The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Tag: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

  • Richard A Whiting

    Richard Armstrong Whiting (1891-1938) was an important contributor to the Great American Songbook, but his name is probably less than many of his contemporaries. Indeed, while working as a song plugger, Whiting discovered the young George Gershwin.

    Whiting wrote his first successful songs in 1914 and went on to compose a substantial number of standards, including ‘Ain’t We Got Fun,’ ‘Beyond the Blue Horizon’ and ‘Hooray for Hollywood’. He also provided Shirley Temple with her signature tune, ‘On the Good Ship Lollipop’.

    White composed music for a number of films, though only rarely for MGM (for example, Red-Headed Woman in 1932). Notably, he provided the songs for Paramount’s Lubitsch musical Monte Carlo (1930). 

    Cliff Edwards performs ‘The Japanese Sandman’ in Lord Byron of Broadway, originally written by Whiting and Ray Egan in 1920. Some years later, Lucille Norman sang ‘Till We Meet Again’ in For Me and My Gal.

  • William Nigh

    Emil Kreuske (1881-1955) was a silent film actor-turned-director and occasional writer, which probably makes him a Poverty Row auteur. He was essentially a ‘B’ movie director, which makes it all the more surprising that he spent a period at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which officially never made ‘B’ pictures.

    Nigh generally made action and adventure stories, and it was a moment of madness when producer Harry Rapf assigned him to direct a musical, Lord Byron of Broadway. He soon regretted it. According to one of the film’s stars, Marion Shilling, Rapf had just lost heavily in the stock market crash when he watched Nigh’s footage. Appalled by what he saw, he yanked Nigh from the project and brought in Harry Beaumont to undertake substantial retakes. But Nigh was accorded a co-director credit, which was quite unusual at MGM. He made no further musicals for the studio and was back on Poverty Row for his next picture.  

  • Larry Steers

    Lawrence Wells Steers (1888-1951) appeared in around 550 films during his thirty-year career, sometimes credited, more often not.

    Twenty-seven of those uncredited roles were in Metro musicals, starting in 1930 with Lord Byron of Broadway. Steers was subsequently in Stage Mother, Dancing Lady, Hollywood Party, Reckless, Here Comes the Band, The Great Ziegfeld, Nobody’s Baby, The Great Waltz, At the Circus, Broadway Melody of 1940, Ziegfeld Girl, Lady Be Good, Two Girls and a Sailor, Meet the People, Ziegfeld Follies (giving the hattrick of MGM Ziegfeld titles), Yolanda and the Thief, Holiday in Mexico, No Leave, No Love, Till the Clouds Roll By, A Date with Judy, The Barkeleys of Broadway, That Midnight Kiss, Annie Get Your Gun, Duchess of Idaho, The Toast of New Orleans and The Great Caruso.

  • Virginia Sale

    Virginia Sale (1899-1992) was a trained character who maintained a career on stage and screen for almost fifty years. Her first film role was as Fifi in French Leave (1927), but she soon began to specialize in playing older women, though still in her twenties. She played many mothers, aunts and spinsters.

    Sale cropped up in three MGM musicals: Lord  Byron of Broadway, the 1930 New Moon and Strike Up the Band.

  • Bill Elliott

    At the height of his career, Gordon Nance (1904-65) was generally billed as Wild Bill Elliott. So named, he featured in dozens of B westerns, mostly produced at Republic and Monogram, the upper end of Poverty Row. Elliott concluded his career playing Lieutenant Andy Doyle in a series of crime pictures for Allied Artists.

    In the thirties, Elliott made uncredited appearances in five MGM musicals: Lord Byron of Broadway, Stage Mother, Dancing Lady, Hollywood Party and Reckless.

  • Iris Adrian

    Iris Adrian Hostetter (1912-84) was at the very beginning of her career when she played an uncredited audience member in Lord Byron of Broadway. She did not go on to stardom of any kind, but maintained a steady career as a reliable and recognizable supporting player, usually as down-to-earth broads. Fourth-billed in Bob Hope’s The Paleface indicates the best amongst her credits. In the 1960s and 70s Adrian became a regular part of the Disney Studio’s live-action stock company.

    Iris Adrian only featured in one other Metro musical, uncredited as Mary Lou in Go West.

  • Gino Corrado

    Italian-born Gino Corrado Liserani (1893-1982) had the occasional featured role during the silent period, such as Aramis in Douglas Fairbanks’s The Iron Mask (1929). He also made appearances in Intolerance (1916) and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927). In talking pictures, however, Corrado rarely strayed beyond restaurants and cafés, playing uncredited diners, chefs and no fewer than 86 waiters. He even served at table in Rick’s Café Américain in Casablanca (1942).

    Corrado appeared in fifteen Metro musicals, starting with a credited role in Lord Byron of Broadway. He was then uncredited as a waiter in The Merry Widow, followed by A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, Broadway Melody of 1938, New Moon, Bitter Sweet (a waiter), I Married an Angel, I Dood It (another waiter), Yolanda and the Thief (yet another waiter), Two Sisters from Boston (credited as Ossifish), Holiday in Mexico, Fiesta, Words and Music (a final waiter) and An American in Paris.

    After retiring from acting, Corrado opened a restaurant.

  • Jack Byron

    Byron Moses Cheek (1895-1991) began his film career with a featured role in Fixed By George (1920), but spent the next thirty-five years mostly in uncredited parts. His final appearance was as a photographer at the start of This Island Earth (1955).

    Byron played five uncredited roles in Metro musicals, in Lord Byron of Broadway, Madam Satan, Hollywood Party, Du Barry Was a Lady and Swing Fever.

  • Marion Shilling

    Marion Helen Schilling (1910-2004) was arguably the cinema’s first Scream Queen. With a technique she developed playing onstage with Bela Lugosi in Dracula, she utilized her scream both in her own performances and as a scream-double for other stars.

    Shilling’s screen career only involved seven years of her very long life, and was mostly spent in second features, including many low-budget westerns.

    The love interest in Lord Byron of Broadway, being both an ‘A’ picture and a musical, was an outlier in Shilling’s career.

  • Ethelind Terry

    Ethelind Terry (1899-1984) made her name on Broadway in the 1920s, most notably as the eponymous heroine of Rio Rita in the original 1927 production.

    In 1930 Terry was cast as the vampish Ardis in Lord Byron of Broadway. The film was not a success and she made only one other film appearance, in a 1937 Tex Ritter western.

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