Background

Louis Burt Mayer, original name Eliezer Mayer, or Lazar Mayer, was born on July 12, 1884 in Minsk, at that time Minsk Governorate, Russian Empire (today’s Belarus) into a Jewish family. His parents were Jacob Meir and Sarah Meltzer. The future mogul was the middle child of five siblings, with two sisters Yetta, Ida, and two brothers Rubin and Jeremiah (born in the USA). The family moved to Rhode Island in 1887 and lived there till 1892.

Education

In 1892, the family moved to Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, where Mayer also attended school which he did not like. At the age of 12, he left school to help his father in his scrap metal business. Lazar’s family was poor, and Mayer's father spoke little English and had no valuable skills. With his family speaking mostly Yiddish at home, his goal of self-education when he quit school was made more difficult. He taught himself grammar, manners, etc.

Career

The son of immigrant parents, Mayer worked in his father’s ship-salvaging and scrap-iron business from the age of 14. He roamed the streets with a cart that said "Junk Dealer", and collected any scrap metal he came across. When the owner of a tin business, John Wilson, saw him with his cart, he began giving him copper trimmings which were of no use, and Mayer considered Wilson to be his first partner and his best friend. When he was 19, Mayer moved to Boston, expanding the father-son scrap enterprise into the United States.

It wasn't long before Mayer grew tired of the family business and began to look for a less gritty line of work. Luckily, a friend in the know tipped him off to a burlesque theater for sale in Haverhill, Massachusetts, a joint known derisively as the "Garlic Box." It was a rundown theater with a bad reputation, but the enterprising young Mayer smartly chose to premiere a religious film at the establishment's opening, immediately currying favor with community skeptics.

The budding businessman soon got a taste for success and began to acquire more and more old theaters in the area, rebuilding their reputations and facades in equal measure. After taking over all five of Haverhill's theaters, he partnered with Nathan Gordon to gain control of a large theater chain in New England.

In 1914, Mayer made his first foray into film distribution when he bought exclusive rights to the landmark picture ‘The Birth of a Nation’ with the money he earned pawning his wife's wedding ring. He would also start a distribution agency in Boston and a talent-booking agency in New York. However, the siren song of Hollywood couldn't be ignored for long; in 1918, Mayer moved to Los Angeles to form Louis B. Mayer Pictures Corporation.

By then the producer had gained a reputation for his hunger, audacity and ability to spot talent. Far from a hands-off studio honcho, Mayer cultivated a specialty for acquiring talent and roaming the back lots looking for his next glamorous lead. Under Mayer’s influence, MGM productions seldom dealt with controversial subject matter. They were characterized, rather, by elaborate sets, gorgeous costuming, and pretty girls. The emphasis was on the glamorous stars, many of whom, such as Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Rudolph Valentino, and Clark Gable, were Mayer discoveries.

The producer's watershed moment would come when Marcus Loew came knocking on his door. Recently having merged his company with Samuel Goldwyn's studios to give birth to Metro-Goldwyn, Loew found himself without a head executive for the company. Soon Metro-Goldwyn became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the iconic MGM Studios was born. Over the next 25 years, Mayer built the studio's reputation on a string of glamorous and mostly uncontroversial films. Some of the biggest hits of Mayer's era were ‘Ben-Hur’ (1925), ‘Grand Hotel’ (1932), ‘Dinner at Eight’ (1933) and ‘The Good Earth’ (1937).

At its height MGM, was Hollywood's kingmaker (and queenmaker), churning out more films and stars than any other studio. The MGM lot itself was legendary—over 150 acres and as self-sufficient as a town, complete with its own opium den, barbershop and 24-hour dining establishment. Also housed on the property was none other than the iconic MGM lion, whose digs amounted to an onsite zoo.

MGM was the most successful studio in Hollywood, even managing to stay profitable through the Great Depression. For almost a decade Mayer held the rank of highest paid man in America, a far cry from his days diving in the Bay of Fundy for scrap metal.

By 1948, the heyday of the Hollywood studio era had begun to fade. MGM had gone years without an Oscar and relations between Mayer and other executives began to fray as profit margins thinned. In 1951, Mayer left MGM after 27 years at the helm. Six years later, on October 29, 1957, the legendary producer and executive died of leukemia.

Achievements

• 

  As the Head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Louis B. Mayer was one of the most influential and powerful men in Hollywood during the '30s and '40s. The studio was recognized as one of the grandest Hollywood studios, and claimed to have "more stars than there are in the heavens." He was also among the founders of Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
  
  Though not universally loved, Mayer set the tone of the studio. He was respected for being able to understand the public's wants, and his knack for picking personnel and stars. He hired only the best of the best, including the great Irving Thalberg. Mayer was one of the country's most successful horse breeders, a political force and Hollywood's leading spokesman.
  
