#QueerQuote: “A Star is Created, Carefully & Cold-Bloodily, Built Up From Nothing, From Nobody. Age, Beauty, Talent, Least of all Talent, Has Nothing to Do With It.” – Movie Mogul, Louis B. Mayer

When I was in college nearby, I would sneak on to the MGM lot and poke around Main Street and the other outdoor sets. It was thrilling; all that history. If you read about the fabled MGM studios, do you know about the ”M”, the ”G” and the other ”M”? Louis B. Mayer (1884 -1957), or “L.B.” as many called him, was head of production at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1924 to 1951.

Hollywood films of his era helped paint a pretty picture of life in the USA to show the rest of the world; as the head of the most esteemed Hollywood film studio of his day, Mayer was a major figure in the history of American culture. He was also that classic American success story: a poor immigrant boy who left school in his early teens to help his family financially only to become the highest paid person in the United States of America.

Mayer was born somewhere in Ukraine and he was curiously given to lying about both the place and the date. A self-made American, he claimed to have been born on the Fourth of July (just like Louis Armstrong), although he grew up in Canada. Most of the men (and a lot of the women) who made Hollywood came from a poor Jewish immigrant background.

Twenty one year old Mayer moved to the USA and purchased a broken-down burlesque theatre in Massachusetts. The locals called it a “Garlic Box” because the audiences were mostly poor Italian immigrants. He remade it into a popular movie house. He pawned his wife’s wedding ring and purchased the exclusive rights to The Birth Of A Nation, paying filmmaker D.W. Griffith $25,000 and building his fortune on the ticket sales. He soon realized that stars would be the keys to his success because, as he said:

 “This is a business of making idols. Everything else was secondary.”

This became the foundation of the new movie studio Mayer built in Los Angeles. With an eye for star-wattage, among the great talents he put on contract were Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow, Norma Shearer, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, Greer Garson, Fred Astaire, and Gene Kelly. Sentimental, given to sobs and shouts, Mayer understood how to sell his performers to the public.

Of swimming star Esther Williams, he said: “Wet, she’s a star. Dry, she ain’t.” To actor Robert Young, he advised: “Put on a little weight and get more sex. We have a whole stable of girls here.“

At its zenith, MGM was huge: 185 acres in Culver City, with 30 soundstages, a fake jungle and a real zoo, a barbershop, its own police force that was larger than Culver City’s, and a 24-hour commissary that served chicken soup to over 2,700 hungry casts and crews a day. There was also a bookie, and a drug dispensary. MGM employed 6,000 people, with 40 cameras and 60 sound machines used on its six separate lots, all if it connected with its own rail line. Power was supplied by an in-house electrical plant that could light a city of 25,000. However, MGM did not have a staff abortionist; for that service, its stars and contract players had to go across town to 20th Century Fox.

Up to 18 movies were being shot at one time. They were either shooting or preparing to shoot on every sound stage.

In 1937 Mayer paid himself $1.3 million (that’s $132 million in 2023 dollars). The MGM studio boasted “….more stars than there were in heaven”, made fifty films a year in the 1930s. In 1939, the studio released fifty-five features including: Idiot’s Delight with Gable and Shearer, Goodbye, Mr. Chips with Garson, The Wizard Of Oz, The Women, Babes In Arms, Ninotchka for Garbo, three Andy Hardy movies, two Dr. Kildare films, the third of the Thin Man series, The Ice Follies Of 1939, the first The Fast And The Furious, On Borrowed Time with Lionel Barrymore and Beulah Bondi, and Gone With The Wind with Butterfly McQueen and Olivia de Havilland.

Mayer was decidedly not an intellectual, but he was a sucker for sentimental love stories, a taste shared by millions of film fans of the era. He had extraordinary energy; his workday lasted twelve hours. He was a great executive; he could have run any industry. He worked without any fixed schedule, but he didn’t like the paperwork. Mayer had a lot in common with newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. Hearst even financed several MGM pictures, with the studio benefited by having rave film reviews included nationwide in Hearst’s newspapers.

