studio executive film producer
At the age of 12, Mayer quit school to help his father run the family scrap metal business. When he was 19, he moved to Boston, expanding the father-son scrap enterprise into the United States.
His family immigrated to Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada when he was very young and Mayer attended school there. In his late teens, Mayer decided to move to Boston, to pursue more career options.
On November 28, 1907 in Haverhill, Massachusetts, Mayer opened his first movie theatre. Within a few years he had the largest theatre chain in New England and in 1916 Mayer partnered with Richard A. Rowland to create Metro Pictures Corporation based in New York City. By late 1918, Mayer had set up a Hollywood facility.
Soon afterwards, Mayer left the partnership to start his own production company, Louis B. Mayer Pictures, and later became a partner with B.P. Schulberg in the Mayer-Schulberg Studio. In 1924, Marcus Loew bought Louis B. Mayer Pictures and as part of the deal made Mayer head of the new Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Corporation. He built MGM into the most financially successful motion picture studio in the world. In 1936, Mayer replaced Irving Thalberg to become head of production as well as studio chief Mayer became the first executive in America to earn a million-dollar salary. He was the most famous of the studio moguls of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
By 1948, due to the introduction of television and changing public tastes, MGM suffered considerably. Much conflict arose between Mayer and Nicholas Schenck, president of MGM’s parent, Loews, Incorporated Mayer decided to hire writer and producer Dore Schary as production chief Nevertheless, a lot of conflict arose between the two men; Schary preferred message pictures in contrast with Mayer’s preference for wholesome films. Three years later, Schenck fired Mayer from the job he had held for 24 years.
Active in Republican Party politics, Mayer served as the vice chairman of the California Republican Party from 1931 to 1932, and as its state chairman between 1932 and 1933.
As a delegate to the 1928 Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Louis B. Mayer supported Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover of California. Mayer became friends with Joseph R. Knowland, Marshall Hale, and James Rolph, Jr. Joseph Schenck was an alternate delegate at the convention. L.B. was a delegate to the 1932 Republican National Convention with fellow California Republicans Joseph R. Knowland, James Rolph, Jr. and Earl Warren. Mayer endorsed the second term of President Herbert Hoover.
He believed in wholesome entertainment and went to great lengths so that MGM had "more stars than there are in the heavens".
Mayer owned or bred a number of successful thoroughbred racehorses at his 504-acre (2.0 km2) ranch in Perris, California, 72 miles (116 km) 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."
Soon after he arrived in Boston, Louis B. Mayer met and married a butcher's daughter, Margaret Shenberg. The couple had two daughters, Edith Mayer (1905-1987) and Irene Mayer (1907-1990), who would both go on to marry movie executives.
Alice Beatrice Roberts (March 7, 1905 – July 24, 1970) was an American film actress. She was briefly married to the cartoonist and showman Robert L. Ripley and a mistress of Louis B. Mayer.
