The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Main Crew

  • Leslie Stuart

    Thomas Augustine Barrett (1863-1928) has been called one of the most gifted composers of musical comedy on the British stage. His early hits, written for the music hall, included ‘Lily of Laguna’ and ‘Soldiers of the King’.

    Stuart’s first West End musical comedy, which became an international success, was Florodora (1899), and it had two quite different impacts on MGM musicals. Firstly, the show formed the background for The Florodora Girl, a fictional story about one of the original Broadway chorus girls. A song from the show, ‘Tell Me Pretty Maiden,’ features at the climax of the film.

    Decades later, Florodora, misnamed Florodora Girl, is one of the many no-longer-relevant New York sights featured in Chip’s out-of-date guidebook in On the Town and mentioned in ‘Come Up to My Place’.

  • Paul Dresser

    Johann Paul Dreiser Jr (1857-1906) is considered one of the most important American songwriters of the late nineteenth century. Like many of his contemporaries, he started out performing in minstrel shows, and ended up as a music publisher.

    In between, Dresser wrote an estimated 150 songs. Like Stephen Foster from an earlier generation, he leaned heavily on sentimental themes such as motherhood, the home, and patriotism.

    Dresser’s best-known song is ‘On the Banks of the Wabash,’ which featured in many Hollywood films, including The Florodora Girl. A bridge over the Wabash River now bears his name.

    Dresser was the older brother of novelist Theodore Dreiser, whose career he supported financially.

  • Alfred E Rick

    I can tell you nothing about Alfred E Rick (18??-19??) except that he and Maurice Scott wrote the comic song ‘Swing Me Higher, Obadiah,’ as performed by music hall artiste Chummie La Mara and, later, by Marion Davies in The Florodora Girl.

  • Maurice Scott

    Only one fact is known about composer Maurice Scott (1878-1933). In 1917 he composed a song that forty-something years later would lend its title to an internationally-acclaimed stage musical and an award-winning film: ‘Oh, It’s a Lovely War’ was written by Scott and John P Long for the music hall entertainer Ella Shields. 

    It was another music hall artiste, Chummie La Mara, who sang Scott’s ‘Swing Me Higher, Obadiah,’ later performed by Marion Davies in The Florodora Girl.

  • Michael Nolan

    The comedian Michael Nolan was born in Ireland but raised in Bradford in Yorkshire, where he got his start as a music hall performer.  Known as ‘the Prince of Irish Comedians,’ he combined comedy patter with songs, many of which he composed himself.

    One of these songs was ‘Little Annie Rooney,’ as featured in The Florodora Girl.

  • Joe Hayden

    Joe A Hayden (1845-1916) was a lyricist who would be totally forgotten today but for one thing. He wrote the words for Theodore A Metz’s immortal ‘There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight’ in 1897.

    The number has been performed in a vast array of context, one of which was to be sung by Marion Davies in The Florodora Girl.

  • Theodore A Metz

    Theodore August Metz (1848-1936) was born in the Hanover of King Ernest Augustus and died in FDR’s America. Having trained as a violinist, Metz emigrated and eventually found work as conductor for a touring minstrel show. 

    Metz’s claim to cultural immortality rests on his composition, in 1897, of a tune that has achieved anthemic status in the United States: ‘There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight’. This song, with lyrics by Joe Hayden, was featured in The Florodora Girl.

  • Ren Shields

    Ren Shields (1868-1913) was a folk musician and vaudeville performer who also worked as a lyricist, in which capacity he wrote ‘Make a Noise Like a Hula Hoop and Roll Away (Whoop,Whoop, Whoop)’.

    More memorably, Shields provided the lyrics for ‘In the Good Old Summer Time,’ written with George Evans.  The number featured in The Florodora Girl and In the Good Old Summertime.

  • George Evans

    George ‘Honey Boy’ Evans (1870-1915) was a Welsh music hall performer, songwriter and producer who toured the United States with a minstrel show he bought called the Honey Boy Minstrels.

    Evans’s best-known contribution to the Great American Songbook was ‘In the Good Old Summer Time,’ written with lyricist Ren Shields in 1902. The number was featured in the Edwardian-set musical The Florodora Girl, and was later the title song of In the Good Old Summertime. 

  • Joseph W Stern

    Joseph W Stern (1870-1934) was a tie salesman and amateur musician who became a composer of popular songs and, finally, a music publisher. 

    One of the numbers written by Stern and his partner, Edward B Marks, was ‘My Mother Was a Lady,’ which featured in The Florodora Girl.

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