The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Producers

  • W S Van Dyke II

    The reputation of Woodbridge Strong Van Dyke II (1889-1943) as ‘One-Shot Woody’ was what enabled him to direct over ninety films in twenty-five years, half of them during the sound era.

    Van Dyke’s mother was an actor, leading to his own early appearances on the stage as a child. Constantly on tour, he claimed to have attended schools in every state. 

    He undertook many jobs during his early years as an adult, before obtaining his first job in the film industry in 1915. He began pretty much at the top, as one of a number of assistant directors under D W Griffith on The Birth of a Nation (1915). Two years later, after having written a number of films, he directed his first feature, The Land of Long Shadows (1917), based on his own screenplay. 

    Van Dyke’s work in silent films was prolific, but undistinguished. It was as a director of sound pictures that he came into his own. He travelled to Tahiti in 1928 to make White Shadows in the South Seas, MGM’s first feature with recorded sound (music and sound effects). Two years later he shot Trader Horn (1931) mostly in Africa, with some dialogue scenes reshot in Hollywood. 

    Van Dyke went on to become a mainstay of MGM’s production schedule, reputedly Louis B Mayer’s favourite (because most efficient) director. He directed the first Johnny Weissmuller film as Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), The Thin Man (1934) and three of its sequels, and Marie Antoinette (1938). 

    He made nine musicals for MGM and, after The Cuban Love Song, all of them starred either Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, or both of them together: Naughty Marietta,(which he also produced), Rose-Marie, San Francisco (also produced by Van Dyke), Rosalie, Sweethearts, Bitter Sweet, I Married and Angel and Cairo.

    Van Dyke was also used regularly to direct reshoots or new scenes for other directors’ pictures, and he did this for Broadway Melody of 1936 and the 1940 New Moon, again with MacDonald and Eddy.

    Woody Van Dyke was a Christian Scientist and, when he learned in 1943 that he was terminally ill, refused medical treatment and took his own life.

  • George White

    These entries usually start with the subject’s birth name and dates, but that is problematic with George White.  Some sources claim he was Eassy White (1892-1968), born in New York. Others say he was George Weitz (1892-1968), born in Toronto. All we know for sure is that the dates are pretty certain.

    White started out as a dancer in burlesque theatres, and worked his way up to the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway. This inspired him to become a producer at the age of 27, launching his own Follies knock-off, George White’s Scandals in 1919. He continued with the format until 1939.

    White also produced book-based Broadway shows, including Flying High (1931). It was typical of the early days of sound that MGM invited him, someone with no background in or knowledge of films, to go to Hollywood and produce a screen version of the hit musical comedy.

    He continued working in Hollywood from time to time, even directing an eponymous musical based around his Broadway show.

    White’s career took a downturn in the late thirties, culminating in a prison sentence in 1947 for being the driver in a fatal hit-and-run incident.

  • Paul Bern

    German-born Paul Levy (1889-1932) was an unsuccessful actor who worked as a stage manager on Broadway before relocating to Hollywood. After some writing and directing, he settled at MGM and became assistant to Irving Thalberg, and then a production supervisor. 

    Bern’s sole involvement in musicals was as the uncredited producer of The Rogue Song.

    Bern is best remembered today for all the wrong reasons. A few months after marrying star Jean Harlow in 1932, he was found dead from gunshot wounds under mysterious circumstances.

  • Hal Roach

    Most of the names synonymous with silent film comedy are performers: Keaton, Chaplin, Lloyd, and Laurel and Hardy. But they are joined by two producer-directors: Mack Sennett and Harold Eugene Roach (1892-1992).

    Roach began working as an extra in Hollywood in 1912, and produced his first comedy shorts in 1915, in partnership with his friend Harold Lloyd. He worked with Lloyd until 1923, and went on to establish the Laurel and Hardy team. Roach wrote, produced and sometimes directed hundreds of comedy shorts and features.

    In 1928, the Hal Roach studio began releasing its films through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which is how he became connected with its early musical pictures. In 1930, MGM wanted to add comic relief to The Rogue Song, so Roach directed additional sequences featuring Stan and Ollie as members of Lawrence Tibbetts band of outlaws.

