[78-L] Music in Jean Harlow film

[Jeff Sultanof]

If I am not mistaken, the name of the arranger is Charles Maxwell.

Jeff Sultanof

On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 3:11 PM, Forsberg, Chris <cforsber at jhsph.edu> wrote:

> 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.", "PERFORME
>  D 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
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