Harry Jerome Bowen (1888-1941) appeared in well over 160 films. The majority were shorts and he was generally, though not always, uncredited. His first appearance was probably in the ‘Little Rascals’ short Your Own Back Yard (1925).
Bowen’s feature films included King Kong (1933), Flying Down to Rio (1933), Ruggles of Red Gap (1935), The Whole Town’s Talking (1935) and The Milky Way (1936).
Harry Bowen was in two MGM musicals, Going Hollywood and The Bohemian Girl.
Robert Watson Knucher (1888-1965) started out in vaudeville as a teenager, and also toured the United States with a travelling medicine show. He moved up through appearing in shows at Coney Island, to a Broadway debut in 1918, where he continued to work.
Watson made his first film in 1925 in That Royle Girl, a minor work by D W Griffith. He went on to appear, usually uncredited, in around ninety pictures, including: China Seas (1935), Captains Courageous (1937), The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1943, and one of nine pictures in which he played Adolf Hitler), The Big Clock (1948, and a rare credited role as one of the employees at Janoth Publications), A Foreign Affair (1948, and Hitler again) and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962, his last film and playing Hitler).
Bobby Watson acted in five MGM musicals, though he was credited only in the first, playing the press agent Thompson in Going Hollywood. The uncredited appearances were in Born to Dance, Singin’ in the Rain (as the diction coach in ‘Moses Supposes’), The Band Wagon and Deep in my Heart.
Bridget Sarah Veronica Rose Kelly (1910-81) started out in show business as Frank Fay’s stooge in vaudeville before quickly moving on to Broadway shows, in which she performed alongside many of the top comedians of the day.
Kelly’s earliest confirmed film appearance is the lead role in The Grand Dame (1931), a Vitaphone short shot in New York. Nineteen-thirty-three was an important year: she had an important supporting role in MGM’s musical Going Hollywood, playing Marion Davies’s best friend; and Hal Roach chose her to replace ZaSu Pitts as Thelma Todd’s partner in a series of comedy shorts. Pitts had played her usual scatty self, while Kelly was the ultimate wisecracking dame.
Throughout the 1930s, Kelly appeared as smart-mouthed support in comedies and musicals, including Every Night at Eight (1935) and Pigskin Parade (1936), and she was the female lead in the creepy comedy The Gorilla (1939), with Bela Lugosi and the Ritz Brothers.
It is believed that Kelly’s career declined in the 1940s because of her insistence on living her life as an out lesbian. Returning to New York, she entertained the troops during the war, and performed on radio and in summer stock. She also worked as personal assistant to Tallulah Bankhead.
Supporting work in films opened up to her again in the 1960s, and she also worked extensively on television. She made a successful return to Broadway in 1971 in a revival of No, No, Nanette, followed by another revival, Irene, in 1973.
Patsy Kelly made one other musical at MGM, starring in Nobody’s Baby.
Canadian Edward Arthur Sparkman (1883-1957) made his film debut in silent pictures, a medium only partly suited to an actor whose unique presence relied on two attributes: yes, a deadpan face, but also, and most importantly, a monotone, nasal voice that seemed to deride everything around it.
Sparks developed his unique style in one of the many Broadway productions in which he appeared after 1912. (His early life had been a gallimaufry of unlikely incidents, including gold prospecting and studying for the ministry.)
After over thirty silent films, initially made in New York studios, Sparks made his talkie debut in The Big Noise(1928), an Allan Dwan production for First National. He went on to steal scenes in about fifty more pictures, including 42nd Street (1933), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Lady for a Day (1933), Imitation of Life (1934) and Magic Town (1947), his final appearance, made as a favour to James Stewart. It was his proud boast that he never smiled in any of them.
Sparks was only in one MGM musical, Going Hollywood, where he began a lifelong friendship with Bing Crosby.
For fans of low-budget programmers, Stuart Erwin (1903-67) lives on as the first actor to play comic-strip boxer Joe Palooka on screen, in Palooka (1934).
Erwin started acting at the University of California, and went on to work in Los Angeles stock theatre companies. He broke into films with a role in Mother Knows Best (1928), Fox’s first talking picture.
He went on to make over 100 films, usually in credited supporting roles, but with a few leads. Even though he was the star of Pigskin Parade (1936), he was perversely nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category at the Academy Awards.
Erwin’s films were generally not prestigious, and he was arguably more successful in radio and television.
Stuart Erwin featured in just one MGM musical, playing the producer and financial backer of the film being made in Going Hollywood.
The first two screen appearances of Marie-Rose Angelina Yvonne Lussier (1904-83) were in They Had to See Paris and Hot for Paris (both 1929). Her characters also epitomized Parisian gaiety and ‘ooh-la-la’. But she was actually a French-Canadian who never went to France, or anywhere else outside North America, in her life.
D’Orsay moved to New York as a young woman and found work in a revue by claiming to have experience at the Folies Bergère.She later took her surname from a brand of perfume. She worked in vaudeville until moving to Hollywood and achieving short-lived stardom until she foolishly walked out on a contract with Fox in 1936 and found it difficult to obtain work.
She then returned to vaudeville, taking film roles when she could get them, and worked right through to the early seventies. In 1971, D’Orsay played Solange, an aging French chorus girl in the original Broadway production of Follies.