    In 1933, the Hal Roach Studio and MGM co-produced The Devil’s Brother, a Laurel and Hardy musical that Roach directed. He also worked as an uncredited director on Swiss Miss and The Bohemian Girl (which he co-wrote), and produced Babes in Toyland and Nobody’s Baby.

  • Cecil B DeMille

    Cecil Blount DeMille (1881-1959) was one of the founders of Hollywood cinema. After a fairly successful career as a stage actor, and less success as a playwright, he helped to found the Jesse L Lasky Feature Play Company (later Paramount) in 1913. DeMille and a team of actors and technicians relocated from New York to Los Angeles and established the first studio in the Hollywood area. His first production was The Squawman (1914), a story he remade twice, in 1918 and 1931.

    DeMille produced and directed films in Hollywood for  the next forty-three years, ending with The Ten Commandments in 1956. Veering wildly between the prurient and the pious, his work was usually commercially successful, and The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) won one of the all-time most baffling Best Picture Oscars, beating The Quiet Man and High Noon; Singin’ in the Rain was not even nominated.

    DeMille directed one of MGM’s strangest musicals, Madam Satan, in which he provided the voice coming from a radio. He also appeared, as himself, in Free and Easy.

  • Albert Lewin

    Albert Parsons Lewin (1894-1968) was one of the more exotic figures working behind the scenes in Hollywood’s golden age. He joined MGM in 1924 as a writer. Trusted by Irving Thalberg, he was made head of the story department, and subsequently a production supervisor and trusted adviser to Thalberg. He became a full-fledged producer after Thalberg’s responsibilities were reduced.

    An intellectual in a doggedly non-intellectual world, Lewis later became a somewhat eccentric auteur, writing, producing and directing a series of oddities, most notably Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951).

    Producer responsibilities were often vague at Metro during the years of Thalberg’s pomp, but Lewin was certainly responsible for The Cuban Love Song. He is also believed to have worked as producer on Devil-May-Care. 

  • Sidney Franklin

    Sidney Arnold Franklin (1893-1972) was a director and occasional producer for over forty years, co-directing in the early years with his brother Chester. His experience working with Mary Pickford and the Talmadge sisters led Irving Thalberg to invite him to MGM in 1928 to direct Norma Shearer. 

    Franklin’s career at Metro was not spectacular (David Thomson described him as colourless), though he did direct some prestigious projects, including The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934 and 1957) and The Good Earth (1937), and he produced Mrs Miniver (1942).

    Franklin made two attempts at directing musicals, Devil-May-Care and A Lady’s Morals, and many years later he produced Torch Song. 

  • Harry Rapf

    Harry Rapf (1880-1949) joined MGM on its formation in 1924 and worked as one of the studio’s three production supervisors, under the direction of Irving Thalberg. His son Maurice claimed that Thalberg and his father disliked each other, but then Rapf seemed to struggle to be liked by anyone, especially writers. He is also credited with more Goldwynisms than Sam Goldwyn himself: “I woke up last night with a terrific idea for a movie–but I didn’t like it”. Nonetheless, he was one of the powerful inner circle at Metro. 

    Rapf did some uncredited work on The Broadway Melody and The Hollywood Revue of 1929, but his first credit on a feature musical was Broadway to Hollywood; it might have been The March of Time if it had not been abandoned. He was uncredited again on Hollywood Party and Student Tour, and next produced Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry and Everybody Sing. 

    Let Freedom Ring followed, and then Rapf inflicted The Ice Follies of 1939 on Joan Crawford, whom he had brought to Hollywood years earlier and had a relationship with. 

    Rapf’s final musical effort was on Swing Fever, uncredited.    

  • Robert Z Leonard

    Robert Zigler Leonard (1889-1968), commonly known as Pop, turned to directing in 1914 after a short career as a leading man, and was a workhorse producer-director at MGM from 1926 until 1957. He worked in pretty much every genre tackled by the studio, and was one of its most prolific directors of musicals, working on fifteen between 1929 and 1952.

