The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Main Crew

  • Harry A Pollard

    Harry Adolphus Pollard (1879-1934) was a stage actor who made his film debut in 1910. A few years later, he became an early auteur, writing, directing and starring in many films with his wife, Margarita Fischer.

    Pollard gave up acting in 1916, though he still managed to clock up over eighty credits. In 1920, he directed the much-praised science fiction serial The Invisible Ray, and in 1926 co-wrote and directed the first in the successful The Cohens and the Kellys series. 

    As an actor, Pollard had blacked-up to play Uncle Tom in 1913. Fourteen years later, he directed another version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1927), this time with Black stage actor James B Lowe in the role. He also directed the first, part-talkie version of Show Boat (1929).

    Pollard’s sole MGM musical was The Prodigal, which was billed as a ‘Harry Pollard Production’.

    Pollard directed his final film, a William Haines comedy, the following year.

  • The Prodigal

    The Crew

    Harry A PollardDirector
    Bess MeredythStory and Scenario
    Wells RootStory and Scenario
    Vincent YoumansSongwriter
    Edward EliscuSongwriter (uncredited)
    Billy RoseSongwriter (uncredited)
    Henry BishopComposer (uncredited)
    John Howard PayneLyricist (uncredited)
    Herbert StothartSongwriter
    Howard JohnsonLyricist
    Jacques WolfeLyricist
    Paul BernProducer (uncredited)
    Harold RossonCinematographer
    Margaret BoothEditor
    René HubertCostume Designer
    Cedric GibbonsArt Director
    Douglas ShearerSound Recording Director

  • Oscar Hammerstein II

    Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein (1895-1960) was one of the biggest names in 20th-century musicals, both literally and metaphorically.

    Hammerstein and two of his main collaborators, Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers, were key to the development of the integrated musical, whereby songs are woven into the plot rather than being simply musical interpolations. In the world of film musicals, there were attempts to achieve this as early as 1930, but it is undeniable that Hammerstein’s work as lyricist, librettist and producer were hugely influential.

    Oscar Hammerstein’s career can be divided into distinct halves. During the first part, he partnered with a variety of composers, including Kern (Show Boat, 1927), Rudolf Friml (Rose-Marie, 1924) and Sigmund Romberg (The Desert Song, 1926). Then, in 1943, he joined with Rodgers to produce Oklahoma!. This was the first in a series of seminal musicals, including Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949) and The Sound of Music (1959), most of which were filmed (with varying degrees of success). 

    MGM did not adapt any of Hammerstein’s work with Rodgers, but did film The New Moon (written in 1927 with Romberg) twice, as it did with Rose-Marie. The studio made one of the several versions of Show Boat.  Hammerstein songs were also featured in The Night is Young , The Great Waltz and the Romberg biopic Deep in My Heart.

  • Sigmund Romberg

    Zsigmund Rosenberg (1887-1951) was a Hungarian-born composer and one of the most celebrated composers of operettas for the American stage.

    Romberg arrived in New York in 1909 and eventually found work playing the piano in cafes and restaurants. He published a few songs and came to the attention of the Shubert brothers, who commissioned him to write material for their Broadway revues. He wrote for a number of shows starring Al Jolson.

    In the 1920s, Romberg wrote three classic operettas in the Viennese style–The Student Prince (1924), The Desert Song (1926) and The New Moon (1928)–working with various lyricists, including Oscar Hammerstein II. He also wrote film scores and adapted his own work for the screen.

    MGM made two versions of New Moon (dropping the definite article) and also adapted Rosalie, Maytime and The Student Prince. He also contributed music to The Night is Young and The Girl of the Golden West.

    In 1954, Romberg was the subject of an MGM musical-biopic, Deep in My Heart, which drew extensively on his back catalogue.

  • Cyril Hume

    Former journalist and occasional novelist Cyril Joseph Hume (1900-1966) had a fairly workaday career as a Hollywood screenwriter. The high point of the 1930s was adapting Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) and contributing to several of its sequels, and co-writing Flying Down to Rio (1933).

    Then, in 1956, came Hume’s annus mirabilis. He wrote the screenplay for the science-fiction classic Forbidden Planet, and followed it up by co-writing the estimable Nicholas Ray picture Bigger Than Life.

    Early in his career, Hume contributed dialogue to New Moon.

  • New Moon (1930)

    The Crew

    Jack ConwayDirector
    Sam WoodDirector (uncredited)
    Sylvia ThalbergAdaptation
    Frank ButlerAdaptation
    Cyril HumeDialogue
    Sigmund RombergComposer
    Oscar Hammerstein IILyricist
    Herbert StothartComposer
    Clifford GreyLyricist
    William AxtComposer
    Paul BernProducer
    Oliver T MarshCinematographer
    Margaret BoothEditor
    Cedric GibbonsArt Director
    George WestmoreMakeup Artist
    Douglas ShearerSound Recording Director

  • James Brock

    James Kendall Brock (1901-63) was a sound recording engineer who spent most of his career at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and worked on sixteen musicals during that time.

    Brock began, under the supervision of Douglas Shearer, on A Lady’s Morals. Here, as for most pictures, he was uncredited.

    Barnes was the sound mixer on The Merry Widow and A Night at the Opera, then sound engineer on The Great Ziegfeld, Maytime, The Girl of the Golden West, Du Barry Was a Lady, On an Island With You, Easter Parade, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, The Band Wagon, Easy to Love, The Student Prince, Interrupted Melody, Merry Andrew and Gigi.

  • 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.

  • Carrie Jacobs-Bond

    Carrie Minetta Jacobs-Bond (1862-1946) was a prolific songwriter and by far the most successful female composer of her day. But she is remembered today, if she is remembered at all, for one piece: the parlour song ‘I Love You Truly’, of which about eight million sheet music copies were sold.

    A late song by Jacobs-Bond, ‘Lovely Hour’, was performed by Grace Moore in A Lady’s Morals. 

  • Harry M Woods

    Harry MacGregor Woods (1896-1970) was a Tin Pan Alley composer whose name is rarely heard, but who produced many standards from the Great American Songbook. These included ‘When the Red, Red Robin (Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along)’, ‘I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover’, ‘Side by Side’ and ‘Try a Little Tenderness’.

    Woods rarely wrote directly for the screen, though his songs have been heard in hundreds of films. One exception was Metro’s A Lady’s Morals. 

    ‘When the Red, Red Robin’ is sung by Susan Hayward in I’ll Cry Tomorrow. 

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