James Burroughs (????-19??) had a brief career not appearing in MGM musicals.
In 1929 Burroughs sang ‘Wedding of the Painted Doll’ offscreen in The Broadway Melody and ‘Tableau of the Jewels’ in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. He followed these non-appearances the next year by singing ‘Blue Daughter of Heaven’ in Lord Byron of Broadway.
Eddie Kane (1899-1989) was a bit player with around 250 appearances who featured, albeit uncredited, as the loosely-disguised Ziegfeld character in The Broadway Melody. He later turned up uncredited in Ice Follies of 1939, Two Girls and a Sailor and Bathing Beauty.
Grady Harwell Sutton (1906-95) was a hard-working supporting player for 60 years, often in codified gay roles. He is probably best-known today for his four films with W C Fields.
Sutton’s first uncredited appearance in a Metro musical was as a football spectator in So This Is College. He then waited sixteen years for his most substantial part, as Kathryn Grayson’s would-be suitor in Anchors Aweigh.
This was followed by uncredited appearances in Ziegfeld Follies, Two Sisters from Boston, Holiday in Mexico, No Leave, No Love and, after another sixteen years, Billy Rose’s Jumbo.
The three MGM-musical roles of Dorothy Dehn (1908-98) represent a downward spiral. From the wholesomeness of the campus in So This Is College, via the part of Quicksilver in Madam Satan, she ended up as a Maxim’s girl in Lubitsch’s The Merry Widow,
Supporting player Phyllis Crane (1914-82) was just 15 when she played a college student in So This Is College and definitely too young to have been involved in the craziness of Madam Satan. She made her last appearance at the grand old age of 23.
Oscar Rudolph (1911-91) was a bit-part actor who went on to a career as a prolific director of television episodes.
After appearing as a freshman who loses his trousers in So This Is College, he played another student in In Gay Madrid, a cook in It’s a Great Life and a peasant in Maytime.
Synopsis
Three young, blonde triplets hold a sign introducing the first scene: Palace of Minstrel. A minstrel chorus sings and dances [Bones and Tambourines]. Jack Benny enters and introduces Conrad Nagel as the Interlocutor. Nagel starts to introduce Charles King, but is interrupted by King himself. To apologize, King asks the chorus to name the screen’s greatest lover. Before they can answer, Cliff Edwards enters and declares it is he. Edwards plays his ukulele and sings scat. Benny re-enters and takes away Nagel, leaving Edwards to discover he has no audience. He exits and the curtain closes.
Nagel introduces Joan Crawford, who sings and dances, supported by the Biltmore Quartet [Gotta Feelin’ for You].
Charles King and a dancing chorus performs [Minstrel Days]. June Purcell sings [Low Down Rhythm] and Joyce Murray performs a toe dance.
Conrad Nagel returns, with Charles King as Mr Bones and Cliff Edwards as Mr Tambo. After an exchange with Edwards, Nagel introduces King. [Your Mother and Mine]. King tells Nagel that, as a screen lover, he will now need to use words and music, and reminds him of the serenade to Anita Page in The Broadway Melody. He tells Nagel he is handicapped. Anita Page enters and Nagel serenades her [You Were Meant For Me]. King is astonished, shrinks to a tiny figure and storms off.
Jack Benny makes a risqué remark to Ann Dvorak, who slaps him. Benny introduces Cliff Edwards, who demands a bigger build up. [Nobody But You]. The chorus dances.
Benny returns and plays his violin. He is interrupted by Karl Dane and George K Arthur, dressed as sailors and laying a red carpet. Benny resumes [Your Mother and Mine], so Dane and Arthur roll up the carpet and carry it and Benny away. Benny returns with a cello, but the curtain closes.
Benny and William Haines exchange comic remarks while Haines destroys Benny’s tuxedo. Gwen Lee enters: Haines whispers to her and she slaps Benny. Haimes and Lee leave and a disheveled Benny takes a miniature Bessie Love from his pocket. She grows to her normal size. Bessie Love talks about the demands of talking pictures, then sings and dances with chorus boys. [I Never Knew I Could Do a Thing Like That].
Jack Benny enters wearing a suit of armour. The curtains open and Conrad Nagel introduces Queen Marie Dressler and Princess Polly Moran. Dressler slaps Benny but hurts her hand on the armour. Dressler sings. [For I’m the Queen].