    Leonard directed and co-produced Marianne in 1929, one of his many collaborations with Metro’s female stars. A few years later he made In Old Madrid, then became the first person to direct Fred Astaire on film in Dancing Lady.

    The Great Ziegfeld was the second musical to win the Best Picture Oscar, and Leonard was also nominated for his direction.

    Leonard worked on five Jeanette Macdonald-Nelson Eddy vehicles–Naughty Marietta (uncredited), Maytime, Girl of the Golden West, Sweethearts (uncredited) and New Moon–as well as two MacDonald solo pictures, The Firefly and Broadway Serenade.

    Ziegfeld Girl returned him to the world of the Broadway impresario, and, after a gap of eight years, he was reunited with that film’s star, Judy Garland, for In the Good Old Summertime. Leonard then directed a new generation of musical performers in Nancy Goes to Rio (Jane Powell), Duchess of Idaho (Esther Williams) and Grounds for Marriage (Kathryn Grayson.

    Leonard’s final musical outing was Everything I Have is Yours in 1951. 

  • Arthur Freed

    No one had a longer connection with MGM musicals than Arthur Freed (1894-1974), starting at the very beginning with The Broadway Melody in 1929 and ending in 1960 with Bells Are Ringing. Of course, his role changed significantly during that period.

    Freed had not been working  long as a lyricist at MGM when he and composer Nacio Herb Brown were assigned the task of producing the first bespoke score for a film musical. Following the success of The Broadway Melody, Freed’s songs were a mainstay of the studio’s musical output for a quarter of a century. He and Brown contributed numbers to The Hollywood Revue of 1929, Marianne, Lord Byron of Broadway, Montana Moon, Dancing Lady, Going Hollywood, Student Tour, Broadway Melody of 1936, San Francisco, Broadway Melody of 1938, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, Ice Follies of 1939, Babes in Arms, Two Girls on Broadway, Hullabaloo, Little Nellie Kelly, Lady Be Good, Born to Sing, Presenting Lily Mars, Meet Me in St Louis, Three Little Words, Pagan Love Song, Singin’ in the Rain and The Affairs of Dobie Gillies

    He also worked without Brown on the 1930 Good News and on A Lady’s Morals, The Prodigal, Hollywood Party, A Night at the Opera, Strike Up the Band, Babes on Broadway, Bathing Beauty, Anchors Aweigh, Ziegfeld Follies, Yolanda and the Thief and Love Me or Leave Me.

    During the 1930s Freed spent time on Metro’s sound stages, watching the staging of his songs and learning about the craft of creating film musicals. He also devoted time to ingratiating himself with studio head Louis B Mayer, making known his ambition to become involved in the production side of the process. Finally, in 1938, Mayer decided to give Freed his chance.

    Arthur Freed initiated the filming of The Wizard of Oz and was its de facto producer, although only credited as associate producer; Mayer safeguarded the project by appointing the more experienced Mervyn LeRoy as producer.

    Having shown what he could do, Freed was made a full producer and worked on 39 musicals and a handful of non-musicals during the next thirty years. The musicals were Babes in Arms, Little Nellie Kelly, Strike Up the Band, Lady Be Good, Babes on Broadway, For Me and My Gal, Panama Hattie, Cabin in the Sky, Du Barry Was a Lady, Girl Crazy, Best Foot Forward, Meet Me in St Louis, Yolanda and the Thief, The Harvey Girls, Ziegfeld Follies, Till the Clouds Roll By, Good News, Easter Parade, The Pirate, Summer Holiday, Words and Music, The Barkleys of Broadway, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, On the Town, Annie Get Your Gun, Pagan Love Song, An American in Paris, Royal Wedding, Show Boat, The Belle of New York, Singin’ in the Rain, The Band Wagon, Brigadoon, It’s Always Fair Weather, Kismet, Invitation to the Dance, Silk Stockings, Gigi and Bells Are Ringing.

    The Freed Unit became MGM royalty and made most of the musicals upon which the studio’s current reputation rests. Opinions vary as to the extent to which Freed can take credit for this achievement, and the unit did produce a few duds. But, at the very least, Arthur Freed was the catalyst for a body of work of unrivalled sophistication and artistry.

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