One of D’Orsay’s best roles was as the awful Lili in MGM’s Going Hollywood. She made one other musical for the studio, playing Marcelle in the French-language version of The Merry Widow.
Harry Lillis Crosby Jr (1903-77) was one of the most successful and influential singers in the world during the middle decades of the twentieth century. He was a prolific recording artist–at least 1600 songs, possibly nearer 2000–and a star of radio, television, concert hall and big screen.
Crosby joined his first band–as a drummer–in 1923, and performed in various acts until being spotted by a member of the Paul Whiteman organization. He and his friend Miles Rinker were hired as singers and found themselves performing with one of the biggest bands in the country, with an international reputation. Out of this came the three-person Rhythm Boys, who appeared in the Universal musical revue King of Jazz (1930).
Crosby went solo in 1931 and, alongside the other strands of his career (including recording the best-selling single of all time), he became a film star, accumulating over 80 credits up to 1979. Most of his films were musicals, or comedies with music (for example, the Road pictures he made with Dorothy Lamour and Bob Hope). But he also took on straight roles, culminating in an Oscar for Best Actor for his role as a singing priest in Going My Way (1944).
Bing Crosby made scores of musicals, but most of them were at his home studio, Paramount. He only made two for MGM, one at the beginning of his screen career and one late on. They were Going Hollywood and High Society.
The Numbers
| Our Big Love Scene | Arthur Freed, Nacio Herb Brown | Bing Crosby |
| Beautiful Girl | Arthur Freed, Nacio Herb Brown | Bing Crosby |
| Just an Echo in the Valley | Harry M Woods, Reginald Connelly | Bing Crosby |
| Going Hollywood | Arthur Freed, Nacio Herb Brown | Bing Crosby |
| We’ll Make Hay While the Sun Shines | Arthur Freed, Nacio Herb Brown | Bing Crosby, Marion Davies, chorus |
| Cinderella’s Fella | Arthur Freed, Nacio Herb Brown | Fifi D’Orsay; Marion Davies |
| Medley | Various | Three Radio Rogues |
| When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain | Kate Smith, Howard Johnson, Harry M Woods | Jimmy Hollywood |
| You Call It Madness (But I Call It Love) | Con Conrad, Gladys DuBois, Russ Columbo, Paul Gregory | Henry Taylor |
| Remember Me | Gus Kahn | Jimmy Hollywood |
| My Time is Your Time | Leo Dance, Eric Little | Jimmy Hollywood |
| After Sundown | Arthur Freed, Nacio Herb Brown | Bing Crosby |
| Temptation | Arthur Freed, Nacio Herb Brown | Bing Crosby |
The Synopsis
Sylvia Bruce teaches French at Briarcroft School, but dreams of another life. Listening to crooner Bill Williams on the radio [Our Big Love Scene], she decides to pack a bag and set off to find life, love and music.
In New York, Bill Williams has to record a song [Beautiful Girl] before leaving for Hollywood. He will be travelling with his French co-star, Lili Yvonne. Sylvia sneaks into Bill’s room to thank him for the way his music has changed her life.
Bill wants to board his train without anyone knocking, so he can avoid the big send-off arranged by his publicist, Jack Thompson. But at Grand Central Station, he is besieged by reporters and fans. Bill makes a run for it [Just an Echo in the Valley], with the crowd in pursuit [Going Hollywood].
On the train, Bill finds Bert Conroy, the director of the film, Ernest Pratt Baker, who is financing it, and Sylvia, who shocks Bill by telling him she loves him.
Later, Bill is surprised again when he finds that Lili has hired Sylvia to be her maid. This is short-lived, because Bill tells the jealous Lili that Sylvia loves him, leading Lili to slap Sylvia.
Later, in Hollywood, on the first day of filming, Bert already thinks both the picture and Lili are “a bust”. Sylvia meets Jill Barker, who is trying to break into movies. Sylvia becomes Jill’s roommate at Ailoha Bungalow Court., where she dreams about Bill [We’ll Make Hay While the Sun Shines].
Later, on the set, Sylvia turns up as an extra in blackface. Bill apologizes for the way Lili treated her on the train. Lili finds them together and slaps Sylvia again.
Ernest gets Sylvia and Jill jobs in the chorus. On location, Lili performs her number [Cinderella’s Fella], which Bert thinks is terrible. Lili quits, but Bill persuades her to change her mind.
During a break [medley], Sylvia impersonates Lili Cinderella’s Fella]. Lili slaps Sylvia for the third time, but this time Sylia hits back. Ernest asserts himself and gives the lead in the picture to Sylvia. Bill invites Sylvia to dinner [After Sundown]. Bill tells Sylvia he is through with Lili. but is irritated when Sylvia will not go back to his apartment with him. He drops her off, but forgets his hat. Sylvia takes the hat to him, but finds he is with Lili.
Next day, Ernest warns Bert that Lili is trying to get Bill to walk off the picture. Bill does not understand why Sylvia is avoiding him. She tells him he is a fake, like everything else in Hollywood. Bill goes on a bender with Lili, ending up in Mexico, and the studio decides to replace him. Sylvia and Jill track him down, and Sylvia reminds him that he said he loved her. She asks Bill to come back with her, but Lili restrains him [Temptation].
Back at the studio, they are about to start filming with a replacement when Bill arrives [Our Big Love Scene]. Sylvia and Bill kiss.
