Eric Little (dates unknown) was a lyricist who contributed to West End musicals in the 1920s, which suggests that he was British. Later, he wrote the lyrics for the Rudy Vallee hit ‘My Time is Your Time’.
MGM used the song as part of the Radio Rogues’ medley in Going Hollywood,
Public knowledge about Leo Dance (dates unknown) seems to rest entirely on the fact that he composed the song ‘My Time is Your Time’, which became a hit for Rudy Vallee in 1929.
A few years later, the song was included in the medley performed by the Radio Rogues in MGM’s Going Hollywood.
Gustav Gerson Kahn (1886-1941) was one of Tin Pan Alley’s most prolific and successful writers of popular songs.
Khan started out writing for vaudeville performers in the 1910s before forming the first of many partnerships with composers. In 1924, he wrote his first standard, ‘I’ll See You in My Dreams’.
Contributing to many Broadway scores throughout the 1920s, he also moved into writing for films, and by 1933 was effectively working full time for Hollywood. Khan’s lyrics featured in Flying Down to Rio (1933), Kid Millions (1934) and Captains Courageous (1937).
Khan worked most frequently with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, contributing to Going Hollywood, Hollywood Party, The Merry Widow, Naughty Marietta, Rose-Marie, A Day at the Races, The Firefly, The Girl of the Golden West and Bitter Sweet.
Khan’s contributions to the Great American Songbook include ‘Ain’t We Got Fun?’, ‘It Had to Be You’, ‘Yes Sir, That’s My Baby’, ‘Makin’ Whoopee’ and ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’.
Gus Kahn was played by Danny Thomas in a Warner Bros musical biopic, I’ll See You in My Dreams (1951).
Paul Gregory (1904-42) made his Broadway debut as a teenager, and a few years later was cast as the ‘Native American’ character Wanenis in the original production of Whoopee! (1928).
Gregory was one of several cast members who travelled to Hollywood to make the film version of Whoopee! in 1930. He remained there for a few years and made three other features.
Gregory was an occasional songwriter, and collaborated on ‘You Call It Madness (But I Call It Love)’, which was performed by the Three Radio Rogues in Going Hollywood.
There is scant information about Gregory’s short live after Hollywood, though he appears to have returned to New York. He is frequently confused, including by the AFI, with producer Paul Gregory (1920-2015).
Ruggiero Eugenio di Rodolfo Colombo (1908-34) was the child of Italian immigrants. He started learning the violin at a young age and was hired professionally when just thirteen.
In 1928, he performed with the Gus Arnheim orchestra in a Vitaphone musical short, which led to a few acting roles. He also continued with Arnheim, branching into singing. He was a crooner, like his friend and colleague Bing Crosby.
Columbo was managed by Con Conrad, and collaborated with him in writing a number of songs. One of these, ‘You Call It Madness (But I Call It Love)’, was parodied by the Three Radio Rogues in MGM’s Going Hollywood.
Ross Columbo died young as the result of a tragic shooting accident. His mother was in poor health and Columbo’s girlfriend at the time of his death, Carole Lombard, assisted in hiding his the fact of his death from her for ten years.
Gladys Louise DuBois (1907-71) was an actor and songwriter who acted in a couple of Pre-Code musicals. She is best-known today for contributing songs, including the title number, to Mae West’s I’m No Angel (1933).
DuBois co-wrote the lyrics to ‘You Call It Madness (But I Call It Love)’, which featured in the Three Radio Rogues’s medley in Going Hollywood.
Songwriter Conrad K Dober (1891-1938) started out as a cinema pianist, first in Harlem, then in Keith vaudeville theatres.
Conrad’s first song was published in 1912, and he found his greatest success during the 1920s, co-writing hits such as ‘Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me’. During this period he wrote regularly for Broadway shows.
From 1929, Conrad worked in Hollywood, contributing songs to musicals by a variety of studios, his biggest hit being ‘The Continental’, written for Astaire and Rogers’s The Gay Divorcee (1934).
Numbers co-written by Con Conrad can be heard in MGM’s Going Hollywood and The Great Ziegfeld.
Kathryn Elizabeth Smith (1907-1986) was born in Virginia and became known as ‘the Songbird of the South’. Her wholly untrained voice spanned two and a half octaves.
After singing as an amateur from the age of eight, Smith found professional engagements, leading to performing in a Broadway show in 1926. Her weight led to her being represented as a rival to Sophie Tucker.
Smith was the original Pansy Sparks in Flying High on Broadway, and the butt of cruel jokes by Bert Lahr. The MGM adaptation replaced her with Charlotte Greenwood, her physical opposite.
She was a recording artist and, from 1931, appeared regularly on the radio, becoming a major star. She co-wrote her radio theme song, ‘When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain’, with Howard Johnson and Harry M Woods, and it was parodied by Jimmy Hollywood of the Three Radio Rogues in Going Hollywood.
During the Second World War, Smith became closely associated with Irving Berlin’s ‘God Bless America’ and, bizarrely, became involved in campaigning on moral grounds against Billy Wilder’s adaptation of Double Indemnity (1944). Her last recorded appearance was in Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in in 1968.
The people who wrote ‘Try a Little Tenderness’ deserve to be better known. One of them was Reginald John Connelly, a British songwriter and music publisher who, with his partner Jimmy Campbell, wrote the song immortalized by Otis Redding, and also the perennial ‘Goodnight, Sweetheart’.
The Campbell Connelly company was established in the mid-twenties and published hits by its owners and other songwriters, becoming internationally successful. Connelly later began composing for British films, including musicals starring Jessie Matthews
Songs written by Reg Connelly were used in two MGM musicals. ‘Just an Echo in the Valley’ was a hit in 1932, and was sung the following year by Bing Crosby in Going Hollywood. Later, ‘Goodnight, Sweetheart’ featured in Holiday in Mexico.
The lyrics of Lorenz Milton Hart (1895-1943) were sophisticated, erudite, witty, conversational and amongst the finest contributions to the Great American Songbook. He stands with Cole Porter and Ira Gershwin as one of the foremost lyricists of the mid-twentieth century.
In 1919, Hart met Richard Rodgers, and they formed a partnership that produced 26 of the most inventive Broadway shows of the late-1920s and 1930s These included A Connecticut Yankee (1927), Babes in Arms (1937), (The Boys from Syracuse (1938) and Pal Joey (1940).
Hart and Rodgers worked in Hollywood for a period in the early 30s, with notable work for Lubitsch’s Love Me Tonight (1932) and Hallelujah, I’m a Bum (1933).
Hart’s erratic behaviour eventually led to a rift with Rodgers, culminating in the latter working with Oscar Hammerstein II on Oklahoma! (1943). Hart died not long after the show’s premier.
Lorenz Hart’s lyrics can be heard in eleven MGM musicals, starting with Dancing Lady in 1933. The others were Hollywood Party, The Merry Widow, Babes in Arms, I Married an Angel, Words and Music (a less-than-accurate dramatization of the Rodgers and Hart partnership), Torch Song, Love me or Leave Me and Billy Rose’s Jumbo.
