The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Main Crew

  • Wells Root

    Wells Crosby Root (1900-1993) was a writer, teacher and author of Writing the Script: A Practical Guide for Films and Television (1980). In the 1950s and early 60s he wrote episodes for virtually every TV western series (and there were a lot of them).

    For MGM Wells adapted the story that formed the basis of Chasing Rainbows and came up with the idea for The Rogue Song. He is cited as the co-author, with Bess Meredyth of a work called The Southerner, which was adapted into The Prodigal. What is certain is that he and Meredyth are credited with dialogue continuity.

  • Bess Meredyth

    Screenwriter Helen Elizabeth MacGlashan (1890-1969) began writing scenarios in the early 1910s, but maintained a parallel career as an actor until 1926. A trusted colleague of Irving Thalberg, she was dispatched to Italy to rescue the out-of-control production Ben-Hur (1925).

    Meredyth met her third husband, director Michael Curtiz, at the Warner Bros studio while she was working for First National, and advised him about his pictures even after she returned to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She reviewed all his scripts and frequently amended the dialogue.Meredyth’s final screen credit was for the screenplay for Curtiz’s The Unsuspected (1947).

    Meredyth contributed to four of MGM’s early musicals. She co-wrote the story from which Chasing Rainbows was adapted and worked on the scenario, and went on to write the adaptation for In Gay Madrid. Some sources show Bess Meredyth and Wells Root as authors of a fictional work called The Southerner, on which the 1930 musical was based. All that seems certain, however, is that they are credited for the film’s dialogue continuity. Finally, Meredyth wrote the screenplay for The Cuban Love Song. 

  • Leslie F Wilder

    Leslie F Wilder (1895-1989) worked as an editor at various studios during the 1930s, including uncredited work for Metro on So This Is College and Montana Moon.

  • Basil Wrangell

    The exotically-named Basilio Petrovich von Wrangell (1906-77) was born in Italy, in the Russian embassy, and educated in England. After acting as an interpreter for director Fred Niblo during the production of Ben-Hur (1925), he travelled to the USA to train as an editor. A long and successful career in films and television followed, with an Oscar nomination in 1937 for The Good Earth.

    Wrangell edited Marianne (uncredited) and Love in the Rough. 

  • James C McKay

    James C McKay (1894-1971) worked as both director and editor during the silent era, starting in 1916 and for a variety of studios. His career seems to have tailed off during the 1930s.

    McKay edited two musicals for MGM: Marianne and They Learned About Women.

  • Anton Stevenson

    Very little seems to be on record about Anton Stevenson (1906-80) other than that he was born, lived for seventy-four years, and worked on the editing of two films while in his twenties.  

    One of the films was Hallelujah.

  • Hugh Wynn

    Hugh Wynn (1897-1936) was a respected MGM editor whose career was cut short by his tragically early and sudden death. 

    Wynn’s most prestigious assignment was The Big Parade (1925), after which he worked regularly with King Vidor, including on Hallelujah.

  • William S Gray

    William Sylvester Gray (1896-1946) was an editor at MGM whose career-high was an Oscar nomination for The Great Ziegfeld.

    Gray’s other musicals were The Hollywood Revue of 1929, In Gay Madrid and Everybody Sing.

  • Sam S Zimbalist

    Samuel S Zimbalist (1901-58) is the only producer to posthumously receive the Oscar for Best Picture, when it was awarded to Ben Hur (1959). This made him, at that time, the producer of the second and third highest-grossing pictures in history. The film placed third was Zimbalist’s Quo Vadis (1951), while first place was, of course, held by Gone With the Wind (1939).

    This was a long way from Zimbalist’s beginnings in the industry, as an office boy at Metro Studios. He took up editing, becoming a full-fledged editor in 1925 with MGM’s first version of The Wizard of Oz.

    In 1929, Zimbalist had his first brush with the Academy Awards when he edited The Broadway Melody.

  • J Clifford Brooke

    Clifford Brooke (1873-1951) may (or may not) be the J Clifford Brooke who is credited with staging a sequence in Devil-May-Care. The AFI Catalogue says no, while IMDb says yes.

    Brooke was a British stage actor, well-known on Broadway as both performer and director, who belatedly worked in Hollywood. His first credited role was in The Sea Hawk (1940) 

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