Canadian John Stramborg (1858-1902) was a Broadway songwriter who worked regularly on the shows produced by the comedy duo Weber and Fields.
‘Honey’ Stromberg started out as an arranger in Tin Pan Alley, but was, from the outset, the composer of popular songs. His first hit was ‘My Best Girl’s a Corker’, published in 1895. Weber and Fields hired him in 1896, pairing him with several lyricists, but most significantly with Edgar Smith. Their best-known number was ‘Ma Blushin’ Rosie’, which featured in Metro’s Broadway to Hollywood.
Stromberg had serious mental health problems, and died by his own hand in 1902, while at the height of his success.
British-born William Henry Penn (1868-1929) would have to be described as an obscure composer and arranger of popular music from the early twentieth century.
Penn is one of those composers who hangs on to a small place in musical history by virtue of a single song. In his case, this was ‘The Honeysuckle and the Bee’, which he wrote in 1906, with lyrics by Albert H Fitz. Penn’s music was featured in Broadway to Hollywood, though the dance number appears to have been filmed for The March of Time.
Edgar Allan Woolf (1881-1943) was a successful screenwriter, dramatist and songwriter whose fame now rests firmly on being co-writer of the screenplay for The Wizard of Oz. He and regular collaborator Florence Ryerson developed a draft produced by Noel Langley, introducing the character of Professor Marvel into the Kansas scenes.
After graduating from university, Woolf was briefly an actor before turning to writing material for vaudeville performers. He also wrote the book for the 1906 musical comedy Mam’zelle Champagne, which became infamous when a performance was interrupted by the murder of Stanford White, as depicted in The Girl on the Red Velvet Swing (1955).
After a quarter of a century writing for Broadway, Woolf, who had previously dabbled in screenwriting for silent films in New York,signed a contract to join MGM. Pictures he worked on included Freaks, Grand Hotel and John Ford’s Flesh (all 1932).
In addition to The Wizard of Oz, Woolf worked on seven other MGM musicals, beginning with Broadway to Hollywood, for which he also wrote a song. Subsequent pictures were Hollywood Party, The Night is Young, Everybody Sing and Ice Follies of 1939. After Oz came Babes in Arms and the posthumously-released Ziegfeld Follies.
Julius Weiss (1900-85) liked to think of himself as the Fourth Stooge, having been producer and/or director on well over half of their output. He claimed to have heavily influenced and shaped their comedy.
White acted in a couple of films as a teenager, including The Birth of a Nation (1915). He was then a general dogsbody around various studios, ending up as an editor at Educational Pictures, where his brother Jack was producing comedies. White co-directed his first short film in 1924.
Jules White moved to MGM in 1930, where he wrote and directed short comedies, including the Dogville Comedies, satires starring trained dogs. He also co-directed Sidewalks of New York, starring Buster Keaton.
In 1933, White moved on again, this time to Columbia, where he was put in charge of the studio’s short subjects. Over the next couple of decades he produced over 360 pictures, and also acted as director on around 240, as well as contributing to their screenplays. It is claimed that by the 1950s he could put out a new short comedy with a single day’s shooting, largely by cannibalizing from earlier films.
Columbia stopped making shorts in 1957, but White went on to direct a couple of Three Stooges’ feature films.
Shortly before moving to Columbia in 1933, White shot retakes for Broadway to Hollywood, which featured two of the Stooges, More and Curly Howard.
James Francis Greene (1899-1935) was a sound recording engineer at the Hal Roach Studios, responsible for the sound on some of Laurel and Hardy’s most beloved pictures, including The Music Box (1932, with location recording required on those steps), County Hospital (1932), Towed in a Hole (1932) and Busy Bodies (1935).
He was also the sound recording engineer on the duo’s first operetta, The Devil’s Brother (1935).
Greene’s career was tragically cut short when he experienced an insulin shock which the police took to be drunkenness. He was thrown in a cell and died when no treatment was given.
William Hilton Terhune (1899-1940) directed half a dozen shorts for Hal Roach in the 1930s, but was predominantly an editor, starting at the studio as a cutter in 1926.
Terhune was the editor on Topper (1937) and its first sequel, Topper Takes a Trip (1938). He also worked on the Joan Crawford picture Susan and God (1940) for MGM.
William Terhune edited the four Laurel and Hardy musicals, The Devil’s Brother, Babes in Toyland, The Bohemian Girl and Swiss Miss, as well as the Marx Brothers’ At the Circus.
Albert Adrian Jordan (1887-1983) worked in the British film industry in the 1910s before emigrating to America, where he found work as a cutter at Vitagraph.
Jordan moved to the Hal Roach Studios in 1921, where he stayed for the bulk of his career. Stan Laurel, who was the creative force behind the Laurel and Hardy films, admired Jordan’s work to the extent of insisting that he edit all of their pictures, if he was available.
This meant that Jordan worked on virtually all of the Laurel and Hardy features, including their four musicals, The Devil’s Brother, Babes in Toyland, The Bohemian Girl and Swiss Miss.
Jordan also edited one of the Roach studio’s most prestigious productions, Lewis Milestone’s Of Mice and Men (1939).
After leaving Hal Roach, Jordan worked mostly in television until he retired, aged 75.
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.
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.
