He attended the Horace Mann School.
He was best known for his efforts on behalf of film preservation and for his support of the film industry"s humanitarian charity, the Motion Picture & Television Fund. In 2004 he was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. After serving in World World War II, he received his bachelor"s degree from Yale University in 1948, and a law degree from Yale Law School in 1951.
He moved to Los Angeles and sought a position at one of the city"s major downtown law firms, but was rejected, being told that those firms didn"t hire Jews.
He was eventually hired as a lawyer at Columbia Pictures, where he worked for nine years. He then moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
In 1986 Mayer became president and chief executive of Turner Entertainment. In that position, he was responsible for managing the large library of motion pictures that Ted Turner had purchased from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, including high-profile restorations and re-releases of landmark Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films like Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, as well as being a focus of controversy when he supported Ted Turner"s decision to colorize some old black-and-white films in the library.
In that capacity, he was credited with enabling the preservation of more than 2,000 orphan films, films whose original copyright had expired or otherwise lacked commercial potential sufficient to pay for their preservation.
He also sat on the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress. In addition, Mayer also served as chairman of the Motion Picture & Television Fund, an industry charity that provides healthcare and social services.