Star Producer

I just read Scott Eyman's Lion Of Hollywood: The Life And Legend Of Louis B. Mayer.  It's a lengthy book, but then, Mayer ruled over Hollywood for a long time.  He was born in 1884 in Russia (most of the moguls of the studio years were Russian Jews). His family emigrated to Canada where he grew up, earning a living collecting scrap metal.

As a young man he moved to Massachusetts, got married and in 1907 opened a movie theatre.  He was a natural showman and soon was running a chain.  He helped form Metro Pictures and like many other big exhibitors, moved into production.  By the late 1910s, he was running a studio in Los Angeles.  In 1924, Marcus Loew, who owned the Loew's theatres, merged Metro Pictures and Goldwyn Pictures.  The money men like Loew were in New York and someone was needed to watch over things in the West. Mayer was chosen and MGM was created.

It was a symbiotic relationship.  A bunch of not-that-big movie people got together and suddenly they had actors, a big lot, theatres and, best of all, a great administrator to bring it all together.  Mayer soon added boy wonder Irving Thalberg to oversee production and MGM became the biggest studio of all.  The Big Parade, made in 1925, was the biggest hit of the silent era, and the studio was off to the races.  They created more and bigger stars than anyplace else--John Gilbert, Greta Garbo, Lon Chaney, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Marie Dressler, Johnny Weissmuller, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Greer Garson and many others.  They also made the transition to sound smoothly.  For that matter, during the Depression, while other studio were losing money and even going bankrupt, MGM showed a solid profit every year. For the next two decades, it would dominate Hollywood. Mayer's philosophy was simple--create and develop stars in properties people want to see, sparing no expense (as long as producers decide what to spend, not directors or anyone else).

Mayer wanted MGM to stand for class--a middle class version of class, I suppose--and you can see it in the sets and costumes.  Warner Brothers had a lot more grit and mayhem, while Paramount gave its directors and clowns much more freedom  Mayer would have none of it.  Above all, he believed in wholesomeness, not realism.  As he put it, we all go to the bathroom, but there's a reason we lock the door.  Characters should be noble, patriotic and reverent.  Even poor people should live in clean, well-lit, nicely furnished homes.  And if a woman was awoken in the middle of the night for plot reasons, she should still look like she just spent an afternoon at the salon.

The MGM system had powerful unit heads who declared what a movie would look like, generally before the director was assigned.  And after it was shot, the editors took over.  Every step of the way it was closely shepherded by producers.  If something wasn't working, scenes would be rewritten and reshot until they got it right.  This led to tremendous success, but also a certain uniformity and even stodginess that often makes the heart sink when one sees the MGM logo on an old film (though, at the time, audiences couldn't get enough).

Short, stocky and homely, Mayer was the unquestioned king of Hollywood.  A father figure at MGM, he knew how to deal with people, especially talent--often by sweet-talking them, and if they refused his offers, threatening to destroy them.  He was also an intimate of the powerful, including presidents.  However, he was still just an employee of Loew's, Inc. and when Nick Schenck took over after Marcus Loew died in 1927, the two had an antagonistic relationship.  Meanwhile, just below, Thalberg kept demanding more money and power until he was practically the equal of Mayer.

Thalberg had a heart attack in 1932 and much of his work was farmed out to other producers.  When he died in 1936, only 37 years old, MGM kept chugging along, making as much money as ever.  And Mayer and Schenck kept fighting as well.

The studio did well during World War II and there seemed no end in sight, but after the war, the world had changed.   Americans had seen a lot of death, and the make-believe world of MGM seemed more false and old-fashioned than ever.  But Mayer had trouble accepting the new style.  Furthermore, MGM's old stars were aging, and the studio had trouble developing and sustaining new ones. For the first time, in 1947, MGM lost money.

Other changes were afoot.  The government was investigating Hollywood for communist influence, and Hollywood was running scared.  In 1948, the Supreme Court broke up the studios' vertical integration and so began the process of selling off theatres.  Actors won greater contractual freedom and at other studios started demanding a percentage of the gross.  Then there was television, which threatened to destroy the entire industry, and certainly broke America of its weekly film habit.

Mayer was getting old and the studio, looking for a new Thalberg, hired Dore Schary, who'd started as a screenwriter, to serve under Mayer--"under," except that he'd often go straight to Schenck to get things done.  Schary wasn't much for wholesomeness, and didn't really love the spectacles that were MGM's specialty, preferring message pictures and film noir.  Mayer and Schary rarely fought overtly, but Mayer knew he was being undercut and by 1951 told the money people in New York it was him or Schary.  They chose Schary.  What choice did they have?  Schary wasn't half the movie man Mayer was, but he represented the future while Mayer was the past.

Maybe it's just as well, since the studio system Mayer had created was dying.  Mayer himself kept busy with minor projects, but he was a broken man.  He died in 1957.

Mayer is often caricatured as a monstrous philistine--in fact, most of those caricatures of old studio bosses were originally based on Mayer.  But though he had his flaws, he loved movies and MGM made plenty of good ones when he was in charge.  Some of the criticisms are true, though.  His favorite films were the Andy Hardy series, and it's easy to understand why.  Not only were they full of the wholesomeness and middle-American values Mayer cherished, they were also cheap to shoot and made a ton of dough.  In later years, he'd compare them favorably to Lubitsch's Ninotchka, made at MGM at the same time, which cost a lot more and didn't gross as much.  Lubitsch was a major director who'd recently left Paramount and signed a two-picture deal at MGM.  He was given his freedom and not only made Ninotchka, but The Shop Around The Corner.  I'd trade all the Andy Hardy films for the former, and just about any decade of MGM's output for the latter.  But that's not how Mayer saw things, and good or bad, it's his vision that's reflected in hundreds and hundreds of movies.

There is one great thing Mayer did I haven't mentioned.  He often worked on hunches, and in 1939 took songwriter Arthur Freed and put him in charge of musicals.  The Freed unit, essentially operating as a studio within a studio, turned into one of the glories of Hollywood, releasing classics such as Singin' In The Rain and The Band Wagon. For that alone, I don't know how any movie lover can have hard feelings about Mayer.