  At the peak of his career, Mayer was the highest paid person in the United States, making well over a million dollars a year. It was Mayer who formed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the source of the Oscars) in 1927.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Hollywood on Trial [VHS]
  • Ben Hur (1926): Ramon Novarro, Betty Bronson, May Mc Avoy, Francis X Bushman: Amazon Digital Services LLC 1925
  • Grand Hotel (1932): Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery: Amazon Digital Services LLC 1932
  • The Good Earth: Paul Muni, Luise Rainer, Walter Connolly, Tilly Losch: Amazon Digital Services LLC
  • Gone with the Wind (1939): Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland: Amazon Digital Services LLC 1939
  • The Wizard of Oz: Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Frank Morgan, Bert Lahr: Amazon Digital Services LLC 1939

Politics

Mayer served as the vice chairman of the California Republican Party in 1931 and 1932, and as its state chairman in 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.

Views

Mayer tried to express an idealized vision of men, women, and families in the real world they lived in. He also believed in beauty, glamour, and the "star system." In MGM films, "marriage was sacrosanct and mothers were objects of veneration." Mayer cherished the Puritan values of family and hard work. When he hired writers, he made those objectives clear at the outset, once telling screenwriter Frances Marion that he never wanted his own daughters or his wife to be embarrassed when watching an MGM movie. "I worship good women, honorable men, and saintly mothers", he told her. Mayer was serious about that, once coming from behind his desk and knocking director Erich von Stroheim to the floor when he said that all women were whores. Mayer knew that formula in his themes and stories usually works. He felt that the general public, especially Americans, like to see stars, spectacle, and optimism on screen, and if possible, with a little sentiment attached. They don't like to be challenged or instructed, but comforted and entertained.

Therefore, having messages was less important to Mayer than giving his audience pure entertainment and escapism. In his screen dramas, he wanted them to be melodramatic, whereas in comedies, he often laced them with a strong doses of sentimentality. Musicals were high on his list of preferred genres.

Quotations: Mayer once told Robert Young, "Put on a little weight and get more sex, we have a whole stable of girls here."

One of Hollywood's first true moguls, there is no denying his influence on the early years of the film industry's boom, but as Mayer himself once said: "The sign of a clever auteur is to achieve the illusion that there is a sole individual responsible for magnificent creations that require thousands of people to accomplish."

"I am going to make pictures you can take your mother and your children to see. I am not going to make pictures for the sake of awards or for the critics. I want to make pictures for Americans and for all people to enjoy. When I send my pictures abroad, I want them to show America in the right light—and not that we are a nation chiefly of drunks, gangsters and prostitutes."

Mayer once said: "The sign of a clever auteur is to achieve the illusion that there is a sole individual responsible for magnificent creations that require thousands of people to accomplish."

Membership

Member Chamber of Commerce, United States, Los Angeles Chamber of C., Community Welfare Federation Los Angeles (member board), National Housing Committee for Congested Areas, Commercial Board of Los Los Angeles. Mason (Shriner).; Clubs: Hillcrest Country.

Personality

Mayer was a man in which everything except physical stature was writ large: He was ferociously driven and daring, a genius at gauging public taste, a tremendous discoverer of talent, a master of persuasion and a visionary of passion and imagination with a deeply ingrained sense of responsibility to audiences.

Louis B. Mayer himself had gained a reputation of leonine proportions not long after his arrival in Hollywood. He was characterized by his strong will and tell-it-straight relationships.

In his overall management skills, Mayer was considered a great executive, someone who could have run General Motors equally as well as a large studio like MGM, said producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz. He worked at the studio all the time, and decisively, without any fixed schedule, but didn't like paperwork. Some said Mayer had a lot in common with newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Hearst had financed various MGM pictures, while MGM benefited by having film reviews included nationwide in the Hearst newspapers.

Mayer's temper was widely known, but most people knew that his sudden bursts of anger faded quickly. With those working underneath him, he was usually patient and preferred to leave department heads alone, and would fire executives if they failed to produce successful films over a long period.

Quotes from others about the person

• Actress Ann Rutherford said about Mayer: "I had been to his hometown. I knew from whence he sprang. He taught himself grammar. He taught himself manners. If anybody on earth ever created himself, Louis B. Mayer did."
  
  When meeting a new employee, he always told them to come to him personally for help with any problems. Some, like Barbara Stanwyck, considered this attitude to be "pompous" however, since he used his position to meddle into people's lives. Others, such as actor Edward G. Robinson, after his first meeting Mayer, said "I found him to be a man of truth ... Behind his gutta-percha face and roly-poly figure, it was evident there was a man of steel—but well-mannered steel." British director Victor Saville remembers him as being "the best listener. He wanted to know. He was the devil's advocate. He would prod you and question you and suck you dry of any knowledge."
  
  Biographer Scott Eyman noted: “With many of his actors, Mayer was like an overprotective mother. In some cases, especially for child actors, he could become closely involved in managing their everyday life, from telling where to shop, where to dine, or what doctor to visit. He liked giving suggestions about how they could take better care of themselves." He sometimes arranged marriages, and coping with occupational hazards like alcoholism, suicide, and eccentric sexual habits were as much a part of his job as negotiating contracts with stars and directors. When he learned that June Allyson was dating David Rose, for instance, he told her to stop seeing him: "If you care about your reputation, you cannot be seen with a married man."
  
