“Though he never lost his love for Canada, which had given him, and his family, refuge and the freedom of opportunity, that found fulfilment in the United States, it was his love for America that made him an authority on our country, and his counsel was sought by men in high places. Yet he never lost the common touch.”
(Spencer Tracy, 1957)
He never knew the real name of his parents. They anglicized their name to Mayer when they arrived in Canada in 1893. Some early records in Saint John, the hometown he adopted, give the family name as Meyerinski, but Louis B. Mayer would never accept this as fact.
He never owned a birth certificate, and despite his wealth and power he was unable to convince authorities in Russia, Canada, or the United States to give him one.
The “B” in Louis B. Mayer was his own creation. He felt it gave him more dignity. It was not until newspaper columnist Hedda Hopper demanded to know what it stood for that he chose Burton. It was, he said years later, the name of the writer whose script he had been reading when he was asked the question.
He didn’t know his real age, or the actual date of his birth. When he became an American citizen in 1923 he chose 1885 as being close to the truth and July 4 because it seemed appropriate for a new American to be born on Independence Day.
He rose from scavenging scrap metal at the age of eight to become the most powerful mogul in the history of motion pictures.
Louis Burton Mayer was born in Minsk, Russia, on July 4, 1885, if we are to accept his own guess as being accurate. When he was eighteen months of age, or thereabouts, his parents fled from their homeland and found safety in Saint John, New Brunswick.
It is difficult now to say how much of his life story is fact and how much fiction. He hired the top publicity men in America to polish his image. For example, the scrapyard that he and his father ran in Saint John had become a ship salvaging business employing 100 people in later studio biographies of his life.
One thing is sure, before he died, Louis B. Mayer accomplished more than any other man in the history of motion pictures did, and he left behind a legacy of achievements that seem, in retrospect, difficult to accept as coming from the brain of just one man.
When he was eight he started work for his father, Jacob Mayer. He pulled his toy red wagon around the dock area of Saint John, picking up pieces of scrap metal that ship repair companies had thrown away. These he hauled more than a mile to his father’s scrapyard.
“I missed a lot of formal schooling when I got the word that they were dumping metal at the docks,” he said in 1943. “But I was learning more important informal knowledge, a knowledge of people, that made it possible for me to be where I am today.”
He left school when he was only fourteen, and immediately became a junior partner in Jacob Mayer and Company, which became from that day Jacob Mayer and Son. “Don’t let anybody tell you I was not clever,” he said. “I was top of my class in just about everything that I felt was important. That is why, today, I can spot errors in Canadian history, made by my writers, just as easily as I can pick up blunders in American history. To me the two countries are one. One day perhaps they will be. I hate people who spell Saint John in New Brunswick with an ‘St’. That is an insult to a fine city. St. John’s is in Newfoundland. You see, I know these things.”
It was a long climb from the Saint John scrapyard to being the most powerful man in Hollywood. But Mayer never faltered along the way. “I never doubted for one moment that I would make it to the top in some industry,” he said. “I have found there is no room in this world of success for doubters.”
When he was about eighteen he convinced his father to expand the family business to Boston. “Wherever there was a shipyard there was scrap metal,” he recalled. “And I felt it was time for me to see a big city. I was wise enough to know that whatever my future was going to be it was not going to be achieved in Saint John.”
It was in Boston that Mayer became interested in the “moving picture” industry, as it was then called. “I saw lines of people waiting to get inside one of the nickelodeons that were sprouting up everywhere,” he said. “So I joined the line and went inside. The films that flickered on a makeshift screen were crude and really not very entertaining. But I felt inside me, that first time I saw a movie, that this was the industry I wanted to join and, eventually, lead.”
Mayer spent every spare moment visiting the different nickelodeons in Boston. “I had a girl friend, Margaret Shenberg, who went with me,” he recalled. “We were both eighteen and Margaret had ambitions like me. We both wanted me to become important, and we both knew that collecting scrap iron wouldn’t be the answer.”
When they were nineteen, Margaret Shenberg and Louis Mayer (there was no “B” then) were married. Neither her parents nor his were enthused about two people so young getting married, but they all attended the wedding at a small synagogue in Boston, where a compassionate rabbi had decided to overlook the fact that Mayer had no birth certificate to prove who he really was, or what his real age might be.
Years later Mayer returned the favour. He built a synagogue for the rabbi, who had by then been transferred to an impoverished town in New Jersey. “I went there and helped put the bricks and mortar together,” he said. “Anyone can give money, but it must be accompanied by the sweat and tears of its donor if it is to be from the heart.”
