John Brown (1904-74) was a college football star whose good looks secured him a screen test and a five-year contract with MGM. He played opposite Joan Crawford in Our Dancing Daughters (1928), but his thick Alabama accent meant he was never going to be cast as a city sophisticate after the introduction of sound. Brown’s accent was suitable, however, for the cowboy he played when reteamed with Crawford in Montana Moon.
Brown’s career suffered a double blow in 1931 when he was replaced by the rising Clark Gable in Laughing Sinners, and then failed to secure the lead in Tarzan the Ape Man. His MGM contract ended and Brown spent the rest of his, very successful and prolific, career in Poverty Row westerns, frequently playing characters called ‘Johnny Mack Brown’.
Joan Prescott, the flirtatious daughter of wealthy John Prescott, arrives at the last minute to board her father’s private train. He warns her that he does not want any more foolishness from her. Joan’s sister, Elizabeth, tells her she is in love with Jeff, a man she met in Boston and who is on the train. Joan has often stolen men from Elizabeth, but she promises not to do so this time.
Joan does not like Jeff, but that evening he tells her that he is in love with her. On impulse, Joan gets off the train at the next stop. She buys a ticket back to New York but, while waiting for the train, comes across the campfire of Larry Kerrigan, a Texas cowboy. They talk, and Joan tells him how pleasant it is to be away from all the city noise. Larry says he often dreams of going to a city, to get away from the silence. Joan is surprised to find that Larry works on a ranch owned by her father. Larry says Mr Prescott is admired by all his men, but that he has “a pair of high-falutin’ daughters that ought to be hog-tied”. Larry nicknames Joan ‘Montana’ and she sleeps alongside him by the campfire. Over the next few days, they fall in love.
City girl Joan Prescott (Joan Crawford) and cowboy Larry Kerrigan (Johnny Mack Brown) bond round the old campfire
Elsewhere on the ranch, cowboy Froggy meets Bloom, a travelling doctor from the Bronx, who pulls Froggy’s bad tooth.
Joan and Larry arrive at the main camp [Montana Call] and he introduces her to Froggy, Bloom and the others as his wife. He does not tell them she is the boss’s daughter.
Joan and Larry say goodbye the next morning [Happy Cowboy] and ride to the ranch, where they tell her father and the others that they are married. Prescott takes Larry into the library. He tells Larry he is very pleased about the marriage, but cannot tell Joan because what he likes she is always against; but Joan overhears anyway.
Joan’s friends throw a party for her at the local roadhouse and Larry persuades her to go without him, because he does not have the proper clothes. Larry is unhappy that she does not get home until six in the morning. When Larry says he has to go to work, Joan says he does not have to because her dad will look after them. Larry tells her that is not the way things are going to be. Joan apologizes and he leaves for work.
Later, Joan and Larry go together to another party, at which both the city sophisticates and the ranch hands are present. Froggy and Bloom tease Larry about his fancy clothes. [Get Up You Cowboy; Trailin’ in Old Montana].
Larry dislikes Jeff and is unhappy when he sees Joan flirting with him. Larry tells Joan her city friends do not live up to his standards of decency. She says she will dance with whom she pleases. She then performs a tango with Jeff, who snatches a kiss at the end.
Joan tells Larry they made a mistake in marrying because neither belongs in the other’s world, and she refuses to leave with him. After a moment, Joan rushes after Larry and apologizes, but he refuses to come back with her.
Some time later, back with the other ranch hands [The Moon is Low; Sing a Song of Old Montana], Larry is missing Joan. Mr Prescott comes to tell Larry they are all returning to New York tomorrow. He asks Larry to talk to Joan, saying this is the first time he has ever seen her regret anything. Larry brightens when he hears that, but still refuses. [The Moon is Low].
Froggy (Cliff ‘Ukelele Ike’ Edwards) leads a cowboy sing-song
At the station, Joan is hoping Larry will at least come to say goodbye. At a water stop, the train is held up by masked Mexican bandits. One of them grabs Joan, who berates Jeff and the others for not helping her, and says Larry would have done something. The bandit carries off Joan and, laughing, she tells Larry to take off the mask because she would recognize his voice anywhere. Mr Prescott explains the trick to the other passengers, while Joan and Larry ride off happily with the other ‘bandits’ [Happy Cowboy].
Roseanne Bauchens (1882-1967) spent forty years as the editor-of-choice for Cecil B DeMille’s pictures, from Carmen (1915) to The Ten Commandments (1956). She even appeared alongside DeMille when he did his cameo in Sunset Boulevard (1950). So highly did DeMille value Bauchens that it was stipulated in his contracts that she was to be his editor. She won an Oscar for North West Mounted Police (1940).
This meant that Bauchens was the cutter on DeMille’s Metro musical, Madam Satan. Earlier that year, she edited Lord Byron of Broadway.
Henry Thomas Sharp (1892-1966) became a cinematographer in 1920, and went on to become a favourite of Douglas Fairbanks. Films shot by Sharp included Don Q Son of Zorro (1925), The Black Pirate (1926), The Iron Mask (1929) and Fairbanks’s curio, Around the World with Douglas Fairbanks (1931).
Sharp also photographed The Marriage Circle (1924) for Ernst Lubitsch and Vidor’s The Crowd (1928)
Henry Sharp’s two MGM musicals were Lord Byron of Broadway and \love in the Rough.
Canadian Raymond Blanning Egan (1890-1952) was a regular partner of composer Richard A Whiting, and together they wrote a number of standards, notably including the perennial ‘Ain’t We Got Fun’.
Egan and Whiting’s ‘The Japanese Sandman’ was performed by Cliff Edwards in Lord Byron of Broadway and, some years later, Lucille Norman sang the poignant ‘Till We Meet Again’ in For Me and My Gal.
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.
Emil Kreuske (1881-1955) was a silent film actor-turned-director and occasional writer, which probably makes him a kind of 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.
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 (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.
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.
