The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Writers

  • Nick Grinde

    Harry A Grinde (1893-1979) was a vaudeville performer who found work as a director at MGM in the late twenties. From then until 1945 he directed around sixty generally low budget features for a variety of studios.

    Early on, Metro occasionally used Grinde to work in partnership with tyro directors who had joined the studio directly from theatre work. For example, he co-directed The Bishop Murder Case (1930) with Broadway director David Burton.

    Another such was Good News, which Grinde co-directed with Edgar J MacGregor, director of the original broadway production.

    Grinde did not direct any additional musicals at Metro, being far more at home with westerns and thrillers, though he did, out of left field, write the screenplay for Babes in Toyland.

  • Dorothy Farnum

    Dorothy Farnum (1897-1970) acted in a couple of films as a teenager, but realized that her real strength was writing. In 1919 she sold an original scenario to producer Harry Rapf, who would later be a colleague at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. After a few years of journeyman work in which she learned her trade, Rapf hired Farnum to write Beau Brummel (1924). Star John Barrymore told a newspaper it was the best part he had ever been given, and the film launched Farnum’s reputation as an expert adapter of literary works.

    Farnum became one of MGM’s top-earning writers, In 1926 her adaptation of the potboiler The Torrent was the first of several collaborations with Greta Garbo. It was described at the time as “the first picture with an unhappy ending to win a box-office success”.

    Dorothy Farnum wrote two MGM musicals, providing the stories for Call of the Flesh and A Lady’s Morals. Shortly afterwards she relocated to Europe, writing a screenplay in French (she was fluent in a number of languages, and had previously written the French version of A Lady’s Morals), and then working for Gaumont-British. In 1934 she retired to the south of France.

  • Writers T to Z

    Thalberg, Sylvia
    Tuchok, Wanda
    Unger, Gladys
    Van Every, Dale
    Vidor, King
    Crane, Wilbur
    Younger, A P

  • Writers P to S

    Praskins, Leonard
    Reisner, Charles F
    Rideout, Ransom
    Roach, Hal
    Root, Wells
    Schayer, Richard
    Sears, Zelda
    Spence, Ralph
    Stallings, Laurence

  • Writers K to O

    Kraly, Hans
    Mack, Willard
    Marion, Frances
    Markey, Gene
    Mason, Sarah Y
    Mayer, Edwin Justus
    Meredyth, Bess
    Morgan, Byron
    Nicholson, Kenyon

  • Writers F to J

    Farnham, Joseph
    Farnum, Dorothy
    Field, Salisbury
    Gleason, James
    Goulding, Edmund
    Grinde, Nick
    Hopkins, Robert E
    Houston, Norman

  • Writers A to E

    Baer, Arthur ‘Bugs’
    Block, Alfred
    Boasberg, Al
    Butler, Frank
    Colton John
    Daves, Delmer
    Dickey, Paul

  • Ralph Spence

    Ralph Spence (1890-1949) became a scenarist in 1912, working for the Selig Company, and went on to contribute to over 130 films. His 1925 Broadway play The Gorilla was filmed several times.

    Spence worked on three of Metro’s musicals. He provided additional dialogue for The Florodora Girl, and co-wrote the screenplays for Student Tour and Here Comes the Band.

  • Gene Markey

    Eugene Willford Markey (1895-1980) was a journalist and novelist who turned screenwriter with the coming of sound, and was occasionally credited as a producer. He also found time to marry  not one, not two, but three top Hollywood actors: Joan Bennett, Hedy Lamarr and Myrna Loy. And he had the honour of being described as “a skunk” by actor Louise Beavers.

    Markey served with distinction in the Second World War, unlike his close friends John Wayne and Ward Bond, and despite being older than both of them. He rose to the level of admiral, and reputedly demanded to be addressed as such for the remainder of his long life.

    Markey’s most enduring screen credit is as co-writer of the infamous Barbara Stanwyck vehicle Baby Face (1933), probably contributing the references Nietzsche. He also contributed, less memorably, to The Florodora Girl, devising the story and writing dialogue.

    In later life, Markey settled down as a horse breeder and Southern gentleman.

  • Edwin Justus Mayer

    Edwin Justus Mayer (1896-1960) was a journalist and occasional playwright who, quite enterprisingly, wrote an autobiography when he was 25 and had achieved very little. From 1927 to 1945 he worked on a number of Hollywood films; in his own words, “I never gave up the stage, the stage gave me up. The pictures gave me a living and the theatre wouldn’t. I see no shame in using your professional weapons to make a living.” His crowning achievement was his final screenplay, for Lubitsch’s To Be Or Not to Be (1945).

    Mayer had earlier been one of the three writers credited with the script for In Gay Madrid.

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