Mayer was to follow that credo throughout his life, and his greatest giving came after he had reached the top of the tree in Hollywood. Rarely did he announce his good deeds. In fact, he was often described as “the meanest man in Hollywood.” He was proud of the fact that not once in his entire life did he claim a donation to a worthy cause on his annual tax returns. “I don’t give for that reason,” he said. “Mr. Mayer,” said his accountant, “will never have to fear a government audit. They wouldn’t dare make one because they know they would discover they owed him millions.”
Three years after he married, Mayer spotted an advertisement in a Boston paper offering a small theatre in Haverhill, Massachusetts, for sale. “We went to look at it and for a few minutes were more than a little concerned at finding it looking so run-down. The Gem Theatre was an old burlesque house seating around 1,000,” he said. “It was so dilapidated the locals called it the Germ Theatre.
“But what I saw in front of me wasn’t that dingy theatre,” he said. “I saw what it could become and I convinced Margaret that I knew what I was doing. I got the owner down to about half what he was asking, and gave him a hundred dollar bill as a binding down payment.
“We had bought a small home in Boston, and I had some savings from the scrap metal operation. On the way back to Boston I had all the finances figured out. I would hand over management of the scrapyard to a young man who had been my senior assistant and I knew my father wouldn’t lose with him in charge. If I could sell our home and use every last cent of what money I had in my savings account, I knew we could meet the cost of the theatre.”
The Mayers moved to Haverhill, converted the manager’s office at the theatre into a small apartment, and started work on the badly needed restoration work. A small newspaper editor in town openly scoffed at their efforts. “This place is a loser,” he said. “You’re wasting your money. I shall need cash for all your advertisements, when, and if, you ever get this flea pit open.” Mayer didn’t forget the editor. After two years in Haverhill he bought the paper and physically threw the editor out on his neck.
“It took us about three months before we were ready to show it to the people of Haverhill,” he said. “We did most of the work ourselves because we had no money to pay for outside help. Our only assistant was a lumberyard foreman, a skilled carpenter, who volunteered his services for nothing. He had already given us all the wood we needed with no more security than our word that we would pay the bill when the theatre was a success.
“The Gem had quite good seating and the stage floor was solid and just needed scrubbing and polishing. The dressing rooms had running water and only needed a coat of paint, new mirrors, and a bit of carpet on the floor. Even the stage curtains were in good condition, but very dirty. We took them down and scrubbed them by hand.”
One month after the theatre, renamed the Orpheum, opened its doors Mayer paid the lumber bill. He added to that repayment a decade later when he opened his first film studio in Hollywood. “I wrote to the man who had believed in us and offered him a job in the Californian sunshine. When he said ‘yes’ I sent him the money for a rail ticket to Los Angeles. I put him in charge of all my lumber purchasing and set building and today, twenty years later, he is the senior buyer of all wood and other materials we need here at MGM.”
There were four other theatres in Haverhill at the time, and Mayer knew he had to do something special to draw attention to the Orpheum.
“I installed an organ, mainly because I couldn’t afford even a small orchestra like some of the other theatres, but it was such a novelty that it attracted almost as many people as the movies. I found out later that it was the first organ to be installed in any motion picture theatre in the United States. Ten years later hundreds, perhaps thousands, of theatres had installed organs.
“I hired boys and girls to deliver printed flyers to every house in the community inviting the people of Haverhill to come and look at the new Orpheum. Margaret and I, and three girls who were to became ushers at the theatre, served tea and cookies to each one of the thousands who came in the three days we held the open house. We had the organist playing lively music, and everyone was excited. To every person who visited the theatre we gave a free ticket to see our first film.
“We chose From the Manger to the Cross, a movie that was well ahead of its time. It was directed by Sidney Olcott, and had received tremendous publicity in New York where it was still running after three months. Olcott sent me a copy of the music that had been specially written to accompany the film. Our organist, Wilbert Greenway, made it sound like we had a full orchestra.”
Before the opening show, Mayer and his wife went on stage to announce that the Orpheum’s policy would at all times be to offer clean, wholesome, family entertainment.
“That first week we sold less than a thousand tickets, but we didn’t have an empty seat. More than 3,000 used the free tickets we had issued. The film was expensive, but it ran for six weeks; imagine that, six weeks in a town of around 30,000 people. Even Sid Olcott was so astounded that he came up to Haverhill to see what we were doing right.
“Olcott arranged with Kalem, the company who owned the film, to give us exclusive rights to show From the Manger to the Cross in the entire state of Massachusetts. In the second week they sent the film’s star, Robert Henderson Bland, who had arrived in New York from England, to appear on stage to answer questions after each show.
