The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Tag: MGM musical

  • Margaret Booth

    In 1977, Margaret Booth (1898-2002) received an honorary Oscar in tribute to her 62-year Hollywood career, during most of which she was arguably the industry’s greatest editor. Remarkably, she carried on working for another eight years.

    Like many major Hollywood figures, Booth started out with D W Griffith, working as a negative cutter. She subsequently worked for Louis B Mayer, transferring with him to the new Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio. She was appointed as Supervising Editor in 1939, and stayed there until her shameful dismissal in 1986. During that time, as Booth described it, she worked only in the projection room, never the cutting room (though it is believed she did uncredited cutting on Ben Hur (1959).  She has been described as “the final arbiter on every picture the studio made”.

    The first MGM musical edited by Margaret Booth was The Rogue Song. This was followed by New Moon, The Cuban Love Song, Dancing Lady, Reckless. After that, she technically supervised the editing of every musical, but made a particularly significant contribution to The Wizard of Oz and Gigi.

    As late as 1982, aged 84, Booth worked as supervising editor on the Columbia-released musical Annie. 

  • Charles Schoenbaum

    Charles Edgar Schoenbaum (1893-1951) was a hard-working cinematographer whose earliest credit seems to be working for Cecil B DeMille at Paramount in 1917, but who spent much of his career at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He was sometimes credited as Charles E Schoenbaum, and even C Edgar Schoenbaum.

    His work was not greatly celebrated–his sole Academy Award nomination was for Little Women in 1949–but he was valued for his work ethic.

    Schoenbaum worked on five MGM musicals over a twenty-year period, from The Rogue Song in 1930 to Duchess of Idaho in 1950. In between came Here Comes the Band and the second version of Good News. He was also drafted in by Rouben Mamouian to replace Charles Rosher on Summer Holiday. 

  • Paul Bern

    German-born Paul Levy (1889-1932) was an unsuccessful actor who worked as a stage manager on Broadway before relocating to Hollywood. After some writing and directing, he settled at MGM and became assistant to Irving Thalberg, and then a production supervisor. 

    Bern’s sole involvement in musicals was as the uncredited producer of The Rogue Song.

    Bern is best remembered today for all the wrong reasons. A few months after marrying star Jean Harlow in 1932, he was found dead from gunshot wounds under mysterious circumstances.

  • Franz Lehár

    Franz Lehár (1870-1948), born in what is now Hungary, was one of the most popular composers of operettas in the first half of the twentieth century. 

    Lehár’s best-known work, The Merry Widow (1905), was filmed three times by MGM, once as a silent film in 1925, and twice in musical form, in 1934 and 1952.

    Some of the music from Lehár’s Gypsy Love (1910) is used in The Rogue Song. The musical is sometimes described as an adaptation of the operetta, but their two stories have no similarities. 

  • Frances Marion

    With a career that lasted more than thirty years, Marion Benson Owens (1888-1973) was undoubtedly one of the most important writers in American cinema, even though her name is not well known today. She worked with Anita Loos on a film for D W Griffith, then became a writer for pioneer filmmaker Lois Weber, developing into one of the most prolific and skilled screenwriters in Hollywood. 

    Some of the major pictures worked on by Marion include: The Big House (1930), for which she won an Academy Award; Garbo’s first talkie, Anna Christie (1931); The Champ (1931), bringing a second Academy Award; Dinner at Eight (1933); Camille (1936); and The Good Earth (1937), uncredited.

    Marion’s extensive work for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer included eight musicals. She co-wrote The Rogue Song, and immediately followed this with an uncredited contribution to In Gay Madrid. She wrote the screenplay for the 1930 version of Good News, and then worked without credit on Going Hollywood, Maytime, Rosalie, Presenting Lily Mars and, her swan song, The Pirate.

  • John Colton

    John Colton (1887-1946) was a successful playwright who was enticed to Hollywood by MGM in 1927, to write titles for some of their last silent films. This was not taxing work, with Colton’s name in the credits being more valuable than anything he wrote.

    The Broadway hit Rain, co-written by Colton with Clemence Randolph, was filmed by MGM in 1928 as Sadie Thompson, but the author was not invited to work on it. Other films based on Colton’s plays were The Shanghai Gesture (1941) and Hitchcock’s Under Capricorn (1949).

    Colton contributed to conventional screenplays after the introduction of sound, including for three MGM musicals: The Rogue Song, Call of the Flesh and The Cuban Love Song. All three lent themselves to the interest in exotic settings that Colton demonstrated in his plays.

  • Hal Roach

    Most of the names synonymous with silent film comedy are performers: Keaton, Chaplin, Lloyd, and Laurel and Hardy. But they are joined by two producer-directors: Mack Sennett and Harold Eugene Roach (1892-1992).

    Roach began working as an extra in Hollywood in 1912, and produced his first comedy shorts in 1915, in partnership with his friend Harold Lloyd. He worked with Lloyd until 1923, and went on to establish the Laurel and Hardy team. Roach wrote, produced and sometimes directed hundreds of comedy shorts and features.

    In 1928, the Hal Roach studio began releasing its films through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which is how he became connected with its early musical pictures. In 1930, MGM wanted to add comic relief to The Rogue Song, so Roach directed additional sequences featuring Stan and Ollie as members of Lawrence Tibbetts band of outlaws.

    In 1933, the Hal Roach Studio and MGM co-produced The Devil’s Brother, a Laurel and Hardy musical that Roach directed. He also worked as an uncredited director on Swiss Miss and The Bohemian Girl (which he co-wrote), and produced Babes in Toyland and Nobody’s Baby.

  • The Rogue Song

    Crew

    Lionel BarrymoreDirector
    Hal RoachDirector (uncredited)
    Wells RootIdea
    John ColtonScreenplay
    Frances MarionScreenplay
    Herbert StothartComposer
    Franz LeharComposer
    Clifford GreyLyricist
    Dimitri TiomkinComposer
    William AxtComposer
    Paul BernProducer (uncredited)
    Irving ThalbergProducer (uncredited)
    Percy HilburnCinematographer
    Charles Edgar SchoenbaumCinematographer
    Margaret BoothEditor
    Cedric GibbonsArt Director
    AdrianCostume Designer
    Douglas ShearerSound Recording Engineer
    Paul NealSound Recording Engineer
    Albertina RaschChoreographer
    Westmore, GeorgeMakeup Artist (uncredited)

  • Frankie Genardi

    Frankie Genardi (1922-2010) was a child actor who made his debut, aged five, in Frank Borzage’s 7th Heaven (1927). He retired at seventeen.

    Genardi’s two Metro musicals were The Rogue Song and New Moon.

  • Kewpie Morgan

    Horace Allen Morgan (1892-1956) was a studio electrician who became an actor when director Romaine Fielding decided he needed a “fat boy” for a character part in Teasing a Tornado (1915). He went on to be a regular supporting player in silent comedies, working with Buster Keaton on Three Ages (1923) and Sherlock Jr (1924). He played similar roles to Oliver Hardy in his pre-Laurel days.

    Morgan was in two Metro musicals. He was in The Rogue Song, and then actually appeared with Oliver Hardy in the uncredited role of Old King Cole in Babes in Toyland. 

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