Tag: MGM musical

Anita Loos

Corinne Anita Loos (1888-1981) habitually lied about her age, but 1888 is the most likely year. Her name is now inextricably linked with her most famous novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) and its adaptations, but she was connected with the cinema for most of her career.

Loos started in public life as a child performer on the stage, and only later tried her hand at writing. In 1911, she submitted a story idea to the Biograph studio. It is often claimed that her first filmed script was D W Griffith’s The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), but it was actually Griffith’s The New York Hat (1912), with Mary Pickford. It was only when she visited the studio some time later that Griffith discovered that ‘A Loos’ was female. She would eventually write an estimated 100 scenarios for Biograph and/or Griffith, and for the Lubin studio. Most famously, she provided the intertitles for Intolerance (1916).

Loos moved to New York in 1918 to write for Famous Players-Lasky. She also published two books on screenwriting, and wrote her first stage play in 1923. Only in 1931 did Loos settle in Hollywood, signing a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Prominent amongst her screenplays were Red-Headed Woman (1932), the musical San Francisco, for which she was Oscar nominated, and The Women (1939).

Loos’s final Hollywood film was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945, dialogue only), after which she returned to New York and worked in other mediums.

In addition to San Francisco, Loos worked uncredited on The Cat and the Fiddle and Babes in Arms, and wrote the screenplay for I Married an Angel.

October 8, 2026
Sam Spewack

Samuel Spewack (1899-1971) travelled from what is now Ukraine to the USA as a child and was educated at Columbia University. He became a journalist, wrote a few novels and, after marrying Bella Cohen, worked with her in Moscow for four years.

In the late 1920s, he and Bella began writing plays together, a number of which were performed on Broadway. Their work was also adapted for the cinema. In 1948, they collaborated with Cole Porter, writing the book for the musical Kiss Me, Kate. Broadly speaking, Sam took responsibility for the plot and structure of their work, while Bella was noted for her crackling dialogue.

The Spewacks’ first work directly for the screen was providing additional dialogue for Paramount’s Caught (1931). They contributed to fourteen other features, including adapting their own play, Clear All Wires! (1933).

In 1940, they wrote the screenplay for the Cary Grant-Irene Dunn comedy My Favourite Wife, which earned them an Oscar nomination.

Bella and Sam Spewack wrote one MGM musical, The Cat and the Fiddle. In addition, Kiss Me, Kate was filmed by the studio in 1953.

October 8, 2026
Bella Spewack

Bella Cohen (1899-1990) travelled from Romania to the USA as a child and grew up poor in New York. She became a journalist and, with her husband Sam Spewack, worked in Moscow for four years.

In the late 1920s, she and Sam began writing plays together, a number of which were performed on Broadway. Their work was also adapted for the cinema. In 1948, they collaborated with Cole Porter, writing the book for the musical Kiss Me, Kate. Broadly speaking, Sam took responsibility for the plot and structure of their work, while Bella was noted for her crackling dialogue.

The Spewacks’ first work directly for the screen was providing additional dialogue for Paramount’s Caught (1931). They contributed to fourteen other features, including adapting their own play, Clear All Wires! (1933).

In 1940, they wrote the screenplay for the Cary Grant-Irene Dunn comedy My Favourite Wife, which earned them an Oscar nomination.

Bella and Sam Spewack wrote one MGM musical, The Cat and the Fiddle, and some sources state that Bella worked uncredited on Naughty Marietta. In addition, Kiss Me, Kate was filmed by the studio in 1953.

October 8, 2026
William K Howard

Andrew Sarris designated director William K Howard ‘Subject for Further Research’, indicating something more than the ordinary in his output.

Howard is best-remembered today for The Power and the Glory (1933), the story of a wealthy businessman told in a non-linear narrative, which is held to have influenced Citizen Kane (1941). Though screenwriter Preston Sturges was responsible for the innovative structure, his literary conceit was brought to life by Howard’s staging and the mise en scène he crafter with cinematographer James Wong Howe.

William K Howard started out in Hollywood as an assistant director in 1920, and very quickly earned an assignment as co-director on Get Your Man (1921) at Fox. He worked as director on around fifty pictures across his career, as well as occasionally working as either writer or producer.

In the late 1930s, Howard worked for a period in the United Kingdom, with his most notable production being Fire Over England (1937).

Few of Howard’s films were major ‘A’ productions, but he was a stylist who frequently elevated routine material like biopics and crime dramas into something more.

Immediately after making The Power and the Glory, Howard directed his only MGM musical, The Cat and the Fiddle.

