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.
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.
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 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 (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.
Charles Kaley (1902-65) was a popular singer and band leader who was unexpectedly–perhaps inexplicably–cast in the lead role in Lord Byron of Broadway. The film provided him with a successful recording of ‘Should I?,’ but Kaley’s acting career progressed no further than a handful of appearances in Poverty Row shorts and features.
A young woman waits outside the Trocadero Cafe to speak to Roy Erskine, who has been avoiding her. She says she knows Roy is through with her. She is not complaining because she always knew she would end up as “just another song”. Roy makes love to girls, breaks their hearts, and then turns it into material for a new song. Roy says he did not get a song from her, implying she was just a golddigger.
Roy goes into the Trocadero, where he plays piano. He meets flirtatious Bessie, who offers to let him use the piano in her apartment to work. Back at her apartment, Bessie reveals that she has been in love with Roy for months. She has only been in love once before and, to prove it, she shows Roy a bundle of old love letters. While they are kissing, Roy gets an idea for a song.
Roy (Charles Kaley) finds inspiration in Bessie’s (Gwen Lee) bundle of old love letters
Later, in the Trocadero, Bessie introduces Roy to Mr Millaire, who plays in a vaudeville theatre orchestra and is interested in Roy’s songs. Roy agrees to bring an example to the theatre. Now he has written a new song, Roy starts to avoid Bessie.
Roy goes to a music shop and asks Nancy Clover to produce a piano copy of a song for him, because he does not read music. Roy and Nancy are attracted to each other. Roy takes Nancy to the theatre [The Japanese Sandman] where his new song is being performed by Joe Lundeen [A Bundle of Old Love Letters]. Roy is shocked to find that Millaire has taken credit for writing the song.
Going to Joe’s dressing room, they find him talking to his agent, Phil. Roy and Nancy perform the song to a sceptical Joe and Phil [A Bundle of Old Love Letters]. Joe and Phil are convinced and Phil suggests Joe, Roy and Nancy form a new act.
Three months later, Lundeen and Erskine with Nancy Clover are a hit [A Bundle of Old Love Letters] and so is the song. Roy is flirting with a dancer “for inspiration,” making Nancy unhappy. In the dressing room, Joe advises Nancy to be patient, saying Roy is on a merry-go-round for the moment. Riccardi, the dancer’s husband, bursts in looking for Roy. Joe pretends he is Roy and that Nancy is his wife, and Riccardi calms down.
Joe warns Roy to stop chasing women for inspiration, but Roy ignores him. Time passes and Roy continues composing, using one woman after another.
Roy, Nancy, Joe and Phil visit an expensive nightclub [Blue Daughter of Heaven]. Roy is introduced to the audience and asked to perform [Should I?]. Roy then goes to a party, leaving Nancy with Joe.
The next morning, Roy, Joe and Nancy are at a recording studio and hear, over a loudspeaker, the voice of a woman singing Should I?. Joe recognizes the voice as someone he knew a long time ago [Should I?]. Nancy and Joe hear Roy introducing himself to the singer, Ardis Trevelyn. Ardis pretends not to remember Joe, who is upset by this.
Joe introduces himself to Ardis (Ethelind Terry)
Ardis takes Roy back to her apartment for lunch. He tells her meeting her has made this the most important day of his life, and immediately starts composing lyrics based on the idea. Later, Ardis calls Roy when he is performing in Boston: Roy is to write the numbers for her new Broadway show, and he, Joe and Nancy will also perform. [The Woman in the Shoe].
Joe tells Nancy that they have to break up Roy’s relationship with Ardis, because she is not capable of loving anyone. He then realizes that Nancy loves Roy, and decides to set Roy straight.
Roy is asking Ardis why she will not marry him when Joe enters. Joe tells Roy that Ardis cannot marry him because she is already married: he and Ardis married seven years ago and she gave him the air after four. Roy gets belligerent and orders Joe to get a divorce. Joe leaves the theatre and is knocked down by a taxi. Back at the apartment Roy and Joe share, a doctor tells Nancy that Joe is dying. Roy and Ardis arrive and hear the news. Joe dies before Roy can see him.
