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THE MUSIC MAN OF MGM
In Hollywoodâs Golden Age, each of the studiosâincluding Poverty Rowâs Republic, Monogram, and PRCâmade musicals. MGM, the âTiffany of studios,â whose letterhead boasted of âMore Stars than Are in the Heavens,â was the gold standard. That might never have been the case if Arthur Freed had not become part of the MGM family in 1929, five years after the amalgamation of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and Louis B. Mayer Productions to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, known to generations of moviegoers as MGM.
Arthurâs life is a skein of dates and places, supplemented by news stories and production files. There are many lacunae, many questions never to be answered; there are also facts that are easily verified. His father, Max, was born in 1866 in Asszonyfa, Hungary, seventy-eight miles west of Budapest. Max emigrated to America in 1887; his future wife and Arthurâs mother, Rosie Grossman (nĂ©e Groseman), also Hungarian, emigrated in 1891. Rosie was either four or six years younger than Max. Census records give her birth year as 1872; her death certificate is more specificâAugust 1, 1870. Max and Rosie seem to have met in Charleston, South Carolina, which had been a major center of Jewish immigration before the Civil War but afterward was just a southern city with a small Jewish presence. Why Max and Rosie were in Charleston in 1894, the year they supposedly married, is unknown. Since postbellum Charleston Jews were merchants and peddlers, Max, who was, among other things, a zither salesman, may have thought that Charlestonians would be intrigued by the sound of the stringed instrument that was becoming increasingly popular in North America.
Since census data are never complete, the 1910 and 1920 census reports did not record the day and month of Max and Rosieâs marriage. The month would be significant: Arthur was born on September 9, 1894. Initially, he bore his motherâs surname, Grossman, probably because Rosie and Max had not yet married, although it is also possible that Max may not have been Arthurâs biological father. Romantics might like to imagine Max and Rosie as lovers living in a garret where he played Hungarian folk melodies on a zither, legitimizing their union after Rosie became pregnant with Arthur; or getting married to legitimize Arthur, if he were another manâs child. Either version would make a great womanâs picture, a blend of fact and fiction complete with a tragic ending: Maxâs suicide in 1917 at age fifty-one, as Arthur was on the first leg of a journey that brought him to MGM twelve years later.
Within this skein of dates, places, and conjectures, there is one certainty: Arthur was his motherâs son in every way and remained devoted to her until her death on March 11, 1957, in Los Angeles. At some point, Arthur was given his fatherâs last name, Fried, which, according to Polkâs Seattle City Directory, Max was still using in 1909 when he was working in real estate in Seattle. By 1910, âFriedâ had vanished from the Directory, replaced by Freed, a variant of the family name (Maxâs father was Mordechai Moritz Fried). To Max, âFreedâ seemed less ethnic (for example, Freed, West Virginia). The spelling apparently meant a great deal to Max, even though âFriedâ and âFreedâ are pronounced the same. âFreedâ also went better with his new title. The listing in the 1910 Directory read, âFreed, Max, mngr, Max Freed & Co.â
The mercurial Max did not remain in real estate for long. His business address changed frequently. In the 1913 Directory, he was listed as president of the Smyrna Valley Orchard Company. There was no listing for him in 1914, but there was one a year later. Max had switched from produce to hardware and was now manager of the Seattle office of Butler-Freed-Riley, a hardware manufacturing company with headquarters in Jersey City, New Jersey.
The Freeds were now living on a ranch in Bellevue, just across Lake Washington and accessible by boat or ferry from Seattle.
To census takers, Max Freed was a merchant, who began in art, antiques, and zithers, but soon branched out into totally unrelated businesses like furniture, real estate, fruit growing, and livestock. Max seemed happiest on the Bellevue ranch, which may have evoked memories of his Hungarian boyhood. The Ranch (April 1, 1914) carried an ad for an auction (cash only) at Maxâs ranch. Up for bidding were Holstein dairy cows, a Holstein bull, horses, a seven-passenger Garford touring car that cost $3,850, milk cans, and separators. âMax the Rancherâ was just another role in an ever-growing repertoire. In the 1916 Directory, âFreed, Maxâ was followed by the names of two companies that he supposedly represented: Molloch Knitting Mills and the National Loan and Investment Co. There was no listing for him in 1917, only one for his wife, identified as âRosie wid Max.â After May 9, 1917, Rosie was a widow.
