[78-L] Music in Jean Harlow film

[David Lennick]

What MGM studios? They tossed tons of stuff over the years, including all their 
playbacks. A colleague salvaged lots of these from the dumpster while working 
down there in 1980 but I don't think he came across anything going back that far.

dl

Jeff Sultanof wrote:
> 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
>> _________________________________