“Normally we just showed the film once a day, but when Bland was with us we had to add an extra early show and we still turned crowds away from each performance. When they couldn’t get in to the first show they stayed outside the theatre to wait for the second performance. Wednesday and Saturday we added a third show and still turned people away. We had made sure the papers in the towns around, including Boston, of course, knew that Bland was to appear, and a big percentage of our audience came from out of town.
“I’ll never forget Bland. He was an incredible man. He walked around the streets of Haverhill every day, wearing long white robes. He visited every church, chapel, and synagogue in the area and invited the clergy to visit the show as his guests. We had to block off a section of seats each night for these good church people.
“At the end of six weeks ours was the only theatre in town that people talked about. While the film was on I went into Boston and convinced the director of the Boston Light Opera Company to bring his entire company to the Orpheum. He agreed to come for one week, but the show, which opened when From the Manger to the Cross closed, had to stay two weeks because so many people were clamouring at the box office for seats that we didn’t have.”
Mayer and his wife added up their profits at the end of the first eight weeks of operation and decided they had made enough to take an even bigger gamble.
“We knew we had to spend money to make money, so I went to Boston and New York asking managers to give us their best touring live shows for the Orpheum. Some scoffed at first, but a letter I got from the Boston Light Opera Company, saying how delightful their two weeks in Haverhill had been, convinced the doubters. I persuaded Maude Adams to appear on stage with her New York company of Peter Pan. She liked the way we treated her so much that she convinced her good friend, the great William Farnum, to play the Orpheum in one of his biggest Broadway successes, The Littlest Rebel.
“I even got the big stars like Marie Dressler and Lillian Russell. I made sure they had the red carpet rolled out for them and their comments, when they got back to New York, made our little theatre famous.”
In the first four years they operated the Orpheum the Mayers never lost money on any show they presented on stage or on the screen. They constantly worked to improve the theatre, and made the dressing rooms luxurious for even the smallest performers on the bill.
Mayer also quietly purchased a local hotel and turned it into the first “all suites” hotel in North America. “I had to be sure the stars who visited us were pampered in every way,” he said.
“This was around the time when film makers were letting the world know the names of their stars, so I persuaded Griffith at Biograph, Olcott, and Kalem and others to send along the stars of their films for personal appearances. I even had Mary Pickford and her brother Jack, but we won’t talk about Jack. Mary was a darling. Everything we asked, she did.
“But the most co-operative star of all was Florence Lawrence, the former Biograph Girl who was now known by her own name. She sat in the lobby of the theatre for several hours each day for a week signing autographs. Thousands lined up to meet her. She shook hands with everyone, kissed every baby, and even a few men who dared ask, including me. I was able to repay her many years later right here in Hollywood. A beautiful lady. She, and the Pickfords, and several others didn’t cost us a penny. The film companies were delighted with the publicity their stars and films received. I believe we started a trend. Nobody else had thought of stars making personal appearances at that time.”
Mayer had special weeks at his theatre. “There were thousands of Irish people in the area so I talked Sidney Olcott into sending us all the films he made while he was in Ireland. We ran three shows a day for two weeks.”
Within a few years, Mayer owned all six theatres in Haverhill. He spruced them up and gave each one a specific type of film to show. “One played only westerns, another cops and robbers, a third nothing but love stories. At the Orpheum we maintained a policy of playing the biggest and best films available, with stage shows every second week.”
After Mayer had been in Haverhill for three years he was asked to run for mayor of the town. “I declined,” he said, “because I recalled that the previous two mayors had been run out of town.”
By 1911 Mayer owned other Massachusetts theatres in nearby Lowell and Lawrence. “I now had a chain of theatres that made people sit up and pay attention,” he said. “I formed the American Feature Film Company, as a distribution house. It was easy for me to convince more than thirty other theatre owners in six New England states to let me be their booker. I guaranteed quality, wholesome films. And I gave them what I promised.”
Mayer persuaded D.W. Griffith, whose greatest film, The Birth of a Nation, was about to be released, to give him sole rights to show the film in all the New England states. This so annoyed his chief competitor, Nathan Gordon, owner of the huge Olympic Theatres circuit, that in frustration at being deprived of the Griffith masterpiece, he suggested he and Mayer should combine their two companies.
Mayer considered this proposal for less than a week before agreeing. But how he achieved his first show business miracle has never been fully explained, for Mayer, with the smaller group of theatres, came out as chief shareholder in the two companies when they merged. Louis Mayer was on his way!
He told the Los Angeles Examiner in 1932 that he paid Griffith $30,000 for the rights to his film. Doubters proclaimed such extravagance would bankrupt the huge chain of theatres. But Mayer knew what he was doing. The instinct that later made him the movie industry titan he became in Hollywood told him he was right. When the books were tallied up on The Birth of a Nation, Mayer’s American Feature Film Company had made more than $300,000 profit.
