Louis B. Mayer

[mahy-er or, Ger., mahy-uhr for 1; mey-er for 2; mahy-er for 3]

Louis Burt Mayer (born Lazar Meir July 4, 1884 – October 29, 1957) was an early film producer, most famous for his stewardship and co-founding of the Hollywood film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

He is generally cited as the creator of the "star system" within Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in its golden years. Known always as Louis B. Mayer and often simply as "L.B.", he believed in "wholesome entertainment" and went to great lengths so that MGM had "more stars than there are in the heavens".

Early life

Born to a Jewish family in Minsk, today a capital of Belarus, then in the Russian Empire, a capital of the Minsk Province (Minskaja Guberniya). Mayer emigrated with his family to Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada when he was still very young, and Mayer attended school there. His father started a scrap metal business, J. Mayer & Son. His parents, Sarah and Jacob Mayer, had five children: Yetta, Ida, Louis, Jerry and Rudolph.

Early career

Mayer renovated the "Gem Theater", a rundown, 600 seat burlesque house in Haverhill, Massachusetts, which he reopened on November 28, 1907 as the "Orpheum", his first movie theater. To overcome the unfavorable reputation that the building once had in the community, Mayer decided to debut with the showing of a religious film. Years later, Mayer would say that the premiere at the Orpheum was From the Manger to the Cross, although most sources place the release date of that film as 1912. Within a few years, he owned all five of Haverhill's theaters, and, with Nat Gordon, created the Gordon-Mayer partnership that controlled the largest theater chain in New England.

In 1914, the partners organized their own film distribution agency in Boston. Mayer paid D.W. Griffith $25,000 for the exclusive rights to show The Birth of a Nation (1915) in New England. Although Mayer made the bid on a film that one of his scouts had seen, but he had not, his decision netted him over $100,000. Mayer partnered with Richard A. Rowland in 1916 to create Metro Pictures Corporation, a talent booking agency, in New York City.

Two years later, Mayer moved to Los Angeles and formed his own production company, Louis B. Mayer Pictures Corporation. The first production was 1918's Virtuous Wives. A partnership was set up with B. P. Schulberg to make the Mayer-Schulberg Studio. Mayer's big breakthrough, however, was in April 1924 when Marcus Loew, owner of the Loews Theatres chain, merged Metro Pictures, Samuel Goldwyn's Goldwyn Pictures Corporation, and Mayer Pictures into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer under the supervision of Nicholas Schenck in New York City. As "Vice-President in Charge of Production" based in Los Angeles, Mayer effectively controlled MGM for the next 27 years.

In 1927, Loew died, leaving control of MGM to Schenck. In 1929, the head of rival studio Fox Film Corporation, William Fox, arranged to buy controlling interest from Schenck. Mayer and Thalberg were outraged -- they were in charge of MGM but had no say in the deal -- and this only served to worsen an already tense relationship between Schenck and Mayer (reportedly, Mayer called Schenck "Mr. Skunk" in private). Mayer went to the Justice Department and, through his political connections, got the department to file antitrust charges against Fox. The fact that Fox was seriously injured in the summer of 1929 in a car accident -- and the stock market crash took place in the fall of 1929 -- meant the Loews-Fox deal was doomed, even if the Justice Department had given its blessing. Nonetheless, Schenck blamed Mayer for the deal's collapse and never forgave him.

MGM boss

As a studio boss, Louis B. Mayer built MGM into the most financially successful motion picture studio in the world and the only one to pay dividends throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s. However he frequently clashed with production chief Irving Thalberg, who preferred literary works over the crowd-pleasers Mayer wanted. He ousted Thalberg as production chief in 1932 while Thalberg was recovering from a heart attack and replaced him with independent producers until Thalberg's death in 1936, when Mayer became head of production as well as studio chief. Under Mayer, MGM produced many successful films with high earning stars including Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Lon Chaney, Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow, Judy Garland and many others.

Although Mayer had a reputation for ruthless expediency and allegedly narrow views about what subjects were suitable topics for motion pictures, Katharine Hepburn referred to him as a "nice man" (and claimed she personally negotiated many of her contracts with Mayer), while young actresses such as Debbie Reynolds, June Allyson, and Leslie Caron who matured as MGM contract players viewed him as a father figure.

