The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Musical Director

  • Lennie Hayton

    Leonard George Hayton (1908-71) was an important figure in the music department at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during the Golden Age of the studio’s production of musicals.

    Hayton started out as a pianist and arranger with Paul Whiteman in the late 1920s, which led to a friendship with Bing Crosby when he was one of the Rhythm Boys. It was Crosby who had arranged for Hayton to conduct the orchestra when he made Going Hollywood at MGM in 1933. He then returned to working with Crosby on radio and recording for several years.

    In 1940, MGM signed Hayton as a musical director, and he remained with the studio until 1953. He composed for or acted as MD on a range of non-musical pictures, including H M Pulham Esq (1941), Maisie Gets Her Man (1942) and Battleground (1950). But it was in musicals that he made his greatest mark.

    Hayton’s MGM musicals were: Born to Sing, This Time for Keeps (composer), Best Foot Forward, Meet the People, Yolanda and the Thief, The Harvey Girls, Ziegfeld Follies, Till the Clouds Roll By, Good News, Living in a Big Way, The Pirate, Summer Holiday, Words and Music, The Barkleys of Broadway, On the Town (winning an Oscar), Singin’ in the Rain and Easy to Love. After leaving MGM, Hayton returned to arrange and conduct numbers for his wife, Lena Horne, in Meet Me in Las Vegas.

    Lennie Hayton won another Oscar towards the end of his life, for Hello, Dolly (1968).

  • Louis Silvers

    The status of Louis Silberstein (1889-1954) as the pioneer of film music is unassailable, given that he worked as musical director and composer on The Jazz Singer (1927), the ur-musical/talking picture.

    Silvers had already claimed his place in musical history when, aged 24, he composed the music for ‘April Showers’, with lyrics by Buddy De Sylva. He also wrote the music for the experimental sound sequences in the D W Griffith turkey Dream Street (1921). He also composed for three other Griffith pictures.

    Silvers had started out as a vaudeville pianist and was working as a musical director on Broadway when he went to Hollywood. His work on The Jazz Singer is far more nuanced and inventive than the film in general, or Al Jolson’s overblown performance in particular, though it rarely figures in discussion of the picture’s importance.

    Silvers went on to compose music for over thirty films and act as musical director on around seventy. He also conducted the music for dozens of Warner’s early Vitaphone recordings. In 1935, he won the Oscar for Best Original Score for One Night of Love (1934).

    For MGM, Silvers composed and conducted incidental music for Stage Mother and Dancing Lady, and co-wrote ‘Schnarzan’ for Hollywood Party.

  • Maurice De Packh

    Composer Maurice De Packh (1896-1960) was already working as an orchestrator on Broadway by the time he was 22, and its was in that capacity that he excelled. He continued to work on Broadway for decades, while maintaining a parallel career in films.

    De Packh, usually without credit, arranged the scores for some of Hollywood’s greatest Golden Age pictures. The total exceeded 240, but some of the highlights were: Queen Christina (1933), The Informer (1935), Top Hat (1935), Ninotchka (1939), Gone With the Wind (1939, one of several), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Nightmare Alley (1947), Unfaithfully Yours (1948), All About Eve (1950), A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Rio Bravo (1959) and Spartacus (1960, his final film).

    De Packh started out in MGM musicals composing incidental music for Stage Mother and Dancing Lady. He was also the arranger on the latter, and later orchestrated Annie Get Your Gun, The Belle of New York, Singin’ in the Rain, The Merry Widow, The Student Prince, I’ll Cry Tomorrow and Gigi. He also co-wrote the song ‘Schnarzan’ for Hollywood Party.

  • Marvin Hatley

    Composer Thomas Marvin Hatley (1905-86) achieved a form of immortality when he wrote a piece called ‘Dance of the Cuckoos’ (sometimes known as ‘Ku-Ku’). In 1930, this became the theme music for Laurel and Hardy’s sound shorts after it was heard on the radio. According to Laurel, Hal Roach gave the composer “about fifty bucks’ for the rights to the music.

    But Hatley did also find a job at the Roach studio as musical director, in which capacity he wrote and arranged probably hundreds of scores. Two Laurel and Hardy features, Way Out West (1937) and Block-Heads (1938) earned him nominations for the Best Original Score Oscar.

    Hatley also enjoyed appearing in front of the camera whenever a musician or conductor was required. And he provided the piano sounds for The Music Box (1932).

