The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Performers

  • Louise Fazenda

    Actors who started out in silent comedies of the 1910s tended to accumulate a lot of titles in their IMDb entries. Louise Marie Fazenda (1895-1962), after one appearance in a western, made her first comedy short for Universal in 1913, and went on to accumulate over 260 credits.

    Fazenda moved to Mack Sennett at Keystone in 1915, where she came to specialize in slapstick country girls and rubes. She ran Mabel Normand a close second as the studio’s top female comedian, moving to the top when Normand left. Fazenda did a lot of work with Roscoe Arbuckle, Ben Turpin and Ford Sterling.

    Fazenda herself left Keystone in 1921 and spent some time in vaudeville. After returning to Hollywood, she worked for various studios and combined more serious films with comedies, rarely the star but always in prominent supporting roles. She did star, alongside W C Fields, in the 1928 production of Tillie’s Punctured Romance, and played Hilda in Michael Curtiz’s Noah’s Ark (also 1928).

    Fazenda married the Warner Bros executive Hal B Wallis in 1927 (his nickname around the lot became ‘the Prisoner of Fazenda’) and much of her work in the sound era was for the Warners. Her last film was The Old Maid (1939).

    Louise Fazenda made only one appearance in an MGM musical, but it was an excellent piece of work, as Jimmy Durante’s wife Elvira in The Cuban Love Song.

  • Karen Morley

    The Hollywood career of Mildred Linton (1909-2003) is a cause for both anger and celebration. It was ended suddenly by the wickedness of the House Un-American Activities Committee and its stool pigeons. But it was carried out on her own terms by a person of great integrity.

    Morley dropped out of UCLA to begin acting on the stage. This led to a job offer from MGM director Clarence Brown, and then a contract with the studio. She played a variety of roles, in films good and bad, working on eight pictures in 1931 alone, one of which was the understanding fiancée/wife in The Cuban Love Song. In a very different type of role, she was a big hit as the slinky and opportunistic Poppy in Scarface (1932). Much later, she could even give a top-rank performance in a piece of ‘B’ picture, Grand Guignol nonsense like The Unknown (1946)

    Socially and politically progressive, Morley sought out, as best she could as a contract player, roles that interested her, such as Pendie in Gabriel Over the White House (1933), and Mary in King Vidor’s Our Daily Bread (1934). She also refused parts she considered to be offensive.

    Morley was not cut out to be chattel at a studio and, declining the amorous inclinations of Louis B Mayer, she broke her contract with MGM and never signed another. It would be fair to say that the quality of her roles suffered.

    She spent some time away from Hollywood, working with the progressive Tobacco Workers’ Union in North Carolina. After returning to film work, she became one of the few progressive activists in the Screen Actors Guild. This, more than anything else, made her an obvious target for HUAC.

    At a hearing in 1952, Morley invoked the Fifth Amendment, refusing to confirm or deny that she had been a member of the Communist Party. Her career was then over. She never made another film, and even struggled to find stage work in the East. In 1954, much to her own amazement it would seem, she found herself the American Labor Party’ candidate for Lieutenant Governor of New York.

    Karen Morley lived to an advanced age, maintained her principles and, to the last, considered Elia Kazan a fink.  

  • Jimmy Durante

    James Francis Durante (1893-1980) had what in Britain might be called a Marmite personality: some people loved him, others hated him. For some, a little went a long way. (Personally, I’m a fan.) But what is undeniable is that Jimmy Durante had the longest career of any performer starring in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals. It began in 1931, ended in 1962, and included eleven pictures across all four decades.

    Durante started out in show business playing ragtime piano, and developed humour out of the musical performance. This led to vaudeville, and then radio, with time spent as part of a three-man comedy act. 

    He made his film debut in 1930, at Paramount’s New York studios. By the following year he was in Hollywood, working for Metro. Jimmy Durante, throughout his career, moved seamlessly between films, Broadway, radio, records and, later on, television. In 1934, for example, he made films in New York because he was appearing on Broadway in Jumbo, which he would film twenty-eight years later.

    Durante was sometimes the leading man in films; for instance, Palooka (1934), where he got top billing over Lupe Velez. More often, however, he was third or fourth billed, providing comic support.

    Durante’s first MGM musical, this time billed below Lupe Velez, was The Cuban Love Song. This was followed by Broadway to Hollywood and Hollywood Party (playing versions of himself), then Student Tour, Two Girls and a Sailor, Music for Millions, Two Sisters from Boston, It Happened in Brooklyn, This Time for Keeps, On an Island with You and, finally, Billy Rose’s Jumbo.

    Durante’s last big screen appearance was in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), but he continued to work on television. 

  • Lupe Velez

    María Guadalupe Villalobos Vélez (1908-44) was one of a small group of Mexican actors–others included Ramon Novarro and Dolores del Rio–to become stars during Hollywood’s Golden Age.

    Velez started out by performing in Mexico’s version of vaudeville, before moving to the United States and appearing in a Hal Roach short with Charley Chase when she was eighteen. Her first feature film, The Gaucho (1927), in which she had a starring role, was made in the same year.