His flair for showmanship, which put him ahead of the average theatre owner, was never demonstrated more than when he persuaded Griffith to “loan” him all the stars from the film. They included some of the biggest names in the fast-growing industry. Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Henry Walthall, Miriam Cooper, Wallace Reid, Sam De Grasse, Donald Crisp, Raoul Walsh (later to become one of Hollywood’s great directors), and Bessie Love made the trek from New York to Haverhill.
Miriam Cooper, who wrote a book of her memories in 1973, recalled that all the stars were given cars and drivers. “The cars had our names in large letters on canvas covers along both sides of the car. We couldn’t open the doors because of the posters so the drivers had to lift the women in and out of the cars. Mayer was showing the film three times a day at all his theatres, and in one week I appeared on stage to talk to the audiences at eighteen different theatres.
“He kept the best for his flagship, the Orpheum. All of us, I believe there were twelve, appeared together at the same time on the stage of this one theatre. The audience stood up and cheered and wouldn’t let us go. They filed past us on stage where we sat at a long table signing autographs. I recall it was almost two on Sunday morning when the last person left. Mayer was sweating profusely because in those days no one was allowed to keep a theatre open after midnight on Saturday. In those days nothing but churches were open on the Sabbath and the Sabbath started at the stroke of twelve. I think a lot of police palms were greased that night, for I never did hear of him being taken to court for breaking the law.”
Mayer became more and more frustrated with the quality of product some of the movie companies were offering his theatres. In 1915 he formed the Metro Company, with himself and his wife as the company’s directors. “I knew I had to produce my own, superior films, if I was to satisfy the audiences I had built for my theatre chain, by then more than sixty strong.
“I set up a studio in Brooklyn and for two years we produced what I still believe were the best films made in that era. I got together my own resident studio company but became very concerned with the short summers and long winters that limited our production scope.
“Things were happening in Hollywood by 1917 and Margaret and I decided to sell our theatres and move out west.” Before they moved they had a signed contract from the new theatre owners guaranteeing to take films from Mayer’s production company for twenty weeks out of every year.
When the Mayers arrived in California, they found a small unused studio on Mission Road in Los Angeles. The story of the first sign Mayer put up on the studio is legendary, and is believed to be where his reputation for meanness began. The sign on the old studio read:
LOIS WEBER PRODUCTIONS INC.
He is said to have found the original craftsman who carved the letters for the Weber sign. “All I shall need are an ‘A’ a ‘U’ and a ‘Y,’” he is reported to have told the carpenter. Then if you will turn the ‘W’ upside down, change the letters around a bit, and add the new letters you will be able to create:
LOUIS MAYER PRODUCTIONS INC.
The story continued that he insisted the woodcarver leave the letters “E” and “B” in the studio because he would find some use for them later on.
The story may, or may not, be true, but Mayer never lived down his reputation for saving every penny he could. The truth, as it came out many years after his death, showed that Mayer was probably the most generous studio head ever to grace Hollywood.
The Mayers started life in California with a sizeable bank balance. “We were able to buy ourselves a nice home close to the studio,” he said in 1943. “I still wasn’t too sure whether I liked automobiles so I walked back and forth from home to the Mission Road studio every day, and when I mean every day, I mean seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. My days sometimes started at five in the morning and ended at midnight.
“Margaret was so concerned about my health that she built a kitchen at the studio and cooked nearly all my meals there. After a while it became a business on its own. The actors and technicians kept asking her to make them snacks, so she hired a cook and two girls and we set up a small restaurant where everyone who wanted to eat without going outside could dine in comfort. It was, I now believe, the very first studio commissary to exist. And it made a profit, which Margaret put in a separate account of her own.”
Backing his faith in the star system, which he later pushed to great heights at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he signed personalities like Anita Stewart, Renée Adorée, Mildred Harris (then Charlie Chaplin’s wife), and directors Fred Niblo, John Stahl, and Reginald Barker.
His first feature, Satan Sanderson, was released four weeks after the studio opened its doors, and he was soon turning out four or five features a week. “Make no mistake, they were all quality films,” said Mayer. “Not only the sixty theatres we contracted with in the east were showing them, but within a month of producing our first feature we had over 500 theatres clamouring for our product.”
Before he left New York, Mayer withdrew from Metro Productions in favour of using his own Mayer Productions name in California. Metro was purchased by Loew’s, Inc., soon to open the famed Loew’s State Theatre on Broadway as the flagship of their chain of more than 100 smaller theatres that stretched to the Midwest as far as Chicago.
