Louis B. Mayer

American film executive

• Born: July 12, 1884
• Birthplace: Dymer, Russian Empire (now Dumier, Ukraine)
• Died: October 29, 1957
• Place of death: Los Angeles, California

Mayer founded the influential Mayer Studios, which expanded into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, or MGM. The company went on to produce some of the most well known films, especially musicals and family films, in its early years, and expanded after World War II to include patriotic films and film noir. So significant was Mayer to MGM’s success that after he left the company in 1951, the studio nearly collapsed from a lack of money.

Early Life

Louis B. Mayer (MAY-ur) was born Eliezer Meir in Dymer in the Russian Empire (now Dumier, Ukraine). His parents, Jacob and Sarah Meir, fled Russian pogroms and settled in were chosen in 1886, and then moved to Saint John, New Brunswick, in 1892. Mayer worked in his father’s scrap-metal business while attending Saint Johns High School. After graduation in 1902, Mayer traveled to the United States, where he worked in a dry-goods store, then at a scrap-metal business. In 1904 he met and married Margaret Schenberg, daughter of a local butcher, and they had two daughters, Edith (b. 1905) and Irene (b. 1907). The Mayers divorced in 1947, and Louis married Lorena Danker in 1948.

Mayer first supported his growing family by selling cotton waste and junk in Brooklyn, New York. In 1907, he purchased a rundown burlesque house in Haverhill, Massachusetts. After an extensive renovation, he opened the Orpheum Theater as a movie house. For ten cents, patrons could see short films and vaudeville acts along with live music acts. The Orpheum’s success encouraged Mayer to renovate and open the Colonial Theater in 1911. Patrons filled the lavishly decorated theater’s fifteen hundred seats to see full-length films and shorts along with live acts and a full orchestra. Mayer also attracted operas and Broadway shows to the theater. By the late 1910’s, Mayer owned portions of close to fifty theaters in the New England area. He became a U.S. citizen in 1912.

Life’s Work

In 1914, Mayer founded Metro Pictures, a film distribution company. The company’s first film was The Squaw Man, directed by a young Cecil B. DeMille . Within seven days of Metro’s formation, Mayer gained local distribution rights to the decade’s blockbuster, D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). This one film brought a half-million dollars to the new company.

Mayer then organized a studio to produce his own films. His first production was The Great Secret (1916), starring Francis X. Bushman. The film did poorly but, undeterred, Mayer signed additional actors, writers, directors, and producers to long-term contracts. At the time, entertainment industry people signed contracts to work exclusively for one studio. Studios had complete control over film choices, salaries, publicity, and outside appearances. These contracts also gave studios time to develop the talents and careers of potential stars.

In 1918, Mayer purchased the forty-acre, financially strapped William Selig Studios and moved his company to California. At a time when most filming was done outdoors, California’s ample sunshine, diverse terrain, and availability of inexpensive land for construction was perfect for filmmaking. Over the next few years, other filmmakers followed, as the film industry moved west.

Mayer’s first California projects, Virtuous Wives (1918) and In Old Kentucky (1919), began decades of successful filmmaking. Throughout the 1920’s, Mayer’s studio, now called Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), continued to grow and thrive commercially with stars such as John Gilbert, Greta Garbo, Lon Chaney, and the Barrymores: John, Lionel, and Ethel. The studio’s films included Ben Hur (1925) and The Big Parade (1925), the second most profitable film of the decade. By 1925-1926, MGM was the most successful studio in the United States.

The phenomenal success of the Warner Bros. sound film The Jazz Singer (1927) caused upheaval throughout the motion-picture industry. After determining that “talkies” were not a passing fad, Mayer was forced to invest heavily in sound stages and equipment as well as the people to operate them. The careers of some of Mayer’s most popular stars ended when film audiences heard their voices for the first time. Audiences would jeer male actors who had high-pitched voices, mock dainty femme fatales with Brooklyn accents, and fail to understand foreign-born performers with heavy accents.

Theater attendance increased considerably during the Great Depression. Filmgoers of the 1930’s wanted escapism, and MGM gave them just what they needed. Mayer had a knack for determining what films would reflect the tastes and views of the filmgoing public. MGM stars of the 1930’s included Marie Dressler, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery, James Stewart, and Joan Crawford. MGM produced the most popular films of the decade, including Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), A Night at the Opera (1935), The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Captains Courageous (1937), Boys Town (1938), The Wizard of Oz (1939), and Gone with the Wind (1939).

Mayer preferred to produce family films. Child stars Jackie Cooper, Freddie Bartholomew, and MGM powerhouse Mickey Rooney helped keep MGM in the number one position. The studio began its run with musicals with The Broadway Melody (1929), and its popularity spurred decades of industry-leading films of that genre. The quality and sophistication of these musicals set the standard for such films and contributed to Mayer’s continued reign over Hollywood.