Jack Benny enters in his normal clothes. While he is making an introduction, the curtains open to reveal Laurel and Hardy setting up a magic act. Benny leaves and Laurel and Hardy perform a skit which ends with Hardy and Benny covered in cake. Benny introduces Marion Davies, who enters in miniature through the legs of a line of soldiers. She is in military uniform, and sings and dances. [Tommy Atkins on Parade].
The Brox Sisters enter dressed as toy soldiers and sing while the chorus marches and dances. [Strike Up the Band]. The curtain closes for the end of the first half.
The orchestra tunes up and plays a medley. The triplets display another sign: Tableau of Jewels. James Burroughs sings offscreen [Tableau of Jewels], while a tableau displays costumes by Erté. scantily-clad Carla Laemmle dances. The scene changes to the undersea world of Neptune, leading to a skit called ‘Dance of the Sea,’ with Buster Keaton in drag.
Jack Benny introduces Gus Edwards, who sings [Lon Chaney Will Get You If You Don’t Watch Out] and is joined by dancing ghouls. Benny then introduces an acrobatic dance number with the Natova company, [Turkish Adagio] which he interrupts occasionally with commentary.
Benny introduces Norma Shearer and John Gilbert in the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. Director Lionel Barrymore receives a letter from the New York office saying Romeo and Juliet is old fashioned and they want it modernized. Shearer and Gilbert perform the scene again using modern slang.
The triplets hold a sign introducing ‘Singing [sic] in the Rain’. Cliff Edwards sings to his own ukulele accompaniment [Singin’ in the Rain] and the chorus dances in the rain. Then the Brox Sisters take up the song.
Jack Benny introduces Gus Edwards, Charles King and ‘Ukulele Ike’. [Charlie, Ike and Gus]. The triplets introduce ‘The Italian Trio’ and Charlie, Ike and Gus reappear as Italians (with Cliff Edwards in drag). [The Italian Trio].
Benny introduces five lovely girls: Bessie Love, Marie Dressler and Polly Moran. [Marie, Polly and Bess]. In the middle of this skit, Moran breaks away. [Sonny Boy]. Marie, Polly, Bess, Charlie, Ike and Gus sing. [The Fountain in the Park].
Charles King sings to Myrtle McLaughlin. [Orange Blossom Time]. The Albertin Rasch troupe dances.
Finally, most of the cast gathers for a reprise. [Singin’ in the Rain].
Little seems to be known about David Cox (1906-19??), who designed costumes at MGM before moving to work with Dolly Tree at Fox in 1932. He is, nonetheless, a featured artist at the Victoria & Albert Museum, where a costume designed for Bessie Love to wear in The Broadway Melody is among the exhibits.
Cox also designed for The Hollywood Revue of 1929, It’s a Great Life, Chasing Rainbows, Call of the Flesh, Good News and Love in the Rough.
Douglas Graham Shearer (1899-1971) was working in MGM’s camera department when talking pictures were the latest thing and it has been suggested that he became one of the pioneers of the practical use of sound largely because no one else expressed an interest. He said “Overnight I became the one-man sound department”.
Shearer started out adding music and sound effects to White Shadows in the South Seas (1928) and went on to win five Academy Awards, four of them for musicals. While supervising the still rudimentary sound recording on The Broadway Melody, it was Shearer who suggested playing back the pre-recorded music when Thalberg ordered the big production number be redone. He was also the impetus behind the establishment of MGM’s famed music department.
As a department head, Shearer received a credit on almost a thousand pictures during his forty-year tenure, running Cedric Gibbons a close second. But he does appear to have been very hands-on in his approach, personally developing many innovations and technical improvements in screen sound.
Shearer received Academy Awards for Naughty Marietta, San Francisco, Strike Up the Band and The Great Caruso, and nominations for Maytime, Sweethearts, Balalaika and The Chocolate Soldier. He also won an Oscar nomination for his contribution to the special effects in The Wizard of Oz.
In addition, Shearer won seven awards for scientific and technical innovations.
Arthur Lange (1889-1956) was a prolific composer of songs, scores and incidental music for dozens of films at a variety of studios.
At MGM Lange began by composing and arranging music for the Buster Keaton ‘underwater’ sequence in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, where he also appeared onscreen conducting the orchestra. Lange also made an appearance as himself in Free and Easy. He was subsequently the musical arranger onSo This Is College, and composed and arranged forThe Great Ziegfeld and Let Freedom Ring.