In California he also formed another company, Anita Stewart Productions, Inc. He used this strategy to lure Stewart away from his competitors.
In 1923 Mayer made first contact with producer Irving Thalberg, then at Universal Pictures. He convinced Thalberg that the Mayer company was going to be the biggest studio in Hollywood in a few years. The duo began a relationship that produced some of the greatest films ever made in Hollywood and ended only with Thalberg’s untimely death in 1936 at the age of thirty-seven.
In 1924 Loew’s, Inc., purchased Goldwyn Pictures Corporation. It had been founded several years earlier by two brothers, Archie and Edgar Selwyn, and Samuel Goldfish, who changed his name to Goldwyn to fit in with the company’s name. By the time Loew’s stepped in, Goldwyn had run into financial problems and had been pushed out of the company by the Selwyn brothers.
Samuel Goldwyn later formed another company, Samuel Goldwyn Productions, but, contrary to many stories, neither it, nor he, had at any time any connection with the mammoth organization that was soon to become Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Many film histories claim Goldwyn was one of the founding partners of MGM with Mayer, but Goldwyn himself denied this.
With Metro and Goldwyn combined, Marcus Loew decided he needed a competent overseer of all production at his new studio in Culver City. He invited Mayer to be that person. Mayer accepted his offer provided the name “Mayer” be added to Metro and Goldwyn, and that he had complete control over every film to be produced by the new company. Loew, who had seen the quality of films Mayer was producing at his growing Mission Road studio, was happy to put Mayer in charge.
Sadly it should be recorded that Mayer’s claim, made many times over the years, that he had personally selected the magnificent lion that graced the opening of every MGM film, was totally erroneous. The lion and the loop of film that surrounded it, together with the emblazoned Ars Gratia Artis (“Art Is Beholden to the Artist”) was the idea of Archie Selwyn at the first Goldwyn studio.
Mayer did, however, select the lion that was used when MGM made its first sound film. For more than two years after the lion was filmed with its roar, Mayer kept the friendly beast on the MGM lot. It lived in luxurious quarters, had a staff of six to see to its every need, and was trotted out to greet any distinguished visitor to the Culver City lot. Mayer loved to greet important visitors with the lion standing beside him.
Howard Dietz, the original publicist with the Goldwyn Company that merged with Metro, later claimed that he, not Selwyn, invented the roaring lion symbol. He translated its Ars Gratia Artis to be “Art for Art’s Sake.” Dietz later became one of MGM’s greatest lyricists of the 1930s and 1940s, writing such hits as “You and the Night and the Music” and many of Fred Astaire’s most popular songs. Whether he, or Selwyn, created the lion symbol we will likely never know.
Most people, including many of MGM’s greatest stars, believed Louis B. Mayer was either president of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer or of its parent company, Loew’s Inc. “It was a misconception I corrected many times,” he told the Los Angeles Examiner in 1952. “I was vice-president in charge of production, and that was the title I retained until the day I retired from MGM.
“I was president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1931 to 1935 and president of the Association of Motion Picture Producers of America from 1932 to 1938. Those were quite enough presidencies for me. I have never had any desire to be president of MGM. After all, where do you go from president? Only one way, down.”
The Culver City lot that had at one time belonged to producer Thomas Ince, then to Sam Goldwyn, was one of the largest in California when Mayer took over in 1924. Sound had yet to arrive, but the six stages on a sixteen-acre lot, which contained the first permanent outside street scenes, were well equipped with the latest in lighting and technical equipment.
When Mayer retired in 1951, MGM spread over 187 acres and had thirty sound stages. An additional 195 buildings included a complete industrial centre, where just about anything a producer called for could be made, and the huge administration block dedicated to and named after Irving Thalberg.
When Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer started production in 1924, the stars from Mayer’s own studio were combined with such notables as Ramon Navarro, Buster Keaton, Lon Chaney, Sr., Marion Davies, John Gilbert, Conrad Nagel, and directors like Frank Borzage, Rex Ingram, and Erich von Stroheim. It was a formidable array of talent that faced the opposition studios.
Mayer, who made all final decisions regarding scripts, talent, and money disbursements, left Thalberg in charge of day-to-day production of all major features. Harry Rapf, who was lured away from Warner Brothers by Mayer, was in charge of all “B” or second features and short films.
“Irving Thalberg was to me like the son I never had,” said Mayer. “He had immense talents and impeccable taste. We often worked twelve or fourteen hours a day at that time and never once did I hear him complain. Despite his fragile health he worked as long or even longer than I did. I often wonder if perhaps I pushed him too hard. But that was what the industry was about in those days, hard work.”
