The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Songwriters

  • Al Goodhart

    Albert S Goodhart (1905-55) was a composer whose best-known song gained its fame from being featured in one of the world’s favourite musicals. In 1932, he collaborated with Arthur Freed on ‘Fit as a Fiddle’, which Freed later used to great effect in Singin’ in the Rain.

    Goodhart worked in the UK for a few years in the mid-30s, where he received a commission for another iconic song. He co-wrote, with Sammy Lerner and Al Hoffman, ‘No One Can Like the Drummer Man’ for the film Young and Innocent (1937). Director Alfred Hitchcock used the number for the big reveal of the villain in the picture’s denouement. 

    Music for Broadway to Hollywood was Goodhart’s other contribution to Metro’s musical output.

  • Caro Roma

    Female songwriters were relatively rare in Tin Pan Alley, but Carrie Northey (1866-1937) had a reputation as one of the most talented.

    Roma made her stage debut aged three, and was later sent by her family to train at the New England Conservatory of Music. While still in her teens, she apparently conducted an orchestra in Canada, and was a gifted singer and pianist. 

    Caro Roma wrote a variety of types of song, including setting her own poetry to music. She wrote ‘coon’ songs in an exaggerated African-American idiom (popular at the time, less so now), songs with a religious theme, and sea songs.

    Roma collaborated with composer Ernest Ball, and their ‘In the Garden of My Heart’ is featured in Broadway to Hollywood.  

  • Ernest Ball

    At the time of his death, the New Yorker described Ernest Roland Ball (1878-1927) as the most able ballad writer of his time, though scarcely known outside the profession.

    Ball specialized in Irish ballads (though born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio), the two most famous being ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling’ and ‘Mother Machree’. Both songs were collaborations with lyricist Chauncey Olcott, with George Graff Jr contributing to the former and Rida Johnson Young to the latter.

    Numbers composed by Ball appear in four MGM musicals. In Broadway to Hollywood, Nelson Eddy sings ‘In the Garden of My Heart’, written with Caro Roma. An uncredited boy sings ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling’ in Stage Mother and Jeanette MacDonald performs ‘Love Me and the World is Mine’ in San Francisco. Finally, it is back to Nelson Eddy for a rendition of ‘Irish Eyes’ in Let Freedom Ring.

  • Anton Rubinstein

    Russian Anton Grigorjewitsch Rubinstein (1829-94) was a concert pianist, composer, teacher and founder of the St Petersburg Conservatory of Music.

    Rubinstein was a key figure in the Romantic Era, writing operas, symphonies and many piano pieces. His most famous composition is probably ‘Melody in F’, written in 1852. This music was the basis for a ballet sequence in the abandoned MGM revue The March of Time, performed by the Albertina Rasch troupe. Some of the footage was later incorporated into Broadway to Hollywood. 

  • Edgar Smith

    Edgar McPhail Smith (1857-1938) was a librettist, occasional actor, and songwriter who contributed to an estimated 150 Broadway productions over a period of forty years. Much of his work was for the comedians and impresarios Joe Weber and Lew Fields, and his songs were performed by some of the biggest musical and comedy stars of the day, including Al Jolson and Marie Dressler.

    Smith contributed the lyrics to only one standard. ‘Ma Blushin’ Rosie’ was written with John Goldberg, and is featured in MGM’s Broadway to Hollywood, which also shows one of Smith’s shows, Whoop-Dee-Do playing at one of Weber and Field’s theatres.

    ‘Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl’, written for Dressler, is performed by Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in Strike Up the Band.

  • John Stromberg

    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.

  • William H Penn

    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

    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.

  • Marvin Hatley

    Composer Thomas Marvin Hatley (1905-86) achieved a form of immortality when he wrote a piece called ‘Dance of the Cuckoos’ (sometimes known as ‘Ku-Ku’). In 1930, this became the theme music for Laurel and Hardy’s sound shorts after it was heard on the radio. According to Laurel, Hal Roach gave the composer “about fifty bucks’ for the rights to the music.

    But Hatley did also find a job at the Roach studio as musical director, in which capacity he wrote and arranged probably hundreds of scores. Two Laurel and Hardy features, Way Out West (1937) and Block-Heads (1938) earned him nominations for the Best Original Score Oscar.

    Hatley also enjoyed appearing in front of the camera whenever a musician or conductor was required. And he provided the piano sounds for The Music Box (1932).

    He was musical director of The Devil’s Brother, which also utilized ‘Dance of the Cuckoos’, and he composed for The Bohemian Girl and Swiss Miss.

    Hatley was deemed surplus to requirements when Roach restructured his studio in 1939, though Laurel insisted he be brought back to work on Saps at Sea (1940). Hatley became a lounge pianist, often remarking that he was earning more than Hal Roach ever paid him. 

  • Thomas Reynoldson

    Thomas Herbert Reynoldson (1807-83) may or may not have the right to an entry on this website.

    Reynoldson was a British actor and singer of the late Regency period who began, probably in late 1939, to translate and adapt European light operas. One of the works he adapted was Daniel Auber’s Fra Diavolo, written in 1830 with a libretto by Eugène Scribe.

    Fra Diavolo was loosely adapted by Hal Roach and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as The Devil’s Brother, with a number of the original songs retained. Most sources cite Scribe as the author of the lyrics, but this is to ignore the necessary artistry required for the translation of song lyrics. The aria ‘On yonder rock reclining’ may have the same sense as Scribe’s ‘Voyez sur cette roche’, but the former is not a literal translation of the latter.

    It is not certain that Reynoldson’s translations are the ones used by the filmmakers, but it is likely.

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