Later years and fall from power

By 1948, due to the introduction of television and changing public tastes, MGM suffered a considerable dropoff in its success. The glory days of MGM as well as other studios were also over because of United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. (1948), a Supreme Court decision that severed the connection between film studios and the movie theater chains that showed their films. In 1947, the HUAC hearings -- and later Sen. Joseph McCarthy -- accused some Hollywood stars, writers, and directors of being communists.

The MGM corporate office in New York decided that Dore Schary, a writer and producer recently hired from RKO Radio Pictures, might be able to turn the tide. In 1951, MGM had gone three years without a major Academy Award, which provoked further conflict between Mayer and Schenck. Under orders to control costs and hire "a new Thalberg," Mayer hired writer and producer Schary as production chief. Schary, who was 20 years Mayer's junior, preferred message pictures in contrast with Mayer's taste for "wholesome" films.

In 1951, Schenck fired Mayer from the post he'd held for 27 years. The firing reportedly came after Mayer called New York and issued an ultimatum--"It's either him, or me." Mayer tried to stage a boardroom coup but failed and largely retired from public life.

Personal life

Mayer had two daughters from his first marriage to Margaret Shenberg. The eldest, Edith (Edie) Mayer (b. August 14, 1905 - d.1987), from whom he would later become estranged and disinherit, married producer William Goetz (who became president of Universal Pictures). The younger daughter, Irene Gladys Mayer (1907-1990), married producer David O. Selznick. Irene Mayer Selznick wrote in her autobiography A Private View (1983), about having to wait to marry her betrothed, David Selznick, until Edie, the older sister, was married, in accordance with her family's views on propriety. Irene, David, and L. B. Mayer had a fight about the date of Irene and David's wedding being too close after Edie's. Selznick protested, saying he had waited long enough while Edie was courted and planned her wedding, and that his schedule at Paramount Pictures, for whom he then worked, decreed he must get married when he and Irene wished, regardless of LB's protestations.

Active in Republican Party politics, Mayer served as the vice chairman of the Republican Party of California from 1931 to 1932 and as its state chairman between 1932 and 1933. He and Thalberg played a role in attacking reformist Upton Sinclair's EPIC Movement in the 1934 California gubernatorial bid, in an early use of modern-day public relations and propaganda strategy, complete with specially-made short films disguised as newsreels, attacking Sinclair.

Thoroughbred horse racing

Mayer owned or bred a number of successful thoroughbred racehorses at his ranch in Perris, California, east of Los Angeles.

In the 2005 biography, Lion of Hollywood, author Scott Eyman wrote that: "Mayer built one of the finest racing stables in the United States" and that he "almost single-handedly raised the standards of the California racing business to a point where the Eastern thoroughbred establishment had to pay attention." Among his horses was Your Host, sire of Kelso, the 1945 U.S. Horse of the Year, Busher, and the 1959 Preakness Stakes winner, Royal Orbit. Eventually Mayer sold off the stable, partly to finance his divorce in 1947. His 248 horses brought more than $4.4 million.

In 1976, Thoroughbred of California magazine named him "California Breeder of the Century".

Controversies

Patricia Douglas Rape Coverup

A 1937 stag party put on by Mayer for MGM salesmen resulted in the rape of at least two of the 127 women procured as entertainers for the event. The documentary film Girl 27 (2007), directed by David Stenn and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2007, about one of those women, Patricia Douglas, revealed that Mayer was involved with covering up the rape allegations by bribing witnesses, Douglas' attorney, and even Douglas' own mother to help keep the rape silent. Douglas' lawsuit against Mayer and others was one of the first rape charges filed in federal court.

Ted Healy's Death

One version of the death of Ted Healy in December 1937 is that he was beaten to death outside the Trocadero nightclub by screen legend Wallace Beery, a young Albert R. Broccoli (later producer of James Bond films), and notorious gangster (and Broccoli's cousin) Pat DiCicco. This account emerges in a book about MGM's legendary "fixers," Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling, in The Fixers: Eddie Mannix, Howard Strickling, and the MGM Publicity Machine (2004) by E. J. Fleming. MGM, supposedly under orders from Mayer, sent Beery, one of their most valuable properties, off to Europe for several months until everything cooled down, while a story about "drunk college boys" beating up Healy was fabricated to conceal the truth. (Immigration records confirm a four-month trip to Europe on Beery's part immediately after Healy's death, ending April 17, 1938.)