In 1953 Mayer told the Los Angeles Examiner what he claimed was the true story of his discovery of Greta Garbo while he was in Europe to supervise MGM’s first major production there, Ben Hur.
“In 1925 every European actor and director wanted to come to Hollywood, the land of plenty. My manager in Berlin sifted through all possible people and showed me a film made by a director named Mauritz Stiller. I didn’t care much for Stiller’s work but there was a girl in the film who had the most beautiful face I had ever seen. I asked her name and was told Greta Gustafson.
“That night he arranged for us to meet at a club, and Stiller arrived with this girl on his arm. I couldn’t believe it. She was the biggest girl I ever saw in my life. She must have weighed 200 pounds, she had arms like hams, and her legs were even fatter. I almost walked out, but that face, that beautiful face, it was her.
“I signed her on the spot for around $400 a week. That was a lot of money and I had to give Stiller a contract, too, because that was the only way I could get her to come to America.
“I whispered to Greta Gustafson as tactfully as I knew how that in America we don’t like fat ladies, but I said not to worry because we had doctors and other people at the studio who would help her lose weight. ‘Ya,’ she said, ‘I know dot you Americans like scrawny wimin. I lose for you.’
“When I got back to Hollywood, Thalberg and everyone else I showed the pictures of her to said I was crazy. But when she arrived, almost a year later, she had lost nearly seventy pounds and had learned to speak English very well. We named her Greta Garbo and you don’t need to be told I was right.”
In January 1926 the nation’s theatre owners listed the top ten productions they had booked during the previous twelve months. “All ten of those were MGM films,” Mayer recalled proudly in 1943. “And I bet if they had gone down to the twentieth picture we would have had most of those, too.”
Mayer never wavered from his policy of giving youth a chance in all aspects of the motion picture industry. “I knew what youth was all about in 1924,” he told the New York Herald Tribune in 1950. “I know what it is all about today now that I am sixty-five. I started young and stayed young; I hired young people around me and taught them to think, as I did, that the sky was the limit if they weren’t afraid of hard work.”
But he always blended youthful talents with veteran performers and directors. He probably created more stars at MGM than all the other studios did, combined. Asked what makes a great star, Mayer told The American Weekly in 1948 that the question was a tough one to answer. “So many people think they know the answer and have spouted off with erroneous answers that the general public has an entire misconception about stars and how they are made.
“I hope you made a note that I said ‘made’ not ‘born,’” he said. “The idea of a star being born is bush-wah. A star is made, created, carefully and coldbloodedly built up from nothing, from nobody.
“The raw material is what counts. That is what I look for. I have standards that I expect to be met. I know in here (he patted his heart), I can tell by instinct, after years of looking, not for great stars, but for interesting faces. When sound arrived, I added, as stage directors had done for generations, interesting voices.
“But real greatness only comes from persistence. The great stars at MGM would do anything for a chance at fame. That’s how they often came to our attention. They did something to make themselves stand out from the crowd.
“But in the final count, it was we, at MGM, who made them stars. We made them with our brains, our know-how, and our enthusiasm. Without us, the trainers, most of today’s stars would be out there selling shoes or waiting on tables. Because of us they are millionaires, idolized the world over. They are stars because they were made into stars by people like me, not because they were born stars.”
It is interesting to note that Mayer, in an article printed in Festival Magazine in 1939, under his by-line, said just the opposite. “Actors are born, not taught,” he wrote. “The inner spark must be there, but if this exists, training helps bring the quality in the actor out.”
When sound arrived at MGM in 1928, the studio had on its payroll one of the greatest electronic wizards ever to grace a film studio. “Douglas Shearer arrived at MGM in 1925,” said Mayer. “We let him tinker with his toys and he gave us better cameras, he gave us better lighting, he gave us real sound on film when other studios were still experimenting with records synchronized to the action. He won more Academy Awards than any other man for his technical brilliance, and yet Shearer was never once seen on the nation’s screens. Douglas Shearer is one of the secrets that we nurtured from raw material. He is one of the unseen heroes who made MGM great.”
At a time when people in the entertainment world were reluctant to identify themselves as belonging to any political party, Mayer was the odd man out. In both 1928 and 1932 he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention. A close friend of Herbert Hoover, he is said to have spent as much as a million dollars of his own money trying to get Hoover elected president.
But he refused to allow any contract artists at MGM to support any specific candidate. “We can’t afford to alienate fifty percent of our audience,” he told Jean Harlow, even though she too wanted to speak out for Hoover.
