The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Songwriters

  • Richard Rodgers

    There were better composers of popular music in the mid-twentieth century than Richard Charles Rodgers (1902-77), but none was as popular, prolific and influential. He was the first person to be awarded an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, a Tony and a Pulitzer.

    Rodgers’s career hinges on two partnerships with great, but very different, lyricists: Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. He met Hart while still a teenager, and they started out writing amateur shows, until contributing to their first Broadway show, Poor Little Ritz Girl in 1920. Rodgers had to work at other jobs to make a living, and was considering giving up music until the songs he and Hart wrote for a benefit show in 1925 received high praise from the critics. There was particular admiration for ‘Manhattan’, now an American standard.

    Rodgers and Hart wrote Broadway shows throughout the late 1920s before moving to Hollywood, where they scored a particular success with songs for Lubitsch’s Love Me Tonight (1932). Another string of Broadway shows ran from 1935 till Hart’s death in 1943. 

    Rodgers had, by that time, already begun working with Hammerstein, with Oklahoma! (1943) establishing a new style of integrated musical. They went on to write some of the most successful shows on Broadway and throughout the world of musical theatre.

    Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer never filmed any of the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows, so it is Rodgers’s collaborations with Hart that feature in ten of the studio’s musicals: Dancing Lady, Hollywood Party, Babes in Arms, I Married an Angel, Meet the People, Words and Music (a highly-fictionalized Rodgers and Hart biopic), Torch Song, Love Me Or Leave Me, This Could be the Night and Billy Rose’s Jumbo.

    Although none of their songs were used by MGM, the influence of Rodgers and Hammerstein can clearly be seen in the greater integration of music and plot from the late 40s onwards.

  • Harold Adamson

    Harold Campbell Adamson (1906-80) co-wrote a musical while at Harvard, where he was spotted by composer Vincent Youmans and invited to write the lyrics for a 1930 Broadway musical called Smiles. 

    Adamson then partnered with composer Burton Lane, while continuing to write with other composers. He and Lane then went to Hollywood, planning a short visit, but both stayed many years and worked on dozens of films.

    As well as Lane, Adamson wrote with many others, including Hoagy Carmichael, Sammy Fain and Jimmy McHugh. He made a return to Broadway in the 1940s, writing lyrics for several shows.

    Harold Adamson songs were used in thirteen Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals: Dancing Lady, Reckless, Here Comes the Band, The Great Ziegfeld, Ziegfeld Girl, The Big Store, Thousands Cheer, Two Girls and a Sailor, Bathing Beauty, A Date with Judy, Everything I Have is Yours, Jupiter’s Darling and Seven Hills of Rome.

  • Burton Lane

    Burton Levy (1912-97) began writing songs while still a teenager, dropping out of school to do so. By the time he was 18, he had composed music for songs performed in Broadway shows, working regularly with Harold Adamson.

    Working for Irving Berlin Inc, Lane was sent to Hollywood with Adamson in 1934, and subsequently took up residence there. The pair worked together until 1936, writing songs for a number of studios. Lane then partnered with Ralph Freed (Arthur’s younger brother) at Paramount, followed by Frank Loesser. His final screen partnership was with Alan Jay Lerner in the 1950s.

    Lane composed the music for a number of Broadway musicals, the most successful being Finian’s Rainbow (1947) and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1965).

    Notable songs composed by Lane include ‘How About You?’, ‘Old Devil Moon’, ‘I Hear Music’ and ‘ How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Loved You When You Know I’ve Been a Liar All My Life?’

    Lane songs were used in seventeen MGM musicals: Dancing Lady, Reckless, Here Comes the Band, Babes on Broadway, Ship Ahoy, Panama Hattie, Seven Sweethearts, Presenting Lily Mars, Du Barry Was a Lady, Thousands Cheer, Meet the People, This Time for Keeps, Royal Wedding, Everything I Have is Yours, Torch Song, Give a Girl a Break and Jupiter’s Darling.

  • Don Redman

    Donald Matthew Redman (1900-64) was a bandleader, singer, songwriter and musical arranger for performers including Count Basie and Pearl Bailey.

    Redman has been described as “one of the first great jazz arrangers and…a pivotal figure in the development of Swing and the Big Band style Jazz”. Which makes his one link with the MGM musical even funnier.

    One of Redman’s most successful songs was ‘How’m I Doin’?’, written in 1926 and recorded by a number of artists, including Redman himself. But in MGM Stage Mother it is given a twelve-second rendition by ten-year-old Mary Ann Jackson that is arguably (certainly) the most memorable sequence in the film. She shakes her head, slaps her thigh, rotates her hips and bawls out the inappropriate lyrics in a way that only a true stage mother could love. It’s probably not what Don Redman had in mind.

  • George Graff

    George Graff (1886-1973) was an American songwriter who co-wrote over 400 songs. Of these, one has survived to become a standard: ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling’, written with Ernest Ball and Chauncey Olcott in 1912.

    Graff lived a long life and this song became a kind of pension fund, earning him an alleged $10,000 a year in royalties up to the time of his death. Only a few years earlier, it had been featured in the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour (1967). ‘Irish Eyes’ is often mistaken for a traditional Irish ballad, but Graff admitted that he had never even visited Ireland.

    MGM used the song twice in its musicals: it was tortured by Carl ‘Alfalfa’ Switzer in Stage Mother; and sung sweetly by Nelson Eddy in Let Freedom Ring.

  • Chauncey Olcott

    John Chancellor Olcott (1858?-1932) was a stage actor, singer and songwriter. He started out performing in minstrel shows, but eventually became a regular on Broadway.

    Olcott was of Irish descent, and many of his songs took the form of Irish ballads. Three have become standards: ‘Mother Machree’, ‘My Wild Irish Rose’ and, most particularly, ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling’.

    The last of these has been heard in many pictures through the years, and was used twice in MGM musicals. Olcott died in 1932, so did not live to hear Carl ‘Alfalfa’ Switzer’s painfully off-key rendition in Stage Mother. A few years later, Nelson Eddy treated it with a little more respect in Let Freedom Ring.

  • Thomas J Gray

    Thomas Joseph Gray (1888-1924) was a writer and lyricist who was contributing songs to Broadway shows as early as 1914. He served in the First World War, then picked up his career both at home and for London revues. His most frequent songwriting collaborators were Fred Fisher and Ray Walker.

    Gray started contributing stories to films in 1917, writing for actor Victor Moore. In 1924, he began writing titles for Harold Lloyd, working on films as that included Girl Shy (1924) and The Freshman (1925).

    Back in 1910, Gray and Fisher wrote a song with the catchy title ‘Any Little Girl That’s a Nice Little Girl Is the Right Little Girl For Me’. In 1933, MGM used it in Stage Mother, sung by Alice Brady, with a little help from Ted Healy.

    Gray died aged 36, from “a bronchial ailment”.

  • 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.

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