There was something about Max Freed that recalls Hubie in the Jule StyneâBetty Comden and Adolph Green Broadway musical, Do Re Me (1961). In his opening number, Hubie, whose wife calls him âa schemer, a dreamer,â insists that âall that you need is an angleâ to succeed. Max found enough of them to buy a ranch in Bellevue, Seattleâs largest suburb. Until they settled permanently in Seattle around 1909, the Freeds lived a peripatetic existence. They moved regularly, their latest address determined by Maxâs latest angle. All of their children were born in different places: Arthur, 1894, in Charleston; Victor, 1896, in Denver; Hugo, 1897, in Boston; Sidney, 1900, somewhere in New Jersey; Walter, 1903, in Spokane; Ruth, 1906, somewhere in Washington State; Ralph, 1907, in Vancouver, British Columbia; Clarence Rupert, 1911 in Seattle. When Max felt successful enough to purchase the Bellevue property, he believed he could finally settle down and become a successful rancher, providing his family with a lifestyle befitting a gentleman farmer.
The Freeds were a musical family. Max was a tenor; Walter was an organist who later taught music; Sidney worked in the record business; Ralph and Ruth wrote songs, at first for amusement, and later for profit; and Arthur became a lyricist and world-class movie producer, whose Freed Unit at MGM was responsible for many of the worldâs best-loved musicals such as Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Easter Parade (1948), An American in Paris (1951), and Singinâ in the Rain (1952). Except for Victor, who was killed in World War I, all of Arthurâs siblings relocated in Los Angeles, including Clarence Rupert, about whom the least is known. In the 1930 census, he identified himself as âemployerâ and listed his occupation as âpacking company.â He still described himself as âemployerâ in the 1940 census, but this time as âproprietor.â Nothing else is known about him except that he married, enlisted in the army on April 29, 1944, was discharged in 1946, and died in Ventura, California, in 1988 at the age of seventy-seven.
Max Freed did not live to see his children embark on successful careers. Hugo became an orchid breeder and popular lecturer on orchids. In 1946, he and Arthur started Arthur Freedâs Orchids in Malibu. Ruth took up songwriting professionally, sometimes under the pseudonym of Patty Fisher. As Ruth Freed, she wrote âPerhapsâ and âMake a Circle,â recorded, respectively, by Joni James and Kay Starr. As Patty Fisher, she wrote the lyrics for âAn Old Love Letter,â performed by Alice Lon, the âChampagne Lady,â on the Lawrence Welk Show on March 29, 1958. She also wrote two numbers, including the title song, for the Doris Day movie, The Tunnel of Love (1958). Ruthâs husband, Albert Akst, was a former musician who became a highly regarded film editor and cut a number of Arthurâs films including Meet Me in St. Louis, The Harvey Girls, Ziegfeld Follies, Till the Clouds Roll By, Good News, Words and Music, Easter Parade, Summer Holiday, The Barkleys of Broadway, Royal Wedding, The Belle of New York, The Band Wagon, and Brigadoon.
Ralph also became a songwriter, not as famous as his older brother but more prolific. At fourteen, he left Seattle for Los Angeles; after graduating from Hollywood High School, he worked as a writer and lyricist at Paramount and Universal. He joined the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) in 1931 and began collaborating with such composers as Burton Lane and Sammy Fain. Ralph and Lane wrote the Oscar-nominated âHow about You?â sung by Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in MGMâs Babes on Broadway (1941), which Arthur produced. Notable artists such as Shirley Bassey, Frank Sinatra, and Rosemary Clooney have recorded the song. Since 1941, âHow about You?â has been heard in a number of movies: Ship Ahoy (1942), Grand Central Murder (1942), The Youngest Profession (1943), A Guy Named Joe (1943), All about Eve (1950), Donât Bother to Knock (1952), The Young Lions (1958), The Good-bye Girl (1977), and The Fisher King (1991). Alec Baldwin even sang it on TVâs Saturday Night Live in 2000. At least one critic found Ralphâs lyrics superior to Arthurâs, âwhose words stroll through their clichĂ©s with a shrug.â
Arthur was a June/moon type of lyricist whose rhymes were elementary: âI walk down the lane / With a happy refrainâ (âSinginâ in the Rainâ); âYou are my lucky star / I saw you from afarâ (âYou Are My Lucky Starâ). Arthurâs rhymes are never intellectually teasing, unlike, say, Cole Porterâs, which are.
