The Moguls!    

Louis B. Mayer 1885 – 1957

 Part II….Mayer and the building of MGM…

At noon on Saturday, April 26, 1924 Louis B. Mayer gave a party in Culver City and everybody came….

Army and Navy planes dropped roses from the sky while 500 guests gathered on the lawn in front of the studio. All the stars (and their cars) were there….Mae Murray in yellow to match her canary yellow Pierce Arrow, Clara Bow’s Kissel convertible painted the same color as her red hair and two red chow dogs and Francis X. Bushman’s Rolls Royce and chauffeur in lavender. Rudolph Valentino came over from Paramount in a Voisin with silver coiled cobra radiator caps while Buster Keaton arrived in a 30 foot land cruiser with bunks for six, 2 drawing rooms and an observation deck!  That’s Hollywood!

Rapf, Mayer and Thalberg.

Mayer (who had been taking speech lessons from Conrad Nagel to get rid of his Yiddish accent) was just started to speak when suddenly comedian Will Rogers came riding up on a white horse, leaned down to present three small replicas of the studio key to the men on the platform and said “Sorry  I’m late, folks. I forgot my chewing gum and had to ride home to get it”. When the laughter died down Mayer began again only to stop when interrupted again  when a large group of people got up to leave. Director Marshall Neilan decided his crew needed to get back to work because “it was taking too goddamn long” and he couldn’t afford to lose time and money “listening to all that gab”.  Mayer was not amused.  He put down the speech written for him by publicist Pete Smith and concluded “When someone asks you where you work, you can say, not those three long words but three short letters….MGM….and everyone will know you are connected with the foremost movie studio in the world!” Mayer was a bit premature. The merger wasn’t finalized for 2 more weeks and the M for Mayer took another year.
                                        

Mayer’s first order of business was to harness the directors. There were five pictures from Metro, three from Goldwyn and three that Mayer brought over to Culver City, all in production or near release. The problem was that up to now directors had total creative control over scripts, cast and crew, a tradition that came down from the days of Thomas Ince and D.W.Griffith. Budgets went through the roof and in the new post-WWI economy that couldn’t continue or the new studio would never survive. While all the studios were facing the same dilemma, Mayer wanted to go a step further. He wanted the same control over the studio that he had at home, absolute control. After all, he considered everyone who worked for him as his family now. Unfortunately this familial authority would soon extend to even  the  personal lives of everyone at MGM.

Eric Von Stroheim

Marshall Neilan

The first names on the list were Eric Von Stroheim and Marshall Neilan . Von Stroheim had already submitted his final cut of Greed starring Zasu Pitts and Gibson Gowland and it was forty reels long…almost six hours! When he was told it had to be cut, Von Stroheim adamantly refused. So Mayer and Thalberg called in another editor and cut two more reels. They also firmly reminded the furious director about the terms of his contract. Marshall Neilan was finishing Thomas Hardy’s classic Tess of the D’Urbervilles and remaining true to the author’s story. But Mayer didn’t like the ending, arguing audiences preferred happy endings. Neilan finally gave in and  Tess (Blanche Sweet) got her reprieve.  But when his contract was up, Neilan was gone.

One bright spot was Victor Seastrom’s handling of He Who Gets Slapped, the story of a tragic clown played by Lon Chaney. Seastrom kept the set on schedule, problem free and under budget. Mayer called him into his office and gave him a new contract with an increase of $20,000 a picture.  It was the first film released by the new studio but the credits read “A Metro-Goldwyn Picture. Produced by Louis B. Mayer”. It would be another year before films got the complete MGM logo. Ironically in this picture, one of the villains was a murdering lion!
                                  

There was also another incredible movie released that first year. It was The Big Parade directed by King Vidor and starring John Gilbert. It was chalked up to be a “Jack Gilbert Special” or what is referred to these days as a “chick flick” pandering to Gilbert’s female fans. Vidor wanted it to be more and asked Mayer to increase the budget so he could give the war a more important role. Mayer was already infuriated with Gilbert’s behavior. He was drinking and having affairs while his wife actress Leatrice Joy was pregnant. But Mayer agreed and the film still  stands today as the classic silent drama of World War I.

John Gilbert

However, Mayer was still wanted something done about Gilbert. Thalberg, who liked Jack and played golf with him on Sunday afternoons, tried to reassure Mayer that Gilbert would shape up. Publicist Pete Smith was recruited to build him up to the press as a loving husband and prospective father. Few insiders bought that story but the public swallowed it all. Actually, they were getting more in John Gilbert than they got from  the three big Latin lovers of the era (Rudolph Valentino, Ramon Novarro and Antonio Moreno) who were all gay.