Mayer claimed he continued learning every day of his life. He kept a huge dictionary on his desk, and first thing each morning he would open it at random. Everything else had to wait while he found his “word of the day.” He ran his finger down every column until he discovered a word he had not heard before. After writing the word and its definition on a piece of paper, he would glance at it several times during the day until it, and its meaning, was fixed in his brain. If a visitor to his office used a word he didn’t understand, he would hold up his hand for the speaker to stop talking. “Now what was that word you just used?” he would say. Sometimes he would ask for it to be spelled out. Then he checked it in his dictionary. Then he nodded, and added, “Carry on, I understand now what you are saying.”
Asked by a reporter why he needed to learn words that likely he would never use, he replied: “Use them, I would never use them. I hate big words. But I want to be intelligent enough to know what they mean if someone else uses them.”
When Winston Churchill visited Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, Mayer was thrilled to discover that this political giant, visiting from England, was no taller than himself. He mentioned to Churchill that size did not correspond to greatness, and Churchill is said to have replied, “We know that Mr. Mayer, but do our people?”
Churchill was told of Mayer’s morning habit of reading his dictionary, and in the brief speech he gave at the banquet at which he was honoured, he spoke as was his habit, using only a basic vocabulary, getting his points across by his superb delivery and appealing personality. Toward the end of his speech he referred to some peoples’ thinking as “antediluvian.” Mayer held up his hand. Churchill bowed gracefully to him, and said, “Mr. Mayer, ‘antediluvian’ is my Uncle Robert’s wife.” As they left the head table, Mayer smiled at Churchill. “You are a bastard, Winston,” he said. “And you are still antediluvian,” the great man replied. As soon as he had seen Churchill away from MGM, Mayer is said to have rushed back to his office to look up the word “antediluvian.” When he found it meant old-fashioned, or antiquated, he is said to have written Churchill using every big word he could find. There is no record that Churchill replied.
It would take several pages to list the great stars Mayer helped create at MGM. Included are Clark Gable, Judy Garland, Lana Turner, Jeanette MacDonald, Spencer Tracy, Mickey Rooney, Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Jimmy Stewart, Joan Crawford, Nelson Eddy, Gene Kelly, Hedy Lamarr, Red Skelton, Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor, and the greatest screen dog of all time, Lassie.
Joan Crawford had this to say about Mayer in 1964. “He is the sweetest, kindest man who ever lived. He called me his daughter and treated me like one. He put me and other MGM stars on pedestals. He created a make-believe world around all of us. It was fun, while it lasted.”
Spencer Tracy, who was regarded by Mayer as one of the studio’s greatest actors, said: “I won’t dispute his assessment, but I think he knows that I act by instinct, just the way he ran his studio. He knew how to pick faces and mould them into stars. The man was a genius, nothing less than a great and loveable man.”
Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, and Louis B. Mayer.
Actor Van Johnson said, in 1975, “Mr. Mayer was like a father to me. If I had troubles I took them to him and he solved them. He told me from the start to trust him and I did. He was the guiding light in my career. Mr. Mayer knew what was right for me, that’s why I’ve been around so long.”
Spangler Arlington Brugh, who was renamed Robert Taylor by Mayer, recalled in 1960 how he once went to Mayer’s office seeking a raise. “I was a star, making the studio millions, and all I got was $100 a week. I wanted an extra fifty, but before I had finished Mayer had convinced me that I ought to be asking for a reduction in salary. He told me of the studio’s financial situation. He told me he had accepted a cut that year (I learned years later that it was from a million to $900,000) and how things were so bad that he might have to cut some people off the payroll. He never specifically mentioned me, but I fell for the tears he shed for all the out of work people in the world.
“I thought I was an actor until that day. That was when I saw the world’s greatest actor give a performance I later learned he had given to dozens of others who dared ask for a raise. He ended by putting his arms around me and telling me if I stuck with him one day I’d be earning a million dollars a year. He was right. I did stick with MGM and I did earn a million, for several years. What can I say about a man who taught me how to act, have humility, and make many millions. He was a great man.”
In 1927 Mayer called all the heads of the major studios to a meeting in his office. He proposed that an organization to be called the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences be created to honour each year the highest standards from every production department of the motion picture industry.
The response was unanimously favourable. Six months later the Academy came into being. Mayer insisted that it should be independent of every studio, and those eligible to vote in any section would only be the peers of those who earned the right to be nominated.
The first awards were presented at a banquet held at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on May 16, 1929. Mayer, sitting at the head table, awaiting the auditors’ tallies of votes to be announced, was beaming with delight. His “baby” had been born and he was convinced MGM would win at least half of the twelve statuettes (not named Oscars for two more years) to be presented.
When it was all over, he left the room in despair. Paramount, Fox, United Artists, and Warner Brothers had taken eleven of the twelve awards. Joseph Farnham was MGM’s only winner for his writing achievements.