William Haines Arrest and Dismissal

In 1933, MGM star William Haines was arrested in a YMCA with a sailor he had picked up in Los Angeles' Pershing Square. Mayer delivered an ultimatum to Haines -- choose between a sham marriage or lavender marriage and to end his relationship with Haines' partner Jimmy Shields. Haines chose Shields and were ultimately together for 50 years. Mayer subsequently fired Haines and terminated his contract, quickly recasting Robert Montgomery in roles that had been planned for Haines. Haines made his final films, Young and Beautiful and The Marines Are Coming (both 1934) at Poverty Row studio Mascot Pictures, then retired to found a prosperous interior decorating business. (See William J. Mann's 1998 biography Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines.)

Death of Paul Bern

In 1990, Samuel Marx and Joyce Vanderveen wrote Deadly Illusions, published by Random House. Marx was a story editor at MGM and a friend of both Irving Thalberg and Paul Bern, husband of MGM star Jean Harlow, at the time of Bern's death. On September 5, 1932, Marx had gone to Bern's house -- before the police were informed of the discovery of Bern's body -- and saw Thalberg tampering with the evidence. The next day, Marx was among the studio executives who were told by Louis B. Mayer what the headlines would be to avoid scandal -- "Suicide Because of Impotence!"

In the 1980s, Marx investigated the case, and for the first time scrutinized the remaining available evidence. Marx concluded that Bern was murdered by his former common law wife, Dorothy Millette, who then committed suicide. Two days after Bern's death she jumped from the ferryboat Delta King, traveling from San Francisco to Sacramento. Her body was found a few days later by men fishing on the Sacramento River. Millette's shoes and jacket were found on the boat -- she had taken them off before jumping into the water. The "suicide note" had in fact been written by Bern, but some weeks prior to his death, to apologize for a minor quarrel with Harlow about the secluded location of their home -- Harlow wanted to live in a livelier place. Bern had bought a bunch of roses and presented them to Jean with the note that became a "suicide note" in the eyes of Los Angeles district attorney Buron Fitts who was bribed by MGM to keep the lid on the case.

Death and legacy

Louis B. Mayer died of kidney failure on October 29, 1957 and was interred in the Home of Peace Memorial Park in East Los Angeles, California. His last words (reportedly) were, "Nothing matters."

His sister, Ida Mayer Cummings, and brothers, Jerry and Rudolph are also interred at the Home of Peace Cemetery. His mother Sarah and father are buried in the Shaarei Zedek Cemetery in Saint John, New Brunswick, in the small Jewish section of the Fernhill Cemetery on Westmorland Road.

Cultural references

Son-in-law David O. Selznick refused any financial help from Mayer, and instead chose to establish an independent film production studio, after working for both Paramount Pictures and RKO Radio Pictures. Gone with the Wind, David O. Selznick's largest-scale picture, was released in 1939. Ironically, Gone with the Wind was eventually bought by MGM and now is one of several thousand films in the MGM library - which at the present is divided between MGM itself (1986-present) and Warner Bros. (which owns the pre-1986 films).

Mayer has been portrayed numerous times in film and television including:

Mommie Dearest (by Howard Da Silva)
RKO 281 (by David Suchet)
De-Lovely (by Peter Polycarpou)
The Aviator (by Stanley DeSantis)
The Last Tycoon (by Robert Mitchum)
Barton Fink (by Michael Lerner as Jack Lipnick)
Hollywoodland
The Holiday
Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows (by Al Waxman)
Cats Don't Dance (by George Kennedy as the voice of L.B. Mammoth)
Harlow (by Jack Kruschen)
Gable and Lombard (by Allen Garfield)

Mayer has a star on Canada's Walk of Fame

In Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead there is a satirical depicition of a fictional film company named "Cosmo-Slotnik", whose director "Mr. Slotnik" is mentioned as being forty-three in 1927 - Louis B. Mayer's age on that year. In Kim Newman and Eugene Byrd's alternate history novel Back in the USSA, Meyer is the Secretary of State under President Al Capone, as an apparent analogue of Vyacheslav Molotov.