Alfred Block (1897-1949) had a short career as a Hollywood screenwriter, with the highpoint being contributing the story for Laurel and Hardy’s Way Out West (1930). A year earlier he worked on the story for It’s a Great Life and wrote the titles for They Learned About Women..
Category: Main Crew
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Alfred Block
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Leonard Praskins
British-born Leonard Praskins (1896-1968) had a long but minor career as a Hollywood screenwriter. For MGM, he contributed to the story for It’s a Great Life and later wrote both the story and screenplay for Ice Follies of 1939.
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Byron Morgan
Byron Morgan (1889-1963) began screenwriting in the silent period but did some of his best work in talkies. He worked with Laurel and Hardy on Way Out West (1930) and Sons of the Desert (1933) and wrote the excellent Five Star Final (1931) for Warner Bros.
Morgan’s sole contribution to MGM musicals was collaborating on the story of It’s a Great Life.
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Crane Wilbur
Crane Wilbur (1886-1973) acted in his first film in 1910 and found fame opposite Pearl White in The Perils of Pauline (1913). He also became a scenarist, and directed his first picture in 1916. His final film as writer-director was House of Women in 1962.
In 1929 Wilbur wrote a play, Children of Pleasure, which he helped adapt into a musical the following year. He also wrote Lord Byron of Broadway and made an uncredited appearance in It’s a Great Life.
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Ray Heindorf
Raymond John Heindorf (1908-1980) was a composer and musical arranger who worked on The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and soon after moved tothe music department at Warner Bros, where he spent most of his long career.
A Jazz aficionado, Heindorf was known for his willingness to use Black musicians in what was largely a segregated industry.
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Joe Goodwin
Joe Goodwin (1889-1943) was the lyricist who gave the world ‘When You’re Smiling’. To offset that, he also perpetrated ‘Your Mother and Mine’.
The last-named song was one of the songs he produced in collaboration with Gus Edwards for The Hollywood Revue of 1929.
Goodwin went on to write ‘Love Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues’ with Louis Alter for Chasing Rainbows.
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Gus Edwards
Gustave Schmelowsky (1878-1945) grew up in Poland, was a song plugger in New York, performed in vaudeville and eventually became a songwriter, despite the fact that he could not read music. He was also known as the Star Maker, because he launched Sally Rand, Ray Bolger, George Jessel, the Duncan Sisters and may others on successful careers via his revues. He even gave Groucho Marx an early job as one of Gus Edwards’s Postal Telegraph Boys.
Edwards composed the majority of the songs used in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, and also performed a novelty item alongside Cliff Edwards and Charles King, and appeared solo singing ‘Lon Chaney’s Gonna Get You If You Don’t Watch Out’. Edwards also participated in The March of Time.
Edwards’s most famous number was ‘By the Light of the Silvery Moon,’ with lyrics by Edward Madden.
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Jo Trent
Joseph H Trent (1892-1954) was a lyricist who worked with notable jazz composers, including James P Johnson.
With Louis Alter, Trent contributed ‘Gotta Feelin’ for You’ to The Hollywood Revue of 1929.
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Louis Alter
Louis Alter (1902-1980) was a pianist and composer perhaps most celebrated for his piece ‘Manhattan Serenade’. He regularly contributed to films, although only once to an MGM musical, writing ‘Gotta Feelin’ for You’ with Jo Trent for The Hollywood Revue of 1929. He was twice nominated for the Oscar for Best Song.
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Andy Rice
Andy Rice (1881-1963) apparently started out as a monologist in vaudeville before developing into a song and sketch writer. He wrote two editions of George White’s Scandals whilst continuing to perform himself.
Rice contributed songs to The Hollywood Revue of 1929, Children of Pleasure, The Florodora Girl and the unfinished The March of Time.
Thanks to Travalanche for the biographical information.