Ralphâs lyrics, however, have flashes of wit and clever internal rhymes: âI like potato chips, moonlight and motor tripsâ (âHow about You?â); âA rhythmical campaign can do more than champagneâ (âSwing High, Swing Lowâ).
Between 1932 and 1962, Ralph wrote regularly for the movies, often uncredited. One of the films for which he received credit was Arthurâs production of Du Barry Was a Lady (1943), based on Cole Porterâs 1939 Broadway musical. Ralph wrote the lyrics for three numbers: the title song and âMadame, I Like Your Crepes Suzettesâ with Burton Lane and âI Love an Esquire Girlâ with Roger Edens. Although Ralphâs lyrics did not evoke vintage Porter, they captured one aspect of his style: the incongruous rhyme: âwork of artâ / âa la carteâ (âMadame, I Like Your Crepes Suzettesâ). Porter, of course, remains the indisputable master of the incongruous. Who else would rhyme âsassy airâ with âbrassiereâ (âI Jupiter, I Rexâ in Out of This World [1951])? Only two of Porterâs songs from Du Barry Was a Lady made it into the movie: âDo I Love You?â and a laundered âKatie Went to Haiti.â Gone were the references to Katieâs trade (âPractically all Haiti had Katie.â). It was obvious that the delectably bawdy âBut in the Morning, Noâ would never make the cut. It was a question and answer duet with Madame du Barry asking Louis XV, among other things, if he uses the breaststroke, does double entry, and likes third parties, to which he replies in the affirmativeââBut in the morning, no.â The finale, âFriendship,â was interpolated from Porterâs Broadway show, Anything Goes (1934). At least a glimmer of Porter peeked through the 1943 MGM film.
Ralph may not have been a poet, but he was a superb craftsman. For the Esther WilliamsâVan Johnson musical, Thrill of a Romance (1945), he wrote âPlease Donât Say Noâ with Sammy Fain.
The lines are of varying length, and there is no fixed meter. The rhyme scheme is unobtrusive, unlike Arthurâs in âSinginâ in the Rain.â Note what Ralph does in the last two lines of the first stanza: âIâve so much love to impart / Itâs making my heart overflow.â There is nothing poetic about âimpart,â which is, literally, prosaic. Yet Ralph makes it poetic by having âpartâ rhyme with âheart.â In the last line, the singer (in the film, operatic tenor Lauritz Melchior) must take a beat after âheartâ to bring out the rhyme, so the song can end quietly with an anapest, âoverflow.â
Since Ralph wrote songs for a number of MGM films, one might assume that Arthur was responsible for his being hired. Although Arthur wielded great influence at MGM, the studio was not bringing on a movie industry newcomer. Ralph had written lyrics for twenty-nine films between 1932 and 1941 before joining MGM. Two of his best were âWhen Is a Kiss Not a Kissâ in Champagne Waltz and the title song in Swing High, Swing Low (both Paramount, 1937). âSwing High, Swing Low,â sung by a chorus over the opening credits, has been recorded by Gertrude Niesen, the Ink Spots, Benny Goodman, and Artie Shaw, among others.
Ralph received a better high school education than Arthur, although one would never know it from the standard biographical sources. According to imdb.com, Arthur Freed was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshireâa claim seconded by britannica.com, giving the impression that Max and Rosie, like many immigrant parents, wanted their son to have the kind of education they never received. Phillips Exeter archivist Edouard L. Desrochers discovered that Arthurâfor some reason still bearing the surname âFriedââhad been enrolled as an upper-middle-class (third-year) student in fall 1911. His gradesâLatin, D; English, C; Declamation, C; Math, French, and History, E (failure)âprecluded his returning for the spring term, much less graduating from Phillips Exeter.
