than 130 pictures. 

    Having worked as an army photographer during the First World War, Brodine started out in Hollywood as a stills photographer, before shooting his first film for Goldwyn Pictures in 1919.

    Brodine worked prolifically throughout the 1920s and 30s, including repeatedly for Hal Roach. He shot Libeled Lady (1936) for MGM, as well as Topper (1937), Topper Takes a Trip (1938) and Topper Returns (1941).

    But Brodine did his best work after joining Twentieth Century-Fox in 1943: The House on 92nd Street (1945), 13 Rue Madeleine, Kiss of Death (both 1947) and The Desert Fox (1949) for Henry Hathaway; I Was a Male War Bride (1949) for Howard Hawks; and Thieves’ Highway (1949) for Jules Dassin.

    Brodine shot three MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Nobody’s Baby and Swiss Miss. In addition, he was the cinematographer on the French-language version of A Lady’s Morals, titled Jenny Lind and filmed on the same sets as the original in 1931.

  • Art Lloyd

    Arthur Raymond Lloyd (1897-1954) was a journeyman cinematographer who shot all of his 200 shorts (plus a handful of features) for the Hal Roach Studios.

    Lloyd was a regular on both Laurel and Hardy and the Our Gang pictures. He shot such classics as Laughing Gravy (1931), County Hospital, Towed in a Hole (both 1932) and Block-Heads (1938).

    He also shot all four of Laurel and Hardy’s operettas: The Devil’s Brother (with Hap Depew), Babes in Toyland, The Bohemian Girl and Swiss Miss. 

  • Hap Depew

    Ernest Depew (1887-1940) is believed to have started working in the film industry in the early 1910s. He made his debut as a cinematographer in 1921, and by 1925 was working for Mack Sennett, alongside a variety of minor studios. 

    One of Depew’s rare ‘A’ films for a top rank producer was the MGM/Roach production The Devil’s Brother, where he shared the cinematography credit with Art Lloyd.

  • George Barnes

    Lush is a word often applied (though not in the South Wales sense) to the work of cinematographer George Scott Barnes (1892-1953). His lighting of black-and-white film, combined with effortless tracking shots, made him an exemplar of the classical Hollywood style. He also served as a mentor to Glenn Toland, who further developed Barnes’s interest in dep focus.

    Barnes made his first film as cinematographer for the Thomas Ince Company, but was for many years a mainstay of Samuel Goldwyn Productions. He worked for a variety of studios during his career, and for many of the foremost directors, including Hitchcock (winning the Oscar for Rebecca [1940]), Frank Capra, Leo McCarey, Henry King, Billy Wilder, Cecil B DeMille and John Ford (for whom he shot the infamous Sex Hygiene [1942]).

    Barnes, shot one MGM musical, A Lady’s Morals.

  • Harold Rosson

    Harold G Rosson (1895-1988), commonly known as Hal, was one of Hollywood’s most prestigious cinematographers. He filmed over 150 pictures in a career spanning more than fifty years.

    Rosson began his career in 1908 as a teenager, acting bit-parts for the Vitagraph Studios in his native New York. He subsequently worked for Famous Players-Lasky as a general dogbody, then moved to Hollywood to work as a cinematographer for MGM’s predecessor, Metro Pictures.

    In the 1920s, Rosson frequently photographed Marion Davies, Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson. Then he signed a contract with MGM, where he spent the bulk of his career. He had ambitions to be a director, but studio executive Eddie Mannix told him he was far too good as a cameraman to ever be allowed to direct.

    Rosson shot Jean Harlow in four films, and was briefly married to her.

    Rosson photographed twelve MGM musicals, including two of the most venerated, The Wizard of Oz and Singin’ in the Rain. He started out with Madam Satan, claiming he learned more fromDeMille than anyone else in the business. He went on to shoot The Prodigal, The Cuban Love Song, The Cat and the Fiddle, No Leave, No Love, Living in a Big Way, On the Town, I Love Melvin and Dangerous When Wet. He also did uncredited work on The Chocolate Soldier. 

  • Charles Schoenbaum

    Charles Edgar Schoenbaum (1893-1951) was a hard-working cinematographer whose earliest credit seems to be working for Cecil B DeMille at Paramount in 1917, but who spent much of his career at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He was sometimes credited as Charles E Schoenbaum, and even C Edgar Schoenbaum.

    His work was not greatly celebrated–his sole Academy Award nomination was for Little Women in 1949–but he was valued for his work ethic.

    Schoenbaum worked on five MGM musicals over a twenty-year period, from The Rogue Song in 1930 to Duchess of Idaho in 1950. In between came Here Comes the Band and the second version of Good News. He was also drafted in by Rouben Mamouian to replace Charles Rosher on Summer Holiday. 

  • Percy Hilburn

    Percy Hilburn (1889-1946) had a career as a cinematographer lasting only from 1915 to 1931, but still managed to shoot over 70 pictures. Most notable amongst these was MGM’s Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), on which he was one of several DoPs. 

    During the remainder of his career at the studio Hilburn shot two musicals, Children of Pleasure and Good News.

  • William Daniels

    William H Daniels (1901-70) was one of the most eminent cinematographers working during Hollywood’s Golden Age. The American Cinematographer website refers to his “inconspicuously perfect execution”. Daniels’s career lasted fifty years, from silent cinema to the self-conscious kookiness of Move (1970).

    Daniels started out as a camera operator at Universal, but followed Erich Von Stroheim to MGM, where he shot Foolish Wives (1922), Greed and The Merry Widow (both 1925). He then, famously, became Greta Garbo’s cinematographer of choice, shooting sixteen of her pictures. 

    Daniels worked with many major directors, including Clarence Brown, Frank Borzage, Raoul Walsh, George Cukor, Anthony Mann, Ida Lupino and Jules Dassin  In 1950 he won an Oscar for Dassin’s The Naked City.

    Daniels was photographing musicals for MGM for over thirty years, starting with Montana Moon in 1930 and ending with Billy Rose’s Jumbo in 1962.  In between came Broadway to Hollywood, Naughty Marietta, Rose-Marie, Broadway Melody of 1938, New Moon, For Me and My Gal and Girl Crazy.

  • Henry Sharp

    Henry Thomas Sharp (1892-1966) became a cinematographer in 1920, and went on to become a favourite of Douglas Fairbanks. Films shot by Sharp included Don Q Son of Zorro (1925), The Black Pirate (1926), The Iron Mask (1929) and Fairbanks’s curio, Around the World with Douglas Fairbanks (1931). 

    Sharp also photographed The Marriage Circle (1924) for Ernst Lubitsch and Vidor’s The Crowd (1928)

    Henry Sharp’s two MGM musicals were Lord Byron of Broadway and \love in the Rough.

  • Ira H Morgan

    It says something about Hollywood that Ira Harry Morgan (1889-1959), the cinematographer who collaborated with Roland Totheroh on Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) was ended up as the man who shot Adventures of Captain Africa: Mighty Jungle Avenger! (1955).

    Fourteen years into a forty-year career, Morgan was cinematographer on Metro’s Chasing Rainbows.

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