7/19/2006

The men who made MGM
By Tom Range, Sr.

The motion picture production company, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, was established in 1924 as a result of the amalgamation of the Metro Picture Corporation (formed in 1915), the Goldwyn Picture Corporation (1917) and Louis B. Mayer Pictures (1918) under the corporate control of Loew’s Inc.  Each of these corporate entities were effectively led by one man.  These are their stories.

Marcus Loew, born in 1870 in New York City, died 1927.  The son of Jewish immigrants from Austria, he dropped out of school at nine and tried his hand at various odd jobs and business enterprises before moving in 1905 into the peep-show business through the purchase of penny arcades in Manhattan and Cincinnati, in partnership with Adolph Zukor.  By 1907 he owned some 40 nickelodeons all over the country. 

He then began acquiring motion picture theaters and by 1912 his Loew’s Theatrical Enterprises owned some 400 cinemas.  In 1920, in a step designed to provide a constant supply of films for his growing chain of theaters, he bought Metro Pictures.  In 1924 he acquired controlling interest in the Goldwyn Company and Louis B. Mayer Pictures and consolidated his three production companies into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with Loew’s as the parent company.

Samuel Goldwyn, born Shmuel Gelbfisz (later Anglicized to Samuel Goldfish) in 1882 in Warsaw, Poland, died 1974.  At age 11 he made his way on his own to England, where he stayed with relatives and worked as a blacksmith’s helper.  At 13 he arrived in the U.S., alone and penniless.  He found work as an apprentice glove maker, in Gloversville, NY, at $3 per week, and took his education at night school.  By the age of 15 he was an expert glove cutter and at 18 he went on the road as a glove salesman.  Soon he was known as the best in the business.

In 1910 he married Blanche Lasky, the sister of vaudeville performer and producer Jessie L. Lasky.  In 1912, after the American glove industry suffered reversals from government policies on lower tariffs, Goldfish decided to look for a new means of livelihood.  He persuaded his brother-in-law to enter the film business.  In 1913 they formed the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company with Lasky as president, Goldfish as treasurer and sales manager, and Cecil B. De Mille as director.  Management disagreements forced Goldfish out but in 1916 he formed a new partnership with Edgar Selwyn and others. 

They called the new company Goldwyn, combining the first syllable of Goldfish and the last of Selwyn.  Goldfish grew fond of the name and in 1918 he legally changed his to Goldwyn. Besides earning fame as a filmmaker, he was known for some of the funniest malapropisms, or as they are called in Hollywood, Goldwynisms.  A sample: “Include me out,” and “Anyone seeing a psychiatrist should have his head examined.”

Louis B. Mayer, born 1885 in Minsk, Russia, died 1957.  The son of a laborer, he immigrated with his parents to New York as a child.  The family then moved to Canada, where Mayer, the father, became a junk dealer and his wife sold chickens door to door.  As soon as he graduated from elementary school, little Louis joined his father’s business, which by now had become a profitable scrap metal operation.  In time young Louis set up his own junk business in Boston, where in 1904, he married the daughter of a local kosher butcher. 

In 1907, responding to an ad, he bought a small rundown motion picture theater in Haverhill, MA, at a bargain price.  He renovated the auditorium and announced a policy of showing only top-quality films.  Within several years he had bought a number of additional theaters and before long owned the largest theater chain in New England.  By 1914 he had branched out into distribution and the following year he made a huge profit out of distributing Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” in the New England area.

The measure of success in the movie industry is the quantity of Oscars won, particularly for Best Picture.  MGM won its first Oscar in 1929 for “Broadway Melody.”  Other early awards are: 1932, “Grand Hotel”; 1935, “Mutiny on the Bounty”; 1936, “The Great Ziegfeld”; and the iconic 1939, “Gone With the Wind.”  Of recent vintage, MGM won Best Picture for “Rocky” in 1976.

Throughout the 30s and much of the 40s the MGM famous trademark, designed by songwriter-publicist Howard Dietz, a roaring lion (nicknamed Leo) emblazoned with the motto “Ars Gratia Artis” (Art for Art’s Sake) represented the highest quality in motion picture entertainment.

Among MGM’s musicals is the 1951 award winner “An American in Paris.”  Other musicals are “Annie Get Your Gun,”  “Show Boat,” “Singin’ in the Rain” and the incomparable “The Wizard of Oz.” The studio’s outpouring of quality films was prodigious. It produced “Dr. Zhivago,” “Moonstruck” and “Thelma & Louise” up through the 1990s in spite of the studio’s declining prominence resulting from dissention within management.  In early 2005, the MGM studio was sold to Columbia Pictures.

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