Novarro with Mae McAvoy in "Ben-Hur"

Then another cloud appeared on Mayer’s horizon. Ben-Hur now filming in Italy was a special project of Goldwyn Company and not given to the “Mayer Group” (Mayer, Thalberg and Rapf). But it was in trouble and Mayer convinced Marcus Loew that was alos a threat to the new company as a whole. In secret, Mayer and Thalberg assembled a new cast and crew with Fred Niblo as director, Ramon Novarro as Ben-Hur and screenwriter Bess Meredyth to revise the script. They were shipped off to New York for Loew’s approval. Mayer thought the production should be relocated to Culver City but Marcus Loew disagreed.

"Greed" with Zasu Pitts and Gibson Gowland

The problems with both Greed and Ben-Hur continued. In Italy, Fred Niblo had to destroy 200 reels already shot and he needed a new cameraman before work could continue. Thalberg sent three expert cameramen but it was also obvious that (1) Ben-Hur was going to cost at least $3 million (2) Mayer would have to go to Italy and (3)Greed had to be cut even more. Von Stroheim stormed into Mayer’s office to confront him about rumors that he was about to be replaced by Robert Z. Leonard. The violent argument ended with Mayer slapping his face. Shocked, the German director walked out of the office swearing he would have Mayer arrested for assault and battery. But after cooling down, he went back to work.

Mayer made plans to go to Italy, family in tow, but had gotten no farther than New York when there was more bad news from Livorno. A riot had broken out between the fascists and the Socialist Party’s unauthorized workers and the fascists had stormed in and literally held the movie set hostage. Mayer notified his good friend Herbert Hoover (now Secretary of Commerce) who intervened and even provided Mayer with a diplomatic passport. But L.B. couldn’t enjoy the trip or the food because he was plagued with a toothache. However, instead of seeing a dentist, he went straight to Livorno to find out what was going on, a mistake that almost cost him his life. In Rome still conferring with Niblo and and members of the film company on October 18, 1924, Mayer suddenly collapsed. His doctor from Hollywood was quickly called to Rome where toxemia was diagnosed as the problem and all his teeth had to be removed. With each extraction more poison seeped through his body and for over a week Mayer lay in critical condition. It took until mid-November before he fully recovered. But he did manage to supervise the editing of the important Ben-Hur galley sequence before laving Rome for Berlin.

Greta Garbo

It was in Berlin that Mayer discovered possibly one of MGM’s most celebrated stars. During an interview with Mauritz Stiller, the Swedish director, he was asked to see a film starring Stiller’s 19-year-old protégée Greta Garbo. Mayer agreed and even took his daughters to see it with him (although the rumors of Stiller’s alleged homosexuality bothered him). Garbo was awkward, overweight and couldn’t speak English but Mayer saw something in her that apparently his daughters couldn’t see. He made a verbal agreement to pay the passage for both of them to America after April 15 as long as Garbo lost weight by then.

While Mayer was in Europe, Edgar J. Mannix arrived in Hollywood, sent there by the home office to keep an eye on Mayer. But L.B. liked Eddie and made him studio manager and assistant to Irving Thalberg. It seemed that Mayer won Eddie’s admiration during a meeting when director Von Stroheim made the remark “all women are whores” and Mayer decked him. Eddie was very good at what he did and what he did was watch everybody! When he smelled a scandal brewing he was supposed to squelch it and, together with Howard Strickling they covered up everything from accidents and abortions to mayhem and murder.

In February 1925 the new reels of the Ben-Hur galley sequences were sent to Mayer who then had all the old footage destroyed. About the same time, a storm in Rome blew down part of one of the major sets and all the executive offices. So Ben-Hur was finally coming home to Culver City. A huge, full scale replica of the ancient coliseum of Antioch was designed but only half of it was built. The other half was a skillfully created hanging miniature with puppets that moved. It was all done on a 5-acre plot off Venice Boulevard. On the day of filming three thousand extras, eight chariots each drawn by four-horse teams, most of the cast and crew as well as hundreds of spectators gathered for the filming of the chariot race. It was one the most exciting events in Hollywood history for a movie that would be regarded as the greatest of all silent films.

One more event marked Mayer and MGM’s first year…the alliance between L. B. and William Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Pictures. Hearst built a 15 room stucco “bungalow’ on the Universal lot as a “dressing room” for his mistress Marion Davies. It had two kitchens, sunken bathrooms and luxurious decorations. On March 10, 1925 Hearst had the 3,000 square foot house disassembled and moved to the MGM lot. It became a focal point for the social gatherings of all the MGM brass. A photo of Mayer welcoming Miss Davies to the studio with a make-up case was the first telegraph-transmitted photograph ever sent across the continent.

The first birthday of what was still Metro-Goldwyn was held at the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York where Mayer spoke before hundreds of theater owners. But before he left Hollywood Mayer also welcomed Lillian Gish to the studio with a 6-picture contract that gave her carte blanche on the selection of stories, directors and script writers.

MGM made a profit of $4,708,631 in its first full year, topping everyone but Paramount (now 11 years old ) who reported a million more.

The lion had begun to roar…and it sounded a lot like Louis B. Mayer.

NEXT: Part III…Mayer and the Sound of MGM! 

For Part I… see Issue #38

Artist..maryp LLOL