[78-L] Music in Jean Harlow film

[Forsberg, Chris]

Back in Dec, I inquired whether anyone here happened to know the name of the band/singer featured in the nightclub sequence in a 1932 Jean Harlow film, "Red Headed Woman" and if the song (probably of the same name) existed on 78. No one did -- but Stephen Davies and Harold Aherne did have some good suggestions....Stephen said that it was probably a generic "studio band" and anonymous singer, and that the MGM studio records would have the answers. Then, Harold offered that those records were at Univ South Carolina, and posted the URL (http://www.usc.edu/libraries/collections/performing_arts/), and I followed it, and emailed someone there. I got back an answer that all they could find was a table of sorts showing the 3 songs in the film, the title of the songs (which I already knew), and the composer/arranger (which I already knew). There was a column called "ORCH", with "Maxwell" written in for each of the three different songs. There was also columns for "TAKE NO.", "PERFORMED BY", "DATE" and "TIME"....but of course, all 4 of those were blank....grrrr!! He sent me a scanned PDF of this antique production chart, but it didn't help much...

So, the only new info gleaned was this "Maxwell"....I wrote back and asked if there was any way to find out the names of the band or singer...and who "Maxwell" was, and he said that he can't find the name of the singer or the band in the film, and that their MGM Collection consisted primarily of scripts.....and what I really need is the "production information for the film to answer these questions." (I had assumed that USC was the place that had that in the first place). He said that "unfortunately we don't have that here and I don't know where to look (!)." (so which is it -- you don't have it, or you don't know where to look?!?)



He did clear up the Maxwell thing though -- he said it was the name of the man who did the orchestrating of the songs for the film (I had thought it might have been the name of the orchestra). He said he didn't know his first name.



So, USC seems to have been a bit of a letdown. Would the MGM production information then be at the MGM studios...? Anyone know? Is it worth writing to MGM?



Thanks,



Chris