Mayer Louis B. - Lion of Hollywood: the Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer

The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer
SCOTT EYMAN

Simon & Schuster
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The Life and Legend
LION OF HOLLYWOOD
of Louis B. Mayer

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Copyright 2005 by Scott Eyman

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Eyman, Scott, date.

Lion of Hollywood : the life and legend of Louis B. Mayer /
Scott Eyman.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Mayer, Louis B. (Louis Burt), 1885-1957.

2. Motion picture producers and directorsUnited StatesBiography.

I. Title.

PN1998.3.M397E94 2005

791.430232092dc22

[B] 2005042472

eISBN 13: 978-1-4391-0791-1

ISBN 13: 978-0-7432-0481-1

All photographs not otherwise credited are from the authors collection.

Excerpts from the memos of David O. Selznick through the courtesy
of Selznick Properties Ltd.

For Chuck Adams

World of Our Fathers, Irving Howe It was something of a miracle and something of a joke. They had come from the Ukraine and Poland and Austria-Hungary but it was they, more than anyone else, who reached the fantasies of America, indeed of the entire worlda universalism of taste which shaped the century and which they could shrewdly exploit because they innocently shared it.

George Cukor When people think about the studio system they should realize it was not a prison; it was not full of buttonhole makers, people who didnt know anything, who were crass, who crushed artists into the ground. That was not the case. Louis B. Mayer knew that the coin he dealt in was talent. He would husband it and be very patient with it and put up with an awful lot of nonsense if he really believed in it. Of course, he was tough, and he could be ruthless and very disagreeable but he and Thalberg built up this extraordinary concentration of talent which was MGM, and when Mayer left the whole studio began going to pot. I think people dont understand how a place like MGM had to be fed, sustained and organized every day.

IN THE SUMMER of 1944, when he looked out his window on the third floor of the Thalberg Building, Louis B. Mayer saw a studiohis studiothat covered 167 acres. Lot 1 encompassed seventy-two acres, housed all the thirty sound-stages, office buildings, and dressing rooms, the seven warehouses crammed with furniture, props, and draperies. Lot 2 consisted of thirty-seven acres of permanent exterior sets, including the town of Carvel, home of the Hardy family, and the great Victorian street from Meet Me in St. Louis. Here was the house where David Copperfield lived, there the street where Marie Antoinette rolled to the guillotine.

Lots 3, 4, and 5 were used for outdoor settingsthe jungle and rivers that provided the backdrop for Tarzan, much of Trader Horn, the zoo that provided the animals, including the lion that heralded each and every Metro-Goldwyn Mayer film. Connecting everything was thirteen miles of paved road.

In periods of peak production, which was most of the time, the studio had six thousand employees and three entrances to accommodate themthe gate between Corinthian columns on Washington Boulevard; another one farther down Ince Way; and a crew gate on Culver Boulevard, where the workers punched time clocks.

MGM owned forty cameras and sixty sound machines. Thirty-three actors were officially designated stars, seventy-two actors were considered featured players, and twenty-six directors were under contract. Anywhere from sixteen to eighteen pictures were being shot at one time, remembered actress Ann Rutherford. They were either shooting or preparing to shoot on every sound-stage. You could stick your nose into any rehearsal hall or soundstage, and it was just teeming with life.

The studio had its own dentist, its own chiropractor, its own foundry. It made its own paint, its own rubber molds. There were shops where old cars could be fabricated and assembled; electric, glass, and plastic shops. If a prop could not be found in the vast warehouse, it could be made overnight, or pur-chased; the studio spent $1 million a year buying props.

About 2,700 people ate in the commissary every day, while the research department answered about five hundred questions daily. The studios laboratory printed 150 million feet of release prints every year. Power was supplied by an in-house electrical plant, which was of sufficient size to light a town of 25,000.

MGM maintained a police force of fifty officers, with four captains, two plainclothesmen, an inspector, and a chiefa force larger than that of Culver City itself. Each member of the MGM police was trained to recognize all contract players and to salute each star.

The MGM police had a slightly different mandate than most police forces. Part of their job was protecting the studios assets from the public, but they also had to protect those assets from themselves. No matter what an MGM actor did, police chief Whitey Hendry had to beat the local police to the scene, where publicity chief Howard Strickling would make arrangements to keep the story out of the papers. To do this, the studio had paid informants in every local police department.

Twenty years earlier, when Mayer had moved onto what was then the Goldwyn lot, the studio had consisted of forty acres, five stages, six cameras, six stars, a half-dozen directors, and six hundred employees. In the intervening years, Louis B. Mayer and his lieutenants built a company that was regarded by the public and his peers alike as the pinnacle of the industry.

It was the studio in this town, said screenwriter Bernard Gordon. When I came out here in 1939, I drove by MGM and I thought to myself, By God, thats Hollywood. No other studio compared, and Mayer was the boss. Metro Goldwyn-Mayer. Mayer!

Each studio had its own specific ambience, and MGMs was a luxury that was a synonym for quality. The songwriter Harry Warren used to have a stock story about the difference between Metro and the competition: At Warner Brothers, you come in the gate at seven in the morning. The guards on the walls keep their guns aimed at you. At 7:05, Hal Wallis calls out, Have you written that song yet?

At Metro, the birds sing. The grass is green. Everybody smokes a pipe and has the Book-of-the-Month under his arm. Nobody works at Metro. You watch the flowers grow.