Mayer, Louis B. (1885-1957)

Arguably the most influential motion picture executive of this century, Louis B. Mayer presided over the studio that claimed to have "more stars than there are in heaven," Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). In 1938 Mayer was the highest paid person in America, including Franklin Roosevelt and Henry Ford. All this was rather impressive for a former junk man.

He was born Lazar Meir in Russia. In 1888, his family moved to America, where his father started a scrap metal business, J. Mayer and Son. Mayer joined his father in the business right after high school, but he always had larger ambitions. In 1904 he married Margaret Shenberg and they had two daughters, Edith and Irene.

After deciding, "Movies are the one thing you can sell and still own," Mayer got into the nickelodeon business. Distributing the huge hit motion picture, Birth of a Nation, in 1914 made him a very wealthy man. By 1918 he had become Massachusetts's biggest movie theater owner. Mayer decided that the next step in his career was to make his own films.

In 1917 he formed the Mayer Company. When he began producing films he had only one star under contract, the popular Anita Stewart. He featured her in his first production, Virtuous Wives (1918). When Mayer hired Irving Thalberg to become his production chief in 1923, a very successful partnership was born. A 1924 merger with Sam Goldwyn and Marcus Loew formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), with Mayer as head of operations for the West Coast. The first project Mayer and Thalberg tackled after moving to the new company was Sam Goldwyn's unwieldy project, Ben Hur (1925). After they did some recasting and budget cutting, the picture was released to acclaim and became MGM's first big hit.

Mayer thought of himself as a father figure to his stars, and he could be generous and protective. He could also be ruthless and tyrannical. Mayer's vision of motion pictures was as wholesome family entertainment and he refused to believe the audience wanted realism. For a long time he was correct. During the Depression, people wanted escapist fare, such as musicals and comedies, to forget the real world. Series motion pictures, such as The Thin Man and Andy Hardy, were also popular.

When Thalberg died in 1937, Mayer became the absolute ruler of MGM's West Coast operations. Unfortunately, he had a powerful enemy in company executive Nicholas Schenck. Schenck had long wanted to get rid of Mayer, but as long as the company was doing well he could not. After World War II, however, the public had grown hardened and jaded by war and wanted more realism in their movies. Mayer would not accept this and his longtime feud with the MGM East Coast office grew as the studios' bottom line began to shrink. In the late 1940s Dore Schary was brought to MGM and began producing more realistic films, but hardly the big hits for which MGM was famous.

As Mayer began to spend more time away from MGM, the studio's luster continued to fade. The long era of the studio system was ending. Mayer was fired in 1951. He attempted to return to MGM several times, always unsuccessfully. He died of leukemia in 1957. Louis B. Mayer is remembered as a temperamental tyrant who was loved by some who worked for him, hated by others. He will forever be the man who steered the greatest motion picture studio of the time through its golden years.

—Jill A. Gregg

Further Reading:

Altman, Diana. Hollywood East: Louis B. Mayer and the Origins of the Studio System. New York, Carol Publishing Group, 1992.

Carey, Gary. All The Stars in Heaven: Louis B. Mayer's MGM. New York, Dutton, 1981.

Marx, Samuel. Mayer and Thalberg: The Make-Believe Saints. New York, Random House, 1975.