The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Main Crew

  • Paul Neal

    Paul Neal (1896-1969) began working in Douglas Shearer’s sound department at MGM in 1929, and went on to record and mix sound for a variety of studios. He worked with a range of important filmmakers, including John Ford (The Whole Town’s Talking, 1935), Frank Borzage (History is Made at Night, 1937), William Wyler (Wuthering Heights, 1939) and Henry Hathaway (The Dark Corner, 1946).

    Neal recorded sound on five Metro musicals: Montana Moon, The Rogue Song, The Cuban Love Song, Dancing Lady and The Cat and the Fiddle.

  • Montana Moon

    Crew

    Malcolm St ClairDirector
    Sylvia ThalbergStory and Continuity
    Frank ButlerStory and Continuity
    Joseph FarnhamDialogue
    Arthur FreedLyricist
    Nacio Herb BrownComposer
    Herbert StothartComposer
    Clifford GreyLyricist
    Malcolm St ClairProducer (uncredited)
    William DanielsCinematographer
    Carl PiersonEditor
    Leslie F WilderEditor (uncredited)
    Cedric GibbonsArt Director
    AdrianCostume Designer
    Douglas ShearerSound Recording Director
    Paul NealSound Recording Engineer (uncredited)

  • Anne Bauchens

    Roseanne Bauchens (1882-1967) spent forty years as the editor-of-choice for Cecil B DeMille’s pictures, from Carmen (1915) to The Ten Commandments (1956). She even appeared alongside DeMille when he did his cameo in Sunset Boulevard (1950). So highly did DeMille value Bauchens that it was stipulated in his contracts that she was to be his editor. She won an Oscar for North West Mounted Police (1940).

    This meant that Bauchens was the cutter on DeMille’s Metro musical, Madam Satan. Earlier that year, she edited Lord Byron of Broadway. 

  • 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.

  • Ray Egan

    Canadian Raymond Blanning Egan (1890-1952) was a regular partner of composer Richard A Whiting, and together they wrote a number of standards, notably including the perennial ‘Ain’t We Got Fun’.

    Egan and Whiting’s ‘The Japanese Sandman’ was performed by Cliff Edwards in Lord Byron of Broadway and, some years later, Lucille Norman sang the poignant ‘Till We Meet Again’ in For Me and My Gal.

  • Richard A Whiting

    Richard Armstrong Whiting (1891-1938) was an important contributor to the Great American Songbook, but his name is probably less than many of his contemporaries. Indeed, while working as a song plugger, Whiting discovered the young George Gershwin.

    Whiting wrote his first successful songs in 1914 and went on to compose a substantial number of standards, including ‘Ain’t We Got Fun,’ ‘Beyond the Blue Horizon’ and ‘Hooray for Hollywood’. He also provided Shirley Temple with her signature tune, ‘On the Good Ship Lollipop’.

    White composed music for a number of films, though only rarely for MGM (for example, Red-Headed Woman in 1932). Notably, he provided the songs for Paramount’s Lubitsch musical Monte Carlo (1930). 

    Cliff Edwards performs ‘The Japanese Sandman’ in Lord Byron of Broadway, originally written by Whiting and Ray Egan in 1920. Some years later, Lucille Norman sang ‘Till We Meet Again’ in For Me and My Gal.

  • William Nigh

    Emil Kreuske (1881-1955) was a silent film actor-turned-director and occasional writer, which probably makes him a Poverty Row auteur. He was essentially a ‘B’ movie director, which makes it all the more surprising that he spent a period at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which officially never made ‘B’ pictures.

    Nigh generally made action and adventure stories, and it was a moment of madness when producer Harry Rapf assigned him to direct a musical, Lord Byron of Broadway. He soon regretted it. According to one of the film’s stars, Marion Shilling, Rapf had just lost heavily in the stock market crash when he watched Nigh’s footage. Appalled by what he saw, he yanked Nigh from the project and brought in Harry Beaumont to undertake substantial retakes. But Nigh was accorded a co-director credit, which was quite unusual at MGM. He made no further musicals for the studio and was back on Poverty Row for his next picture.  

  • Robert Shirley

    Robert Shirley (1904-81), like most of the engineers in Douglas Shearer’s sound department, never received onscreen credit for his work, despite working on some of Metro’s prestige projects. These included Strange Interlude (1932), Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).

    Shirley’s musicals were They Learned About Women, Reckless, The Wizard of Oz (though everyone seems to have worked on that), Broadway Rhythm, Meet Me in St Louis, Music for Millions, Thrill of a Romance, Anchors Aweigh, Yolanda and the Thief, The Harvey Girls, Two Sisters from Boston,Easy to Wed, Holiday in Mexico and, to round things off nicely, Singin’ in the Rain.

  • Tom Held

    Thomas Held (1889-1962) was an Austrian-born editor. After starting out as an assistant director, his first, uncredited editing assignment was on They Learned About Women, where he worked alongside Jack McKay. 

    Held’s other musicals were San Francisco and The Great Waltz (for which he was Oscar-nominated). He also worked uncredited on The Wizard of Oz.

  • Jack Conway

    Hugh Ryan Conway (1886-1952) was an actor and director in silent films from around 1910. From 1925 he was under contract as a director at Metro-Goldwyn Mayer.

    Conway was a solid journeyman director, though few of his pictures are likely to end up on any Greatest Ever lists. He worked with most of MGM’s major stars of the 1930s, with particular success on Jean Harlow and Clark Gable assignments such as Libelled Lady and Too Hot to Handle. His largest-scale achievement was A Tale of Two Cities (1935).

    Conway only worked on three musicals: They Learned About Women (with Sam Wood), the 1930 New Moon and Let Freedom Ring.

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