    He was musical director of The Devil’s Brother, which also utilized ‘Dance of the Cuckoos’, and he composed for The Bohemian Girl and Swiss Miss.

    Hatley was deemed surplus to requirements when Roach restructured his studio in 1939, though Laurel insisted he be brought back to work on Saps at Sea (1940). Hatley became a lounge pianist, often remarking that he was earning more than Hal Roach ever paid him. 

  • Paul Marquardt

    German-born Paul Alfred Marquardt (1889-1960) was a composer who worked for many years as an arranger at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and for other studios. Although rarely receiving an onscreen credit, Marquardt made a substantial contribution to MGM’s musical history.

    He orchestrated the music for many non-musical films, including Anna Karenina (1935), Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936), Captains Courageous (1937), The Women (1939), Northwest Passage (1940), Rebecca (1940),Frank Borzage’s The Mortal Storm (1940), Woman of the Year (1942), Mrs Miniver (1942), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Red River (1948), The Thing from Another World (1951), High Noon (1952) and Friendly Persuasion (1957). Marquardt also composed original scores in the 1930s, including for The Sign of the Cross and A Farewell to Arms (both 1933). He worked on well over 350 films between 1930 and 1957.

    The first of Marquardt’s 39 MGM musicals was The Cuban Love Song, collaborating with Charles Maxwell. This was followed by Dancing Lady, The Merry Widow, The Night is Young, Naughty Marietta, Reckless, Here Comes the Band, A Night at the Opera, The Great Ziegfeld, San Francisco. Maytime, A Day at the Races, The Firefly, Rosalie, Everybody Sing, The Girl of the Golden West, The Great Waltz, Sweethearts (in which he also appeared as a conductor), The Wizard of Oz (credited for orchestral and vocal arrangements), Babes in Arms, At the Circus, Balalaika, New Moon, Hullabaloo, Rio Rita, I Married an Angel, Seven Sweethearts, Presenting Lily Mars, Thousands Cheer, Ziegfeld Follies, Holiday in Mexico, Easter Parade, The Kissing Bandit, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, The Barkeleys of Broadway, That Midnight Kiss, Annie Get Your Gun, Royal Wedding and Show Boat.

  • Paul Lamkoff

    Composer Paul Lambkovitz (1888-1953) was born either in Poland or Russia, and trained at the Petrograd Conservatory before working as both a conductor and cantor. He emigrated to America in 1922.

    Lamkoff was qualified by both his professions to work as a vocal coach and choral arranger for the ‘Kol Nidre’ sequence of The Jazz Singer (1927), roles he also carried out for the 1952 remake.

    He then had a sporadic career in the film industry, working as composer, orchestrator and vocal coach on a dozen or so pictures. These included Call of the Flesh, Here Comes the Band, A Night at the Opera, Rose-Marie and San Francisco.  Alongside this he pursued his work as a cantor and expert on Jewish music.

  • Ernest Klapholz

    Ernst Hersh Klapholz (1881?-1965) was a composer and musical arranger, and also business partner of Arthur Lange. His sole MGM musical was as one of the arrangers on The Hollywood Revue of 1929.

  • Ray Heindorf

    Raymond John Heindorf (1908-1980) was a composer and musical arranger who worked on The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and soon after moved tothe music department at Warner Bros, where he spent most of his long career.

    A Jazz aficionado, Heindorf was known for his willingness to use Black musicians in what was largely a segregated industry.

  • Eva Jessye

    Eva Jessye (1895-1992) was an internationally-renowned choral conductor and composer and a member of the Harlem Renaissance. Later in life, she was part of the civil rights movement.

    Cinema played a very small part in Jessye’s prestigious life and career. She made only three films, but one was an MGM musical, she was the choral director and sang in Hallelujah.

    In the 1960s Jessye acted in Black Like Me (1964) and Slaves (1969), two well-intentioned anti-racist films. 

  • Arthur Lange

    Arthur Lange (1889-1956) was a prolific composer of songs, scores and incidental music for dozens of films at a variety of studios.

    At MGM Lange began by composing and arranging music for the Buster Keaton ‘underwater’ sequence in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, where he also appeared onscreen conducting the orchestra. Lange also made an appearance as himself in Free and Easy. He was subsequently the musical arranger onSo This Is College, and composed and arranged forThe Great Ziegfeld and  Let Freedom Ring.  

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