Popular songwriter--notably in collaboration with Nacio Herb Brown--who joined MGM with the advent of sound and produced virtually every great Hollywood musical of the 1940s and 50s. Freed gathered around him such luminaries as Vincente Minnelli, Gene Kelly, Syd Charisse, Fred Astaire and Judy Garland, and produced classic films including the all-black "Cabin in the Sky" (1943), "Meet Me in St. Louis" (1944), "On The Town" (1949), "Singin' in the Rain" (1952) and "Silk Stockings" (1957).