  Some, such as young starlet Elizabeth Taylor, didn't like Mayer overseeing her life, and called him a "monster." While Mickey Rooney, another young actor, and someone who co-starred with Elizabeth when she was 12, formed the opposite impression: "He was the daddy of everybody and vitally interested in everybody. They always talk badly about Mayer, but he was really a wonderful guy...he listened and you listened." Rooney spoke from experience, as he himself had some confrontations with Mayer, notes film historian Jane Ellen Wayne: :Mayer naturally tried to keep all his child actors in line, like any father figure. After one such episode, Mickey Rooney replied, "I won't do it. You're asking the impossible." Mayer then grabbed young Rooney by his lapels and said, "Listen to me! I don't care what you do in private. Just don't do it in public. In public, behave. Your fans expect it. You're Andy Hardy! You're the United States! You're the Stars and Stripes. Behave yourself! You're a symbol!" Mickey nodded. "I'll be good, Mr. Mayer. I promise you that." Mayer let go of his lapels, "All right", he said.
  
  He had always fussed over his health and from 1942 he saw his doctor, Jessie Marmorston, almost every day for perhaps fifteen or thirty minutes. He would send a car to pick her up, and he fascinated her. His recent biographer Scott Eyman quotes her as saying, ‘He had powers of logic in making deductions which had no basis in scientific techniques, which came about in the oddest way, but his conclusions were sound.’ What he wanted above all else, she thought, was ‘to belong’. ‘He wanted to be a great American."
  
  Actress Esther Williams said: "L.B. wasn't crude at all. Super-intelligent people might have found him common or crass. He may have been an immigrant with a good suit of clothes, but never forget that this was a man working hard to be an American."
  
  "He loved swaggering, charismatic hams like Lionel Barrymore and Marie Dressler", writes Eyman.

Interests

• Horse racing

Connections

Soon after he arrived to Boston, 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. Mayer divorced with Shenberg on June 14, 1904. His second wife became Lorena L. Danker.

Father:

Jacob Meir

Mother:

Sarah (Meltzer) Mayer

Wife:

Margaret Shenberg

Wife:

Lorena L. Danker

Daughter:

Edith Mayer

Daughter:

Irene Mayer Selznick

References

• Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer Lion of Hollywood is the definitive biography of Louis B. Mayer, the chief of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer—MGM—the biggest and most successful film studio of Hollywood’s Golden Age. An immigrant from tsarist Russia, Mayer began in the film business as an exhibitor but soon migrated to where the action and the power were—Hollywood. Through sheer force of energy and foresight, he turned his own modest studio into MGM, where he became the most powerful man in Hollywood, bending the film business to his will. He made great films, including the fabulous MGM musicals, and he made great stars: Garbo, Gable, Garland, and dozens of others. Through the enormously successful Andy Hardy series, Mayer purveyed family values to America. At the same time, he used his influence to place a federal judge on the bench, pay off local officials, cover up his stars’ indiscretions and, on occasion, arrange marriages for gay stars. Mayer rose from his impoverished childhood to become at one time the highest-paid executive in America. Despite his power and money, Mayer suffered some significant losses. He had two daughters: Irene, who married David O. Selznick, and Edie, who married producer William Goetz. He would eventually fall out with Edie and divorce his wife, Margaret, ending his life alienated from most of his family. His chief assistant, Irving Thalberg, was his closest business partner, but they quarreled frequently, and Thalberg’s early death left Mayer without his most trusted associate. As Mayer grew older, his politics became increasingly reactionary, and he found himself politically isolated within Hollywood’s small conservative community. Lion of Hollywood is a three-dimensional biography of a figure often caricatured and vilified as the paragon of the studio system. Mayer could be arrogant and tyrannical, but under his leadership MGM made such unforgettable films as The Big Parade, Ninotchka, The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, and An American in Paris. Film historian Scott Eyman interviewed more than 150 people and researched some previously unavailable archives to write this major new biography of a man who defined an industry and an era.
• The Merchant of Dreams: Louis B.Mayer, M.G.M. and the Secret Hollywood The son of a penniless Russian immigrant, Louis B. Mayer became the richest and most powerful film tycoon in Hollywood. As the tyrannical head of MGM, his was the imagination which launched a galaxy of stars, among them Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable and Judy Garland - and his was the will which controlled their lives. In this biography, Charles Higham weaves an account based on research of the power struggles, scandals, creative successes and personal traumas which permeated Mayer's career. The author also wrote "Wallis" and "Elizabeth and Philip".
• Hollywood East: Louis B. Mayer and the Origins of the Studio System The author, a film historian, is also the daughter of the late Al Altman, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's New York talent scout. While most histories of the industry concentrate on Hollywood, Altman's tells what was happening in New York, where much of both the business and the creative activity occurred. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
• Hollywood Rajah: The Life and Times of Louis B. Mayer eBook: Bosley Crowther: Books
• All the Stars in Heaven: Louis B. Mayer's MGM
• Merchant of Dreams
• Mayer and Thalberg: The Make-Believe Saints