Hearst suggested that Mayer have an office bungalow built on the MGM lot, something Hearst said was appropriate for a studio head, adding:

“Everybody of distinction from all over the world comes to Los Angeles and everybody who comes wants to see your studio and they all want to meet you and do meet you, so put on a few airs, and provide the atmosphere.“

Mayer was noted for his terrible temper, but most of his staff and talent realized that these sudden bursts faded as quickly as they started. He preferred to leave the various department heads alone, but would fire executives if they failed to produce successful films. Mayer really created the “star system”, saying:

“All I ever looked for was a face. If someone looked good to me, I’d have him tested. If a person looked good on film, if he photographed well, we could do the rest. We hired geniuses at make-up, hair dressing, surgeons to slice away a bulge here and there, rubbers to rub away the blubber, clothes designers, lighting experts, coaches for everything—fencing, dancing, walking, talking, sitting and spitting.“

In the late-1930s, Mayer understood that the Germans could ban or boycott Hollywood, with serious economic implications, since 40% of Hollywood’s grosses came from European audiences. Nevertheless, MGM produced Three Comrades in 1938, despite the warning that the film was a serious criticism of the German government and would be resented by those nasty Nazis.

In 1939, Mayer authorized the production of two other anti-Nazi films, The Mortal Storm with Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart, and Escape with Shearer and Robert Taylor. The Nazi government informed the studios that the films would be remembered by Germany when they won the war, and those nasty Nazis threatened Mayer with a boycott of all MGM films.

All films that could be considered anti-Nazi were banned by the Hays Office, the Motion Picture Production Code which set industry guidelines for the self-censorship of content that was applied to most film released by major studios from 1934 to 1968. The U.S. ambassador to England, Joseph Kennedy, even told MGM to stop making anti-German films. Defiantly, Mayer produced Mrs. Miniver (1942), a simple story about a London family trying to get by during the bombing blitz. Mayer wanted Garson, his personal discovery, to star, but she refused, not wanting to play an unglamorous role. Mayer pressured Garson to accept the part, and she did and won the Academy Award for her performance. Mrs. Miniver won six Oscars and became the Number One box office hit of 1942.

Both President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill loved the film, and Roosevelt wanted prints rushed to theatres nationwide. The Voice of America radio network broadcast the big speech from the film and copies of it were dropped over German-occupied countries.

In 1943, MGM released another Oscar-winner, this one supporting the home front. The Human Comedy starring Rooney was Mayer’s personal favorite of all his films. Mayer assisted the American government by making short pro-democracy propaganda films.

After World War II there was gradual decline in profits for MGM and the other studios. Mayer had to let go of his top producers and other executives. He resigned from MGM in August 1951. On his final day, he walked down a red carpet laid out in front of his executives, actors and staff who applauded him as he walked away. It was the end of an era.

Mayer died in 1957, and the Hollywood he helped to build died too; an industry built by first and second-generation European Jews.

His funeral service at the temple on Wilshire Boulevard was attended by 2,000 people, with 3,000 more standing outside. Tracy gave the eulogy. Honorary pallbearers included ex-President Herbert Hoover, filmmakers Cecil B. De Mille and David Selznick. Jeanette MacDonald sang Ah, Sweet Mystery Of Life.

Sure, he was anti-union, and a Republican, and he was what was called ”handsy with the ladies” in that era, behavior that would him canceled in our own. Crawford:

“…at MGM we were lucky because Louis B. didn’t believe in the casting couch routine. He may have been a tyrant at times, but he taught me discipline, and he made me feel that I could be a star, and he made me act like a star.“

Mayer never wrote or directed a film, yet he understood movies and he had an instinct for what audiences wanted.

Mayer had many enemies and admirers. Some of his stars were not happy with his control over their private lives, but some found him to be a father figure. He forced compliance from female talent by threatening their livelihoods. He forced Judy Garland to go on diets, take drugs, work punishing schedules, and probably sexually abused her. Shirley Temple claimed that Mayer took his pants off in front of her when she was 12, and when she laughed at him, he threw her out of his office.

Tracy:

“The story he wanted to tell was the story of America, the land for which he had an almost furious love, born of gratitude—and of contrast with the hatred in the dark land of his boyhood across the seas. It was this love of America that made him an authority on America.“

He did not appear in films, but he has been portrayed in movies: in Harlow (1965) by Jack Kruschen; Gable and Lombard (1976) by Allen Garfield; Rainbow (1978) by Martin Balsam; The Scarlett O’Hara War (1980) by Harold Gould; Mommie Dearest (1981); by Howard Da Silva; Malice In Wonderland (1985) by Richard Dysart; Barton Fink (1991) by Michael Lerner; RKO 281 (1999) by David Suchet; The Three Stooges (2000) by David Baldwin; Life With Judy Garland: Me And My Shadows (2001) by Al Waxman; De–Lovely (2004) by Peter Polycarpou; The Aviator (2004) by Stanley DeSantis; Trumbo (2015) by Richard Portnow; The Last Tycoon (2016) by Saul Rubinek; Feud: Bette And Joan (2017) by Kerry Stein; Judy (2019) by Richard Cordery; and Mank (2020) by Arliss Howard.