MGM studios remained in the number one spot throughout the 1930’s. By 1937, Mayer was the most highly paid executive in the United States, earning a yearly salary of more than one million dollars. During the Depression, MGM annually produced fifty to sixty feature films, seventy shorts, and eighteen cartoons. The MGM lot encompassed 176 acres and included carpenters, electricians, a school, administrative buildings, back lots, sound stages, writers, producers, directors, musicians, choreographers, a physician, a zoo, and a security force that oversaw a small-town-like population of six thousand people.

In addition to producing, Mayer worked with lawyers, actors, agents, foreign governments, newly formed unions, and censors. He also dealt with the personal addictions and tragedies of his employees and faced a prolonged federal antitrust lawsuit. Mayer surrounded himself with professionals he could depend on to oversee production while he negotiated with parent offices, theater owners, contracts, newspapers, personal egos, and, on occasion, local law enforcement when performers got into trouble. To avoid damaging their careers, Mayer urged employees to avoid scandalous behavior, but he was sometimes ignored. Some regarded his attitude overly intrusive, resented his encroachment into their personal lives, and even rebelled. Employees described Mayer as not only a kind and gentle father figure but also a tyrannical ogre.

During World War II, MGM lost some of its most popular stars while they served in the military. In addition, a number of foreign countries refused to show American films; MGM, though, continued to thrive. The studio energized home-front patriotism with films such as Mrs. Miniver (1943), White Cliffs of Dover (1941), Bataan (1943), and Since You Went Away (1944), and it entertained audiences with stars such as Judy Garland, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Cary Grant, and June Allyson.

The postwar era presented new problems. Audiences matured during the war, and public tastes had changed. Filmgoers now wanted darker, more violent film noir as well as films with more serious themes. Films began to deal with issues that Mayer was reluctant to depict, including racism, political corruption, labor unrest, alcoholism, poverty, rape, anti-Semitism, and crime. Some film stars came home from war service to find audiences were no longer interested in their screen characters. Films cost more to make and fewer actors were willing to sign exclusive seven-year contracts, preferring to sign independently to particular projects. The many strikes that occurred throughout the country also affected the film industry, sometimes completely shutting down production.

The House Committee on Un-American Activities , led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, targeted Hollywood writers, producers, and actors and accused them of being Communist sympathizers and members of the Communist Party. Two of Mayer’s most popular writers, Dalton Trumbo and Lester Cole, were blacklisted and were part of the so-called Hollywood Ten. On October 20, 1947, Mayer successfully defended the studio’s hiring of blacklisted writers and of producing The Song of Russia(1943), which depicts America’s World War II ally in a favorable light.

On May 3, 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a long-standing antitrust lawsuit. Theater owners who wanted more control over what films they could show had filed suit against film studios. Studios were accused of price fixing and forcing theater owners into block-booking films, in which they had to purchase a year’s worth of films, sight unseen. The Court ruled that the major studios had to divest themselves of their theater chains.

Film audiences fell markedly with the advent of television. Profits fell drastically, and by the late 1940’s, MGM fell to fourth place among all studios in the amount of money they made. In 1948, Dore Schary was made vice president in charge of production and Mayer began to slowly lose control over the kind of pictures the studio made. MGM produced more controversial, gritty, violent pictures while still holding on to its title as king of musicals. After an increasing number of arguments with Schary and after losing more control over production, Mayer resigned in the spring of 1951.

After resigning, Mayer negotiated for the possible purchase or control of RKO, Warner Bros., and Republic Pictures, but negotiations fell through. He invested in and promoted the new wide-screen technology known as Cinerama. Within a few years of Mayer’s leaving MGM, profits dropped considerably and the studio neared bankruptcy. Mayer died of leukemia on October 29, 1957.

Significance

Mayer had a knack for determining what films would reflect the tastes and views of the filmgoing public. In the 1930’s, during the Depression, audiences wanted to escape from daily life when they went to theater, and escape is what he provided. Musicals soon followed as a popular genre, and Mayer caught on to this as well, so much so that MGM was noted for its musicals.

Mayer virtually ruled over his small town called MGM. He liked to consider his expanding studio as a family as well as a business. From humble beginnings, Mayer built a film empire from that small town. Without him at the helm, the studios nearly folded.

Bibliography

Eyman, Scott. Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005. Focuses primarily on Mayer’s amazing business finesse and showmanship.

Higham, Charles. Merchant of Dreams: Louis B. Mayer, MGM, and the Secret Hollywood. New York: Donald I. Fine, 1994. Utilizes interviews with family, friends, coworkers, and rivals to personalize Mayer.

Selznick, Irene Mayer. A Private View. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983. Written by Mayer’s daughter, this book provides an inside look into her father’s private and public lives.