The Moguls!
Louis B. Mayer
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PART III
When Marcus Loew of Loew, Inc. decided to merge two of his studios, Metro and Goldwyn, he also gathered in Louis B. Mayer’s Mission Road studio and got a little more than he bargained for…Louis B. Mayer. As head of operations for this new conglomerate, Mayer became a power all his own.
What he brought.
| Producers: Irving Thalberg Harry Rapf J. Robert Rubin Production Manager: J. G. Hawks Writers: Paul Bern, Carey Wilson, Frances Marion Directors: John M. Stahl, Reginald Barker, Fred Niblo, Hobart Henley Art Director: Cedric Gibbons |
 Mayer and Irving Thalberg |
| Actors: Anita Stewart Barbara LaMarr Renee Adoree Hedda Hopper Norma Shearer Designer: Gilbert Adrian |
 Anita Stewart and Hedda Hopper |
What he got….
…from Goldwyn: The old Ince studio in Culver City, a 40 acre layout with a 3-story office, 6 glass-enclosed stages, storage buildings, shops and laboratories, bungalows and dressing rooms. |
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Directors: King Vidor |
Heads of Publicity: Howard Dietz Publicist: Howard Strickling |
…from Metro:Directors: Rex Ingram Actors: Ramon Novarro |
 Garbo and Gilbert |
What he did with it….
…in his first 1000 days:
. Mayer rescued Goldwyn’s production of “Ben-Hur” from a sea of red ink and failed footage by changing directors, recasting the title role and, finally, bringing it back from Italy to Culver City. On a lot on Venice Boulevard they recreated the Colosseum and re-shot the chariot race. The famed MGM backlot was beginning to take form.
. He took back the power of directors to control all aspects of film creation from script to casting and nothing was ever done without his input and approval.
. Mayer made mega-stars out of Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Ramon Novarro, Lillian Gish and Joan Crawford. He also solidified MGM’s talent future by signing director Clarence Brown (who stayed 25 years) and actor Lionel Barrymore (who hung around for 28!).
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. A “sweetheart deal” made with William Randolph Hearst gave him access to all the Hearst publications…22 daily and 15 Sunday newspapers, 7 American magazines (including “Cosmopolitan”) and 2 in Britain all geared to promote MGM films and film stars.
. At a dinner he hosted in 1927, Mayer jump-started the creation of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. It was to be an organization of the industry elite from producers, directors, cameramen, writers and actors. Mayer also saw it as a way to end any talk of unionization.
. In 1927 Mayer brought MGM back from the brink of disaster. When Marcus Loew died, Nicholas Schenck took over and tried to sell off majority shares of MGM to William Fox. Mayer convinced his friend President Herbert Hoover that this was an illegal monopoly and the deal was voided. But he made an enemy of Schenck, now CEO of MGM.
| Part III…Mayer and the Sound of MGM…. |  "The Jazz Singer" |
In the mid-1920s, experiments in sound were being done but few people in the industry believed sound in feature films would ever catch on. However they were all intrigued by the possibility of using audible music and sound effects. Mayer saw “talking” pictures as an inferior attempt to copy the legitimate stage. Harry Warner was quoted “Who in the hell wants to hear actors talk? The music – that’s the big plus in this.” Then, in late 1926, the film industry was suddenly awash in red ink…with one exception. MGM!
 Early padded camera booth |
The hardest hit was Warner Bros. (not first class, not exactly poverty row) and they were fighting for their life. Not even Rin Tin Tin could keep the creditors from the door. Sam Warner decided it was time for a radical leap. He added some music and sound effects to “Don Juan”, a John Barrymore/Mary Astor picture, the first feature film released with a full-length recorded background score (performed by the New York Philharmonic). It was Vitaphone’s first giant step, a method of recording sound on large phonograph disks. This method would later be bested by Fox with their Movietone process of printing a soundtrack directly on the film strip. However, it was Warner and Vitaphone that created what is now regarded as Hollywood’s first talking picture ”The Jazz Singer” in 1927 even though the dialogue was limited to “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet” and one song “Mammy” by Al Jolson. It played to packed houses in city after city wherever audiences could find theaters equipped to show it. The people had spoken…they wanted their movies to do the same.
 Douglas and Norma Shearer |
Under Mayer’s management, MGM coasted through the decline of 1926-27 and was the last major studio to enter the sound era. They also had the cash on hand to invest in the expensive turnaround required with new equipment and sound stages, plus actors, directors and producers savvy enough to bridge the gap. Mayer had just one pressing problem…. a sound director to oversee the new sound department. It was Eddie Mannix who came up with an idea. “We’ve got a fellow in the special effects department who does camera work and trick stuff, Doug Shearer, Norma’s brother. Why not throw the sound problem in his lap?”
Shearer knew he was chosen because they were desperate. “What I know about sound you could put in a nutshell.” So he went off to the Bell lab with some ideas and, by hook and by crook, rounded up a sound crew. Somewhere along the way, Shearer and his team invented two important technologies…sound editing and pre-recorded sound tracks. What a humble beginning for one of the greatest sound directors in Hollywood history!
Shearer began with Leo the Lion who roared for the first time in “White Shadows in the South Seas” a semi-documentary by “Woody” Van Dyke and Robert Flaherty. Then, with Irving Thalberg, Shearer turned a planned silent film into MGM’s first “all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing” feature musical “Broadway Melody of 1929”. It was the first sound film to win an Oscar for Best Picture. Silent films were now yesterday’s news and movie-goers would drive miles out of their way to find theaters equipped to show “talkies”. Almost fifty years after Thomas Edison dreamed of wedding his phonograph and his still primitive camera and projector, sound met film and they both lived happily ever after.
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Who would even dream that it would be Louis B. Mayer, a former junk dealer from New England, who could blend his tyrannical overseer manner of management with an uncanny ability to find talent into the biggest film studio in Hollywood history? As Peter Hay put it in his book “MGM… When The Lion Roars”: “No Hollywood studio could claim to be greater than Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during the thirty-five years when the lion roared.”
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In the next issue ….Part IV….Mayer’s first decade