Later, Roy writes a song in Joe’s memory. He tells Phil it is the best thing he has written and wants more money for it. Nancy visits Roy and asks him not to exploit Joe’s death in a song. She asks him to do it for her, because she loves him. She does not want him to be cheap and selfish. After Nancy leaves, Roy tells Ardis that he realizes everything he has written was squeezed from someone’s misery and tears. Ardis says she always knew he never had an idea he did not steal. Roy rips up the song about Joe. Ardis tells him he will starve if he stops writing popular songs, and walks out on him.
Nancy (Marion Shilling) begs Roy not to exploit Joe’s death, while Ardis looks on
Some time later, Roy only has $200 left and has been unable to write anything, and he has started drinking.
Later still, Roy looks the worse for wear and fails to get back his old job at the Trocadero. He meets Bessie and goes back to her apartment. Roy reminds her of when he called her old love letters mush and says the joke is on him now, because he has been carrying around a letter from Nancy for months. Roy had sent Nancy a song he wrote for her, but she says she has never listened to it and they should not see each other again. Bessie turns on the radio and Roy recognizes the song he wrote for Nancy [Only Love Is Real]. He realizes that she did play it after all. Roy rushes off to find Nancy, leaving Bess alone.
The song is a big hit and Roy and Nancy marry. At their new apartment, Roy gets the inspiration for a new song [You’re the Bride and I’m the Groom].
They Learned About Women is a contender for the worst title ever given to a film musical. ‘Playing the Field’ and ‘Take It Big’ were other suggested titles, but undoubtedly lend themselves to innuendo. The other contender, ‘The Pennant-Winning Battery’ would arguably have been worse.
Van and Schickel were very popular entertainers, and their musical performances give an inkling of why they were so liked. But they were no great shakes as actors and it seems likely they would have gone the same way as the Duncan Sisters after It’s a Great Life, if Schickel’s untimely death had no rendered the matter moot.
Sam (Benny Rubin), Jack (Joe Schickel) and Tim (Tom Dugan) at the start of a new season. Jerry (Gus Van) is AWOL.
They Learned About Women was the second Metro musical outing for the songwriting team of Milton Ager and Jack Yellen, and is notable for being the first of the studio’s musicals with a score entirely written by one team. These remained a rarity for the next forty years. It’s a fairly average set of numbers, though ‘Ten Sweet Mamas’ is notable for several reasons. It is a very early integrated number, in two senses: it is sung by Gus Van not on a stage, but in a shower room, with the chorus engaged in their ablutions while singing; Van washes himself then lies face down on a massage table.
The song is also integrated in the way it comments on the themes and plot
Jerry tells the other players all about his Ten Sweet Mamas
of the film. ‘Ten Sweet Mamas’ is a variation on ‘Ten Green Bottles,’ with the number of mamas reducing throughout the song; in fact, Van starts singing at the seven point. The song’s subject is unfaithfulness, ostensibly female (“Can’t trust a woman/I have found”), though in fact the blame swings both ways (he loses his last mama because she catches him with his wife). The lyrics foreshadow Jack’s fickleness and Daisy’s duplicity. The shower room setting, coyly shot though it is, positions the film as pre-code, as does the lyric “Had two sweet mamas for my jelly roll,” which was a euphemism for sexual intercourse.
The film’s other highpoint is its one production number, ‘Harlem Madness,’ which gave Nina Mae McKinney, the breakout star of Hallelujah, her second and final opportunity to shine. Her singing and dancing is joyously eccentric enough to merit the song’s title.
Nina Mae McKinney gives it her all in ‘Harlem Madness’
The direction in They Learned About Women is fairly lacklustre, even though it took two directors to achieve it. It was far from unusual at MGM, at that time, for one director to complete another’s film, but it seems unclear why, on this occasion, Conway and Wood were given a shared credit.
Bessie Love works hard, as always, but there are diminishing returns for her third dose of heartbreak in a year. Frankly, Jerry is as big a chump as Terry in Chasing Rainbows; she would probably have been better off with Jerry.
Robert Shirley (1904-81), like most of the engineers in Douglas Shearer’s sound department, never received onscreen credit for his work, despite working on some of Metro’s prestige projects. These included Strange Interlude (1932), Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).
Shirley’s musicals were They Learned About Women, Reckless, The Wizard of Oz (though everyone seems to have worked on that), Broadway Rhythm, Meet Me in St Louis, Music for Millions, Thrill of a Romance, Anchors Aweigh, Yolanda and the Thief, The Harvey Girls, Two Sisters from Boston,Easy to Wed, Holiday in Mexico and, to round things off nicely, Singin’ in the Rain.