    Velez had started learning English as a young teenager during a period living in Texas, and had no problem in transitioning to sound films. Habitually cast in Hispanic roles, she often exaggerated her very slight accent when acting. Velez developed a stereotyped reputation as a fiery, volatile character both on and off the screen, which led to her starring in a series of eight pictures about Carmelita Lindsay, the Mexican Spitfire. 

    The private life of Lupe Velez was of great interest to sections of the press, and she had highly-publicized relationships with, amongst others, Gary Cooper, Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams, and Johnny Weismuller, whom she married.

    Velez starred in two MGM musicals, The Cuban Love Song and Hollywood Party. 

    She took her own life at a young age, while pregnant, during what is now believed to have been a period of serious mental illness.

  • The Cuban Love Song

    The Cast

    Lawrence TibbettTerry
    Lupe VelezNenita
    Ernest TorrenceRomance
    Jimmy DuranteO.O. Jones
    Karen MorleyCrystal
    Louise FazendaElvira Jones
    Hale HamiltonJohn
    Mathilde ComontAunt Rose
    Philip CooperTerry Jr. (as Phillip Cooper)
    Ernesto Lecuona and the Palau Brothers’ Cuban OrchestraThemselves
    Agostino BorgatoCuban Telling Terry Nenita Was Gone (uncredited)
    George DavisSoda Jerk (uncredited)
    John GeorgeBeggar on Street (uncredited)
    George KumaTattoo Artist (uncredited)
    Harry StrangMarine Sergeant (uncredited)
    Purv PullenMonkey voices (uncredited)
    Jayne ShadduckBaby voices (uncredited)

  • Tom Kennedy

    Thomas Aloysius Kennedy (1886-1965) had a face that bore testament to his first career as a heavyweight boxer. It was a face that brought him a fifty-year career as a character actor and appearances in more than 400 films and television programmes.

    Kennedy made his first screen appearance in 1915 in The Lamb, a Douglas Fairbanks comedy-western. He later played First Officer Gibson, in hot pursuit of the Marx Brothers in Monkey Business (1931). He was the gangster Slim Murphy in 42nd Street and appeared regularly as Gahagan in the Torchy Blane series (“What a day! What a day!”).

    Right at the end of his career, Kennedy was one of Spencer Tracy’s colleagues in the Santa Rosita Police Department in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).

    Kennedy made two uncredited appearances in Metro musicals in the 1930s: Flying High and Hollywood Party.

  • Harry Watson

    Harry Ruilton Watson (1921-2001) came from a family of child actors, and actually appeared in several films alongside some of his brothers. Most notably, he and his brothers Delmar, Billy and Gary played the Governor’s sons in Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939).

    Harry Watson also played Albert, the gambling pageboy, in the Fred Astaire picture Damsels in Distress (1937).

    As a ten-year-old, Watson appeared in Metro’s Flying High.

    Watson was a combat photographer during the Second World War, and later pursued a career as a press photographer.

  • Bee Stephens

    Erma Beatrice Stephens (1907-88) played a chorus girl in her first film, After Midnight (1927), and she played a chorus girl in her final film, 21 years later (When My Baby Smiles at Me [1948]).

    She also played a chorus girl or dancer in the majority of the fifty-odd pictures that came in between. She was well equipped for this as a career, having begun her dance training aged three.

    Stephens appeared in two musicals for MGM: Flying High and I Married an Angel. 

    After leaving show business behind, Stephens had a long and successful career working for Procter & Gamble.

  • Buddy Roosevelt

    Kenneth Stanhope Sanderson (1898-1973) must be considered one of Hollywood’s nearly-men. After slaving away in dozens of Poverty Row westerns for four years, he was finally offered a part in an ‘A’ picture. Roaul Walsh had been forced to give up the role of the Cisco Kid in In Old Arizona (1931) following the bizarre car accident that cost him his eye, and the part was given to Buddy Roosevelt. However, just before shooting was scheduled to start, he also had an accident, breaking his leg. The part ended up with Warner Baxter, who won an Academy Award and went on to a successful career. For Roosevelt, it was back to the cheapo westerns.

    Buddy Roosevelt had started out as a Hollywood stuntman in 1916, after spending time as a cowboy. He got his first substantial acting role in 1924, and was soon on the ‘B’ western treadmill. He made occasional appearances in non-westerns, for example playing a secret service agent in Gabriel Over the White House (1933). He also continued to undertake stunt work, and doubled for Ronald Colman in Under Two Flags (1936) and Lost Horizon (1937). Roosevelt continued acting in films and television until 1962, with a final appearance in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

    Roosevelt made uncredited appearances in four Metro musicals, in none of them playing a cowboy: Flying High, Annie Get Your Gun, The Belle of New York and Merry Andrew.

  • Betty Recklaw

    Betty Recklaw

    Little is known about Betty Recklaw (19??-2002), not even the year of her birth.

    IMDb suggests that she made her uncredited debut in the Betty Bronson version of Peter Pan (1924) as the mermaid queen. She then appears to have done very little until playing one of the chorus girls in The Broadway Melody. Her only other MGM musical is given as Flying High, again in the chorus line.

    After Sis Hopkins (1941), nothing else is known.

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