The Musicals of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Tag: MGM musical

  • Ben Lewis

    Benjamin Lewis (1894-1970) was a film editor who spent the whole of his career, forty-three years, working for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

    He started out working as an assistant editor on Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), and obtained his first full credit a year later on The Devil’s Circus (1926), directed by Benjamin Christiansen during his sojourn in Hollywood.

    Lewis edited some of MGM’s most prestigious pictures, as well as being a frequent editor on the money-making Andy Hardy series. He worked on Trader Horn (1931), Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), Dinner at Eight (1933) and The Good Earth (1937, uncredited).

    In 1951, Lewis was given the unpleasant task of editing John Huston’s cut of The Red Badge of Courage down to 69 minutes. 

    Lewis worked on seven MGM musicals, across a thirty-four-year period: Broadway to Hollywood, Love Finds Andy Hardy, Strike Up the Band, Rio Rita, For Me and My Gal, Three Little Words  and The Fastest Guitar Alive.

    Ben Lewis’s brother was the venerated ‘B’ picture director, Joseph H Lewis.

  • Al Goodhart

    Albert S Goodhart (1905-55) was a composer whose best-known song gained its fame from being featured in one of the world’s favourite musicals. In 1932, he collaborated with Arthur Freed on ‘Fit as a Fiddle’, which Freed later used to great effect in Singin’ in the Rain.

    Goodhart worked in the UK for a few years in the mid-30s, where he received a commission for another iconic song. He co-wrote, with Sammy Lerner and Al Hoffman, ‘No One Can Like the Drummer Man’ for the film Young and Innocent (1937). Director Alfred Hitchcock used the number for the big reveal of the villain in the picture’s denouement. 

    Music for Broadway to Hollywood was Goodhart’s other contribution to Metro’s musical output.

  • Norbert Brodine

    Norbert F Brodine (1896-1970) had a forty-four year career as a cinematographer, working predominantly with Loretta Young in television for the last few years, for which he won an Emmy. He was credited on more than 130 pictures. 

    Having worked as an army photographer during the First World War, Brodine started out in Hollywood as a stills photographer, before shooting his first film for Goldwyn Pictures in 1919.

    Brodine worked prolifically throughout the 1920s and 30s, including repeatedly for Hal Roach. He shot Libeled Lady (1936) for MGM, as well as Topper (1937), Topper Takes a Trip (1938) and Topper Returns (1941).

    But Brodine did his best work after joining Twentieth Century-Fox in 1943: The House on 92nd Street (1945), 13 Rue Madeleine, Kiss of Death (both 1947) and The Desert Fox (1949) for Henry Hathaway; I Was a Male War Bride (1949) for Howard Hawks; and Thieves’ Highway (1949) for Jules Dassin.

    Brodine shot three MGM musicals: Broadway to Hollywood, Nobody’s Baby and Swiss Miss. In addition, he was the cinematographer on the French-language version of A Lady’s Morals, titled Jenny Lind and filmed on the same sets as the original in 1931.

  • Caro Roma

    Female songwriters were relatively rare in Tin Pan Alley, but Carrie Northey (1866-1937) had a reputation as one of the most talented.

    Roma made her stage debut aged three, and was later sent by her family to train at the New England Conservatory of Music. While still in her teens, she apparently conducted an orchestra in Canada, and was a gifted singer and pianist. 

    Caro Roma wrote a variety of types of song, including setting her own poetry to music. She wrote ‘coon’ songs in an exaggerated African-American idiom (popular at the time, less so now), songs with a religious theme, and sea songs.

    Roma collaborated with composer Ernest Ball, and their ‘In the Garden of My Heart’ is featured in Broadway to Hollywood.  

  • Ernest Ball

    At the time of his death, the New Yorker described Ernest Roland Ball (1878-1927) as the most able ballad writer of his time, though scarcely known outside the profession.

