I first saw 'West Side Story' on stage in 1958. I was in the army, having been conscripted while under contract to MGM. I caught the musical in New York, fell in love with it, bought the album, and memorised the whole thing.
So vast is the shadow cast by the MGM production of 'The Wizard of Oz,' so indelible are its characterizations, so perfect its music, and so assured is its cinematic immortality, that most people think of it as 'The Original.' In fact, it isn't.
Most of the contract people at MGM stayed and stayed and stayed. Why? Because the studio looked after them. Warner Brothers wouldn't - they were always spanking somebody or selling them down the river.
I had an opportunity to meet Elvis, only once. It was at the MGM Grand. It was certainly not at the height of his career. No, it wasn't at the height of his career, but it was still a thrill to see him and meet him anyway. You know?
I remember vividly seeing 'Tarzan' and Fred Astaire, the Chaplin films, Fred Astaire musicals, MGM, because of my mother. She was just interested in everything and she took me to opera and ballet, and then ballet got me hooked.
We gave the show away and in return, we received a certain number of minutes per hour for the three-hour show that we could sell to Madison Avenue. One of the first sponsors was MGM Records.
Growing up, I would watch a movie on video and would go to the back of the VHS and locate the address for Universal Pictures or MGM or whatever. I'd write to the studios asking them if I could be in a movie. They never wrote me back.
At MGM, you knew you were going to be working next year; you knew you were going to get paid. But I was too ambitious musically to settle for it. And I wanted to gamble with whatever talent I might have had.
All the Warner actors were real actors. They started in theater and led very straightforward lives - you never saw entourages around. The MGM girls were the glamour girls, and they always had the makeup and hair people with them and all that.
Fact is, awards shows were never really about recognizing achievement. They were a publicity ploy cooked up in the late 1920s by MGM topper Louie Mayer and his newly formed Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences which was itself, back in the day...
I tap danced for ten years before I began to understand people don't make musicals anymore. All I wanted to do was be at MGM working for Arthur Freed or Gene Kelly or Vincent Minelli. Historical and geographical constraints made this impossible. Slow...
Johnny Stompanato: You want an autograph? Write to MGM. Ed Exley: Since when do two-bit hoods and hookers give out autographs? Johnny Stompanato: What'd you say to me? Ed Exley: LAPD. Sit down. Lana Turner: Who in the hell do you think you are? Jack ...