After the debacle at Phillips Exeter, Arthur returned to Seattle, where he completed his education at Broadway High School on the corner of Broadway and East Pine Street, the first building in Seattle specifically intended for secondary education. Since Broadway High no longer exists, one must assume that he graduated in 1912. That same year, the seventeen-year-old Arthur received his first notice in the Seattle Daily Times (May 24, 1912) as a cast member in Arabian Nights, a comedy presented by the Alumni Association of Temple De Hirsch, a Reform Jewish synagogue that played a major role in the cityâs religious and cultural life. As an alumnus, he would have been part of the congregation and perhaps attended the Templeâs school. Arthur must have been gratified to read that the show âwas well received by a large audience.â He enjoyed performing, but songwriting took precedence.
Soon after graduating high school, Arthur set out for Chicago, determined to pursue a career as a songwriter. Chicagoâs appeal was understandable. Although it had not yet been christened the second city, it was the entertainment capital of middle America. Chicagoans embraced performers like Lillie Langtree, the Barrymores, Maud Adams, Lillian Russell, and Sarah Bernhardt, who responded in kind with return engagements. For the fledgling movie industry, Chicago was a major film distribution center. For Carl Laemmle, an immigrant from Laupheim, Germany, who went on to found the film company that became Universal Pictures, Chicago was the first stop on the road to Hollywood. Laemmle started in exhibition in 1906 with a nickelodeon, the White Front, on Milwaukee Avenue. Needing a piano player, Laemmle hired the thirteen-year-old Sam Katz, a barberâs son; after realizing that all that was necessary to enter the nickelodeon business were a storefront, folding chairs, a projector, and film, Katz went the same route. For Katz, too, nickelodeons were just the beginning. He teamed up with the Balaban brothersâthe most famous of whom was Barney, who became head of Paramount Picturesâto provide Chicagoans with their first movie palaces that looked like opera houses, where movies were not just accompanied by a piano but by a four-piece orchestra and a pipe organ.
Arthur was in Chicago at the right time. He first found a job as a song plugger in the Chicago office of the music publishing house of Waterman, Berlin, & Snyder. It was there that he met Irving Berlin, whose immigrant background and richly melodious songs resonated so deeply with him that one of his lifelong ambitions, which never came to pass, was to produce an Irving Berlin biopic, Say It with Music. Arthur soon realized that, as a song plugger, he would be sitting at the piano on the mezzanine of some department store, playing and singing other peopleâs songs to sell other peopleâs sheet music, while yearning for the day when someone would be doing the same for him. He attracted the attention of Minnie Marx, the mother and driving force behind the Marx Brothers, who had been living in Chicago since 1910. The standard biographies of the Marx Brothers do not mention Arthur, which is not surprising, since it seems that all he did was write special material for their act, in which he also sang. Arthur told the Los Angeles Times (June 1, 1946) that after âMama Marxâ heard him sing, she made him an offer: âYou sing good, and how would you like to join the act?â
That was in 1916, according to his obituary in the Hollywood Reporter (April 13, 1973). Arthur did not remain with the act for long. By summer 1916, he was back in Seattle, where he received his second notice in the Seattle Daily Times (June 29, 1916), in which he was listed among the performers in a vaudeville program at the Hippodrome Theatre on Cherry Street.
Arthur was probably in Seattle on May 9, 1917, when his father took his life. One source described Arthur as having âassumed responsibility as the head of the familyâ after his fatherâs death. On his draft registration form, dated June 5, 1917, Arthur identified himself as âhead of the familyâ and gave as his occupation âfruit grower, self-employed.â The Bellevue ranch had apparently become a fruit-producing property. Possibly the 1914 auction marked the end of Maxâs dabbling in livestock. Arthur was not head of the family for long. On June 15, 1917, two months after the United States entered World War I, he enlisted in the army, as his brother Victor had done earlier. Unlike Victor, Arthur remained stateside, staging military shows.
Victor, who had been a medical student at New Yorkâs College of Physicians and Surgeons before entering the service, died in France in 1918.
No one in the Freed family was prepared for what happened on May 9, 1917. That day, t...