Tony Nudo's Hollywood Legends MGM

Samuel Goldwyn & Louis B. Mayer
MGM

MGM ... What can I say??   If you have read at all through the site - you will know I am not a fan of MGM. I am a major fan, however, of Louis B. Mayer and Samuel Goldwyn. I think the two founders would be discusted by what thier vision has become. It's not just Leo the Lion .... it's a shroud of things. Least to mention that when you get a tub of lard turd like Michael Moore making your films your in trouble!! Anyway - this is about the visionarys of MGM and not the weirdos running it now .... so without further ado .... here's the story ....

He has been dubbed Hollywood's lone wolf ... Samuel Goldwyn. Samuel Goldwyn was born Schmuel Gelbfisz, the oldest of six children in a family of Hasidic Jews in Warsaw, Czarist Russia (now Poland), on August 17, 1882. At age 15, Schmuel’s father died. And the teenager left home on a walk-by-foot journey across Europe. He emigrated to England where his name was Anglicized to Goldfish. He lived with relatives until he earned enough money in a blacksmith shop to come to America. He was 19 years old when he came to Canada, and briefly lived in Manhattan, before settling in Gloversville in Upstate New York. He worked in a glove factory. He became a very successfull salesman. At the time, the film industry was growing fast and in his spare time, he became a fast movie fan as it was an escape from the everyday fast paced life he was in. He went to see as many movies as possible, and many of them 2 and 3 times over. Sam was hooked on movies and wanted in. Before long he went into business with Louis B. Mayer. In 1916 he partnered with Broadway producers Edgar and Archibald Selwyn, using a combination of both names to call their movie-making enterprise the Goldwyn Picture Corporation. Seeing an opportunity, Samuel Goldfish then had his name legally changed to Samuel Goldwyn. The Goldwyn Company proved moderately successful but it is their "Leo the Lion" trademark for which the organization is most famous. Eventually the company merged with Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company, adopting the "Leo the Lion" trademark but Samuel Goldfish was forced out by his partners and was never a part of the new studio that became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Goldwyn established Samuel Goldwyn Inc., eventually opening Samuel Goldwyn Studios on Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood. For 35 years, Goldwyn built a reputation for excellence in filmmaking and an eye for finding the talent for making films. Samuel Goldwyn passed away at his home in Los Angeles in 1974. He was buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale - click here to see his grave. In the 1980s, Samuel Goldwyn Studios was sold to Warner Brothers. There is a theater named for him in Beverly Hills and he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1631 Vine Street   There is a GREAT film called Goldwyn out that tells his story ... get it today!! Cool page full of quotes by Samuel!
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"I wanna make beautiful pictures about beautiful people!" Ahhh - the great Louis B. Mayer!! Enjoy the Oscars every year? You can thank Louis for that, the Hollywood innovater who hatched the idea for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Louis B. Mayer was born Ezemiel Mayer on July 4th, 1885 in Minsk, Byelorussia, Russian Empire (now Belarus). His parents immigrated to America when lil Louis was just three. His parents moved with him to Saint John, New Brunswick, where his father became a junk dealer and his wife sold chickens door to door. After graduating from elementary school, young Mayer joined his father's business, which had become a profitable scrap metal operation. Louis set up his own junk business in Boston, and in 1904, he married the daughter of a local kosher butcher. In 1907 Mayer bought a small rundown motion picture theater in Haverhill, Massachusetts. He renovated the auditorium and announced a policy of top-quality films only and within a few years he owned the largest theater chain in New England. In 1916 he moved to Los Angeles and formed his own producing company, which in 1924 after a series of mergers, and bringing the future name Samuel Goldwyn on-board, and merging with Marcus Loew, president and founder of the powerful Metro Pictures Corp.became known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

He lived in this posh style beach home in Belle Air, CA. As production chief of MGM from 1924 to 1951, he discovered many of the screen's greatest stars, producers, writers, and directors. Among those Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Elizabeth Taylor, Buster Keaton, Katharine Hepburn, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, William Powell, John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Myrna Loy, Ava Gardner and one of Mayer's personal discoveries, Greta Garbo. Mayer was often personally involved in the private lives of his employees, usually to make sure their public reputation matched the studio's image for wholesomeness and decency. With his production supervisor and vice-president, Irving Thalberg, he made MGM a powerful defining force in the motion picture industry of the 1930s and 1940s. His early successes include Ben Hur (1926) and Grand Hotel (1932). He received a Special Academy Award in 1950 for his contributions. He ruled his studios with an iron hand, and to his advantage. MGM set the standard all others tried to follow, influencing mass culture and world opinion. At one point, MGM cranked out major feature films every week, employing thousands of artists and technicians, making -- and breaking -- film stars upon Mayer's whims. He rose to the top, the studio guided by his philosophy of quantity and quality. When MGM executive and writer Paul Bern committed suicide, Mayer arrived on the scene before the police, and took Bern's suicide note. He feared the incident might reflect poorly on the studio, but he was eventually convinced to turn the note over to the police. When Mickey Rooney, star of the "Andy Hardy" series and a well-known womanizer and partygoer, started to get a little too much press, Mayer took him aside and gave him the Mayer version of a Judge Hardy lecture: "You're Andy Hardy! You're the United States! You're Stars and Stripes! You're a symbol! Behave yourself!" There are even reports that when one of MGM's biggest stars was driving drunk on Hollywood Boulevard and killed a pedestrian, Mayer arranged for a low-level studio employee to take the blame in exchange for a life-time job guarantee. Mayer ruled over MGM as a big family -- with Mayer as the paternalistic authority, rewarding loyalty and obedience, punishing insubordination, and regarding opposition as personal betrayal. In 1950, Mayer was given a special Academy Award, "for distinguished service to the motion picture industry."

He died in 1957 from leukemia in Los Angeles. May you R.I.P. Mr. Mayer! Your vision made Hollywood!!   Click to see his grave. There is a book written on him called "Merchant of Dreams" . At Mayer's funeral, Jeanette MacDonald sang, "Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life."

TRIVIA:
Mayer was a staunch conservative, he was active in politics and for several years was the California state chairman of the Republican party.

Sam Goldwyn said of his office: "You need an automobile to reach the desk."

Herman J. Mankiewicz once quipped: "He had the memory of an elephant and the hide of an elephant. The only difference is that elephants are vegetarians and Mayer's diet was his fellow man."

Bob Hope: "Louis B. Mayer came out west with twenty-eight dollars, a box camera and an old lion. He built a monument to himself---the Bank of America."

Mayer once said to a complaining writer, "The number one book of the ages was written by a committee, and it was called The Bible"