The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Category: Stars and Supporting Players

  • James Finlayson

    James Henderson Finlayson (1887-1953) was acting on the stage in his native Scotland when he travelled with a play to the United States in 1911. His parents had recently died and he decided, along with one of his brothers, to stay there. 

    Finlayson obtained a part in a 1912 production of Bunty Pulls the Strings, and later worked in vaudeville with Alex Lauder, the lesser-known brother of Harry. He ended up touring with a play that took him to Los Angeles, and never left. 

    He made his first film appearance in 1917, and by 1919 was working at the Mack Sennett studio. He became a key member of Sennett’s troupe, working repeatedly with Ben Turpin. But in 1922, Finlayson signed with Hal Roach. 

    Roach tried to groom him as a lead player, but this did not work out. He is said to have considered partnering Finlayson with Laurel and Hardy as a comedy trio, but staff director Leo McCarey realized that the duo was a better bet. So Finlayson became an unofficial third member of the partnership, appearing in thirty-three films with Stan and Ollie, right the way through to Saps at Sea in 1940.

    Finlayson always wore a fake walrus moustache and became famous for his overacting, master of the double take and the quizzical or exasperated face, accompanied by the extended cry of ‘D’oooh!’.

    James Finlayson was in five Metro musicals, initially with Laurel and Hardy. He featured prominently in The Devil’s Brother, followed by The Bohemian Girl. Later on, when he had become a bit-part player, he appeared in Two Sisters from Boston, Till the Clouds Roll By and Royal Wedding.

    Finlayson also worked with Hawks in The Dawn Patrol (1930), Hitchcock in Foreign Correspondent (1940), and Lubitsch in Angel (1937) and To Be or Not to Be (1942).

  • Thelma Todd

    Thelma Alice Todd (1906-35) made well over 100 film appearances in her brief life, largely in shorts, but also in many notable features.

    A teenage beauty pageant winner, Todd inevitably came to the attention of Hollywood scouts. She made a few undemanding appearances for Paramount, before finding a berth at the Hal Roach Studios in 1929. After working successfully with Roach’s stars, including Laurel and Hardy, Todd was eventually partnered with ZaSu Pitts in a double act intended as a distaff version of Stan and Ollie. Though not achieving the comic heights of their models, the Todd and Pitts shorts are entertaining enough, even using the same theme and incidental music as Laurel and Hardy.

    Thelma Todd was a gifted comedian, and worked well with the Marx Brothers in Monkey Business (1931) and Horse Feathers (1932). Todd always looks genuinely amused by the comics she is working with, and incorporates this into her performances.

    Todd could also play it straight, and was Iva Archer, widow of Sam Spade’s partner, in the first version of The Maltese Falcon (1931).

    Todd made two appearances in MGM musicals, both of them in Laurel and Hardy vehicles. She had the female lead in The Devil’s Brother, and was later cast in The Bohemian Girl. Unfortunately, she died before the latter film’s release, and most of her part was edited out.

    Thelma’s Todd’s death was deemed to be suicide, but this was always unbelievable to those who knew her, who said she had never shown the slightest sign of depression. She was in a relationship with director Roland West, and it is claimed that he confessed to her murder on his death bed in 1952.

  • Dennis King

    British-born Dennis Pratt (1897-1971) could thank army surgeons for his successful career as an actor and singer. Serving during the First World War, he was injured in battle and required surgery to repair the damage done to his face by shrapnel.

    King was a rare performer who was equally at home in Shakespeare and operettas. He made his West End debut in 1919, and was performing on Broadway just two years later. After working for some years as a classical actor, King gained the lead role in Rose-Marie (1924) and then created the role of François Villon in The Vagabond King (1925).

    King recreated his stage role in Paramount’s The Vagabond King (1930), the first of his handful of film appearances. In 1933, he worked for Hal Roach and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on The Devil’s Brother.

    Dennis King made his first television appearance in 1948, and worked for many years in that medium and on the stage.

  • Palau Brothers

    Orquesta Hermanos Palau consisted of a core of five brothers: Manolo, Felipe, Luis, Rafael and Raimundo (dates all unknown), and was one of the most popular dance bands in Cuba during the 1930s and 40s. They were, in fact, part of a musical dynasty, dating back to the 1850s and through to today.

    In 1931, the band travelled to Hollywood with Ernesto Lecuona, to perform in MGM’s The Cuban Love Song.

  • Enesto Lecuona

    Ernesto Lecuona y Casado (1896-1963) was a popular and prolific Cuban pianist and composer. Something of a prodigy, he wrote his first song aged 11, and graduated from the National Conservatory of Havana when he was seventeen.

    Lecuona travelled the world as a concert pianist, as well as writing around 600 compositions. He wrote film music, but only made one film appearance, performing ‘The Peanut Vendors Song ‘, with the Palau Brothers Orchestra, in The Cuban Love Song.

    Lecuona left Cuba for America after the 1959 revolution, before moving to Spain.

  • Philip Cooper

    Like many another child actor, the career of Philip Finis Cooper (1920-88) was short and sweet. He worked with top Hollywood directors, including Howard Hawks, Victor Felming and William A Wellman, but was in only six pictures, and only two credited roles.

    Cooper made his debut as the son found by Lawrence Tibbett at the end of The Cuban Love Song.

  • Hale Hamilton

    Hale Rice Hamilton (1880/83-1942) made his Broadway debut alongside James K Hackett in 1901. After making a couple of short films in 1915, he appeared in his first feature, The Winning of Beatrice (1918), for Metro Pictures. Until 1929, he maintained a dual career, on Broadway and in films. He was also an occasional dramatist.

    Hamilton was a character actor, usually credited in a featured role. His most notable appearance was probably as Tom Buchanan in the first screen version of The Great Gatsby (1926). He was also in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), playing Paul Muni’s brother.

    Hale Hamilton appeared in one MGM musical, The Cuban Love Song.

  • 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. 

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