    Ball specialized in Irish ballads (though born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio), the two most famous being ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling’ and ‘Mother Machree’. Both songs were collaborations with lyricist Chauncey Olcott, with George Graff Jr contributing to the former and Rida Johnson Young to the latter.

    Numbers composed by Ball appear in four MGM musicals. In Broadway to Hollywood, Nelson Eddy sings ‘In the Garden of My Heart’, written with Caro Roma. An uncredited boy sings ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling’ in Stage Mother and Jeanette MacDonald performs ‘Love Me and the World is Mine’ in San Francisco. Finally, it is back to Nelson Eddy for a rendition of ‘Irish Eyes’ in Let Freedom Ring.

  • Anton Rubinstein

    Russian Anton Grigorjewitsch Rubinstein (1829-94) was a concert pianist, composer, teacher and founder of the St Petersburg Conservatory of Music.

    Rubinstein was a key figure in the Romantic Era, writing operas, symphonies and many piano pieces. His most famous composition is probably ‘Melody in F’, written in 1852. This music was the basis for a ballet sequence in the abandoned MGM revue The March of Time, performed by the Albertina Rasch troupe. Some of the footage was later incorporated into Broadway to Hollywood. 

  • Edgar Smith

    Edgar McPhail Smith (1857-1938) was a librettist, occasional actor, and songwriter who contributed to an estimated 150 Broadway productions over a period of forty years. Much of his work was for the comedians and impresarios Joe Weber and Lew Fields, and his songs were performed by some of the biggest musical and comedy stars of the day, including Al Jolson and Marie Dressler.

    Smith contributed the lyrics to only one standard. ‘Ma Blushin’ Rosie’ was written with John Goldberg, and is featured in MGM’s Broadway to Hollywood, which also shows one of Smith’s shows, Whoop-Dee-Do playing at one of Weber and Field’s theatres.

    ‘Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl’, written for Dressler, is performed by Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in Strike Up the Band.

  • John Stromberg

    Canadian John Stramborg (1858-1902) was a Broadway songwriter who worked regularly on the shows produced by the comedy duo Weber and Fields.

    ‘Honey’ Stromberg started out as an arranger in Tin Pan Alley, but was, from the outset, the composer of popular songs. His first hit was ‘My Best Girl’s a Corker’, published in 1895. Weber and Fields hired him in 1896, pairing him with several lyricists, but most significantly with Edgar Smith. Their best-known number was ‘Ma Blushin’ Rosie’, which featured in Metro’s Broadway to Hollywood. 

    Stromberg had serious mental health problems, and died by his own hand in 1902, while at the height of his success.

  • Weber & Fields

    Joseph Morris Weber (1867-1942) and Moses Schoenfeld (1867-1941) were a highly influential comedy duo at the turn of the twentieth century, in both vaudeville and musical theatre. They were best known for a ‘Dutch’ dialect act, in which they played German immigrants torturing the English language. Both performers were themselves the children of Polish immigrants.

    Weber and Fields also became impresarios, staging shows that centred on their own act, while also putting together road shows that toured the country.

    Joe Weber and Lew Fields were amongst the old vaudeville acts that filmed material for the abandoned MGM musical The March of Time. Part of their sequence can be seen at the beginning of Broadway to Hollywood, although, given they are in a horse costume, there is no way of actually verifying it is them. Both men would have been in their seventies at the time. Joe Weber also appears briefly as a character in Broadway to Hollywood, played by Leo White.

  • William H Penn

    British-born William Henry Penn (1868-1929) would have to be described as an obscure composer and arranger of popular music from the early twentieth century.

    Penn is one of those composers who hangs on to a small place in musical history by virtue of a single song. In his case, this was ‘The Honeysuckle and the Bee’, which he wrote in 1906, with lyrics by Albert H Fitz. Penn’s music was featured in Broadway to Hollywood, though the dance number appears to have been filmed for The March of Time.

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial
RSS
Facebook
X (Twitter)
WhatsApp
Copy link
URL has been copied successfully!