The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Songwriters

  • Sammy Fain

    Samuel E Feinberg (1902-89) was a successful composer of popular songs who worked extensively in Hollywood. He was nominated ten times for the Oscar for Best Song, winning twice for ‘Secret Love’ from Calamity Jane (1953) and for the title song from Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955). Fain also worked regularly for the Disney Studio.

    Fain contributed songs to fourteen MGM musicals, frequently for Joseph Pasternak productions. ‘Let a Smile be Your Umbrella’ was featured in It’s a Great Life. He later wrote numbers for I Dood It, Swing Fever, Two Girls and a Sailor, Meet the People and Thrill of a Romance.

    For Anchors Aweigh Fain composed ‘The Worry Song’ to accompany Gene Kelly dancing with Jerry Mouse. His work also features in Two Sisters from Boston, Holiday in Mexico, No Leave, No Love, The Unfinished Dance, This Time for Keeps, Three Daring Daughters and Made in Paris. From Rosetta Duncan to Ann-Magret in 37 years.

  • Francis Wheeler

    Francis Wheeler (18??-19??) was a small-time lyricist who contributed to two songs that cropped up repeatedly in films of the classic period: ‘The Sheik of Araby’ (inspired by Rudolph Valentino) and ‘Let a Smile be Your Umbrella,’ which was sung by Rosetta Duncan in It’s a Great Life.

  • Ballard MacDonald

    Ballard MacDonald (1882-1935) was a Tin Pan Alley lyricist who collaborated with, amongst others, George Gershwin (notably on ‘Somebody Loves Me’). His best-known song, ‘The Trail of the Lonesome Pine,’ belatedly became a hit in the UK when the Laurel and Hardy version from Way Out West was released as a single. 

    Ballard provided numbers for four MGM musicals. In 1929 he worked with Dave Dreyer on most of the songs for It’s a Great Life. Fifteen years later ‘Somebody Loves Me’ was sung by Lena Horne in Broadway Rhythm. 

    ‘Play That Barbershop Chord,’ a song he co-wrote in 1910, was used in In the Good Old Summertime. Finally, ‘I Love to Go Swimmin With Wimmin,’ written with Sigmund Romberg for the 1921 musical Love Birds, was performed by Gene Kelly and his brother Fred in the Romberg biopic Deep in My Heart.

  • Dave Dreyer

    Dave Dreyer (1894-1967) started out as a pianist for vaudeville stars including Al Jolson and Sophie Tucker before becoming a Tin Pan Alley composer. He is perhaps best-remembered for ‘Me and My Shadow’.

    In Hollywood Dreyer worked as head of the music department at RKO-Radio, but had earlier collaborated with Ballard MacDonald to provide the songs for It’s a Great Life.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Fred Fisher

    Originally Alfred Breitenbach, German-born Fred Fisher (1875-1942) wrote the popular ‘Peg O’My Heart’ and many other Irish-themed ballads. He also co-wrote ‘Whispering Grass’ with his equally-successful daughter, Doris Fisher.

    Songs by Fisher, usually written in collaboration with others, are featured in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, So This Is College, Chasing Rainbows, Children of Pleasure, For Me and My Gal and In the Good Old Summertime. He also contributed a number to The March of Time.

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