Thalberg was born in Brooklyn, in May 30, 1899. He was the older of two children and the only son of William and Henrietta (Heymann) Thalberg. His parents were of German-Alsatian Jewish origin. The father was a lace importer of moderate success and means, and young Thalberg was brought up in a comfortable middle-class neighborhood in Brooklyn.
He attended public schools. The boy was frail and often sickly. While in his senior year at Brooklyn Boys High School, he was confined to bed for several months with rheumatic fever, during which time he read a great deal. It was from this background of casual reading that his subsequent taste and instinct for "story values" in the making of motion picture dramas were presumably derived. With the care and encouragement of his continually ambitious mother, the boy recovered from his illness, but he did not return to school. Instead, he went to work as a clerk in an importing firm and studied shorthand, typing, and Spanish at night.
He took a clerical position in the New York offices of the Universal Pictures Corporation and soon was serving as secretary to the company's colorful and eccentric president, Carl Laemmle. On a trip to the company's California studios in 1919, Laemmle took his young secretary along and left him there as an observer and general liaison man. The form of the full-length screen drama was only a few years old, and Thalberg rapidly acquired a knowledge of how films were made. In the haphazard organization of Universal, the frail and earnest youth, who had not yet reached his majority, came to occupy a position where he was often acting as head of the studio, assigning actors and directors and giving orders on the making of films. Later he was made the official head of the studio.
In 1923 the young producer became associated with Louis B. Mayer, who then had his own producing company, and the following year he was allied with Mayer and J. Robert Rubin as the "Mayer group" engaged by Loew's, Inc. , to run its newly merged Metro and Goldwyn studios. As vice-president in charge of production of the subsequent Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, Thalberg displayed what was frequently called "genius" in bringing to the screen a wide variety of memorable films. It was due to his perception and judgment that The Big Parade (1925) was stepped up from a standard "program picture" to the classic screen spectacle of World War I. He brought together Greta Garbo and John Gilbert for one of the screen's most exciting acting teams, and he extended the multiple-star system to the point of casting Garbo, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, and the Barrymore brothers in Grand Hotel (1932). Thalberg's grasp of material ranged from the Tarzan tales to the sophistication of Ferenc Molnar's The Guardsman (1931), in which he presented Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. He was a stickler for "production, " meaning elegance and quality in settings and costumes, and an acknowledged master of revision, with an unerring eye for spotting dramatic flaws in films.
Thalberg's immense work program, plus a combination of contractual grievances and a personal sorrow over the suicide of a close associate, which accumulated in 1932, weakened him so that he fell ill of pneumonia in December of that year and was away from the studio for nine months, a part of which was spent abroad. Upon his return, it was agreed that he would give up full authority over all the company's films and attempt only a limited number of his own each year. These included such distinguished productions as The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Mutiny on the Bounty, the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera, Romeo and Juliet, and The Good Earth. Thalberg was again stricken with pneumonia on Labor Day 1936. This time his heart, never strong since the rheumatic fever of his youth, failed rapidly, and he died a few days later at his Santa Monica home, at the age of thirty-seven.
Thalberg was the shining example of the motion picture production executive in the years that saw the maturing of the medium and the transition from silence to sound. The year following his death the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences established the special Irving G. Thalberg Award, to be awarded annually for exceptional achievement in the production of films.
Quotations:
"Credit you give yourself is not worth having. "
"If it isn’t for the writing, we’ve got nothing. Writers are the most important people in Hollywood. And we must never let them know it. "
"Compliments you pay to yourself aren't worth having. "
"Screen credit is valuable only when it's given you. If you're in a position to give yourself credit, you don't need it. "
"No story ever looks as bad as the story you've just bought; no story ever looks as good as the story the other fellow just bought. "
Unlike the storied Hollywood producer, he was modest in demeanor, somewhat reserved, and vastly considerate of the talents and opinions of his subordinates, in whom he inspired uncommon loyalty and affection.
Thalberg was married on September 29, 1927, to Norma Shearer, one of the top stars of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with whom he worked in a close and sincerely creative collaboration, being the mentor of all her films during his lifetime. They had two children, Irving and Katharine.
