MGM

About M.G.M Musicals - a brief history of mgm musicals

Established in 1924, MGM is tied for the fifth-oldest movie studio in history with Columbia Pictures. From the end of the silent film era through World War II, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the most prominent motion picture studio in Hollywood, with the greatest output of all of the studios and at its height was releasing an average of one feature film a week. From the outset, MGM tapped into the audience's need for glamour and sophistication. Having inherited few big names from their predecessor companies, Louis B Mayer and Irving Thalberg began at once to create and publicise a host of new stars, among them Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, William Haines, Norma Shearer, and Joan Crawford.. The arrival of talking pictures in 1928–29 gave opportunities to other new stars, many of whom would carry MGM through the 1930s: Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Robert Montgomery, Myrna Loy, Jeanette MacDonald, and Nelson Eddy among the most popular.

MGM was one of the first studios to experiment with filming in Technicolor. MGM's first all-colour, "all-talking" sound feature with dialogue was the 1930 musical The Rogue Song. In 1934 MGM introduced the first live-action film made in Technicolor's superior new three-colour process, a musical number in the otherwise black and white The Cat and the Fiddle. The studio then produced a number of three-colour short subjects including 1935's musical La Fiesta de Santa Barbara, however MGM waited until 1938 to film a complete feature in the process, Sweethearts with Jeanette MacDonald. From then on, MGM regularly produced several films a year in Technicolor, The Wizard of Oz being just one of the most notable. After 1940, production was cut from fifty pictures a year to a more manageable twenty-five features per year. It was during this time that MGM released very successful musicals with newly-acquired contract players such as Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and Frank Sinatra, to name just a few.

MGM found it difficult to attract audiences after the war. While other studios backed away from the popular musicals of the war years, MGM increased its output to as many as five or six each year, roughly one-quarter of its annual output. Such pictures were expensive to produce, requiring a full staff of songwriters, arrangers, musicians, dancers, and technical support, and releasing so many each year affected the company’s finances. MGM still produced some well-regarded musicals, among them An American in Paris, Singin' in the Rain and The Band Wagon. However, it was a losing fight, as the mass audience preferred to stay home and watch television. (An American in Paris and Singin' in the Rain, as well as the 1951 Technicolor remake of Show Boat, were box office hits; The Band Wagon was not.)

In 1958, MGM released what is generally considered their last great musical, Arthur Freed's widescreen, colour production of Gigi, starring Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, and Louis Jourdan. Adapted from the novel by Colette, and written by the team of Lerner and Loewe, who also wrote My Fair Lady and Camelot, Gigi was a box office and critical smash, won nine Academy Awards including Best Picture, and from it came several hit songs, including Thank Heaven For Little Girls, I Remember It Well, the Waltz at Maxim's, and the Oscar-winning title song. The film was the last MGM musical to win a Best Picture Oscar, an honour that had previously gone to The Broadway Melody (1929), The Great Ziegfeld (1936), and An American in Paris (1951).