October 8, 2026

The Cat and the Fiddle

The Crew

William K Howard	Director
Sam Wood	Director (uncredited)
Bella Spewack	Screenwriter
Sam Spewack	Screenwriter
Anita Loos	Screenwriter (uncredited)
Eve Greene	Screenwriter (uncredited)
Zelda Sears	Screenwriter (uncredited)
James Kevin McGuiness	Screenwriter (uncredited)
Jerome Kern	Songwriter
Otto Harbach	Songwriter
Herbert Stothart	Composer (uncredited)
Charles Maxwell	Orchestrator (uncredited)
Bernard H Hyman	Producer (uncredited)
Harold Rosson	Cinematographer
Charles Clarke	Cinematographer
Ray Rennahan	Cinematographer (Technicolor)
Frank E Hull	Editor
Alexander Toluboff	Art Director
Natalie Kalmus	Art Director (Technicolor)
Edwin B Willis	Interior Decorator
Adrian	Costume Designer
Lesley Selander	Assistant Director (uncredited)
Douglas Shearer	Recording Director
Paul Neal	Recording Engineer (uncredited)

October 7, 2026

David Reese

An actor named David Reese (dates unknown) has a single entry in the AFI Catalogue, for playing a bit part in MGM’s The Cat and the Fiddle.

A performer named David Reese appeared in a Broadway show called The Red Canary in 1914.

They may have been the same person.

October 7, 2026
Ludovico Tomarchio

Lodovico Tomarchio (1886-1947) was an Italian operatic tenor who made his professional debut in 1910. He made his first stage appearances in the United States in 1923, and had settled there by 1931.

Retired from the stage, Tomarchio began teaching, and became involved with the Paris Inn, a bohemian nightclub with singing waiters, all of whom were former professional singers. As well as supervising them, he also performed in the venue himself.

Tomarchio made appearances in eight films during the 1930s, including four MGM musicals: The Cat and the Fiddle, A Night at the Opera, Maytime and Swiss Miss (in which he was credited). He can also be glimpsed in archive footage in a montage sequence in Lady Be Good.

October 7, 2026
Jacques Vanaire

One online source claims that the real name of Jacques Vanaire (1888-1954) was August Jack van Roosendael who went to the United States to breed cattle. Whatever the truth of this, he was certainly a Belgian who spent a dozen or so years playing Frenchmen in Hollywood.

Vanaire appeared in about sixty films, including French language versions of studio films. They included Le spectre vert (1930, apparently the first French film made in Hollywood), Jewel Robbery (1932), Sylvia Scarlett (1936), Jezebel (1938), Ninotchka (1939), Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1941) and Holiday Inn (1942).

He was uncredited in five MGM musicals: The Cat and the Fiddle, The Merry Widow, Everybody Sing, Swiss Miss and I Married an Angel.

October 7, 2026
Christian Rub

Christian Franz Bruno Julius Maria Rub (1886-1956) was allegedly an admirer of his fellow Austrian, Adolf Hitler. This is according to those who worked with him on his most enduring contribution to cinema, as the voice and physical model for Gepetto in Pinocchio (1940).

Rub started out as a stage actor in Germany, working in provincial theatre. It is unclear when he relocated to the United States, but his first film there, The Belle of New York, was made in 1919. This was the first of more than 100 film roles, most of them during the sound era.

Rub was a jobbing character actor, accepting both credited and uncredited parts in pictures, including Frank Borzage’s Little Man, What Now (1934), Peter Ibbetson (1935), Dracula’s Daughter (1936), Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Captains Courageous (1937) and, perhaps fittingly, Nazi Agent (1942).

Christian Rub appeared uncredited in MGM’s The Cat and the Fiddle, The Night is Young and Maytime, and was credited as the coachman in The Great Waltz.

October 7, 2026
Dewey Robinson

Burly character actor Dewey Robinson (1898-1950) appeared in well over 200 feature films in a Hollywood career lasting less than twenty years.

Robinson started out as a stage actor, and was in a couple of Broadway productions during the 1920s. In 1931, he was cast as Big Tony Catello in Enemies of the Law, the first of many roles as criminals, and the next year had a small part in I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932).

Notable films featuring Robinson include Blonde Venus (1932), She Done Him Wrong (1933), Roman Scandals (1933, as the slave auctioneer), Max Reinhardt’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935, as Snug the joiner), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), The Ghost Ship (1943), Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street (1945) and The Bells of St Mary’s (1945).

Robinson was a member of Preston Sturges’s stock company, and appeared in eight of the director’s pictures, including playing the sheriff in Sullivan’s Travels (1941).

Dewey Robinson can be seen in uncredited roles in nine MGM musicals: The Cat and the Fiddle, Student Tour, The Merry Widow, Broadway Melody of 1938, The Big Store, Two Sisters from Boston, Fiesta, Neptune’s Daughter and That Midnight Kiss.

October 7, 2026