Next year, at the insistence of Mayer, who had specifically demanded when the Academy was formed that no studio head must be allowed to dictate policies, only seven awards were handed out. Jack Warner, head of Warner Brothers, announced to the public following the ceremony that Mayer’s manipulations had allowed MGM to take home three of the seven statuettes.
At the 1931 ceremony Warner once more blasted MGM and Mayer when MGM’s Douglas Shearer won the newly added category of sound recording excellence. “How can that be,” said Warner, “when we invented sound?” From that moment on, Mayer and Warner conducted all business through an intermediary. Not until 1943, when they both sat down at a luncheon at MGM, did they get together and make peace by shaking hands.
Walter Pidgeon, the Broadway actor who arrived in Hollywood in 1926 after a career in musical comedy, loved to tell the story of his first meeting with Mayer in his office at MGM. “Mayer greeted me cordially, shook my hand, and asked where I was born,” said Pidgeon. “I told him my home town was Saint John, New Brunswick. He leaped to his feet, shaking with rage. ‘Who told you to say that?’ he yelled. ‘How dare you claim to come from my home town. Get out of my office. We don’t want frauds at MGM.’
“I stood my ground, after all my career was likely at stake. When he calmed down, I told him I really was from Saint John. ‘Then tell me two of the principal streets,’ he demanded. I named Queen Street and Duke Street. ‘That’s no proof,’ he said, somewhat abashed, ‘every town has one of those.’ Then, triumphantly, he yelled, ‘Spell it, spell Saint John, you phoney.’ I spelled it out, as all Saint Johnners would, not ‘St.’ but ‘S-a-i-n-t.’ He stopped me, suddenly he was smiling. ‘You really do come from Saint John, don’t you. I was just testing you. Tell me about Saint John. For two hours we talked about Saint John.
“Suddenly he looked at his watch. ‘Tell me, what did you want to see me about?’ I told him I was waiting his approval for a contract with MGM. Without another word he called his secretary, Ida Koverman. ‘Ida,’ he said, ‘prepare a contract for this man from Saint John, he will tell you his name, and Ida, add another fifty dollars a week on the contract for a good Canadian.’ We shook hands and just like that I was under contract to MGM. ‘You do act, don’t you?’ he asked. I nodded and left the room.”
On September 4, 1932, MGM director Paul Bern was found dead in the home at 9820 Easton Drive in Beverly Hills that he shared with his wife, actress Jean Harlow. He had died from a single gunshot wound to his head. Married only a few months to Harlow, one of MGM’s most important stars of the early 1930s, he was considered to have a brilliant future in the film industry.
The house maid who arrived at the Bern-Harlow home around seven a.m., according to neighbours, told police that she found Bern dead on the floor of the main bedroom shortly after ten a.m. and had immediately called Mayer at his home in Bel Air, who told her to call the police.
After this the story gets a little confused. The police department records show they were not called until eleven a.m. No explanation was ever made for the delay in notifying them.
Mayer was first at the house. He claimed he was let in by the maid, but neighbours across the street told newspaper reporters they saw Harlow let him in at around seven-thirty a.m. He later publicly denied arriving before ten-thirty a.m., a time his chauffeur confirmed.
The second arrival, at eight-thirty a.m. according to neighbours, who must have been rather nosy, was Howard Strickling, with another man never identified. Strickling was listed as head of publicity at MGM, but he told writers many times that his principal job was to make sure no hint of scandal ever touched MGM stars. Strickling told police he arrived just after ten-thirty a.m.
Mayer and Strickling said they found a note on the bed beside the body. If it was genuine it absolved Harlow of any possible involvement. The note ended: “… this is the only way, I am terribly sorry.” It was signed “Paul.”
When police were finally called, remarkably by the maid, despite the presence of Mayer and Strickling, neighbours told newspaper reporters that cars had been coming and going from the house since seven-thirty a.m. They mentioned, in particular, a white limousine with dark windows that took someone away around ten a.m.
The maid, or whoever called Mayer, must have been in the house at seven a.m. because phone company logs registered a call to his home at 7:02 a.m.
The maid stuck by her story that she called Mayer after ten a.m. and then called the police immediately. No call was logged to Mayer at that time and police records and telephone company logs showed the police call was not made until eleven a.m. “Sometimes they make mistakes,” said the maid, and that was apparently accepted as a reasonable explanation. Apparently no one thought to ask the maid how she came to be in possession of Mayer’s private telephone number. Surely it is much more likely that Harlow, who had the telephone number, made the call just after the maid arrived to discover the tragedy.
That Mayer and Strickling were there when the police arrived is not in question, but no one seemed to ask why — if Mayer was really called only minutes before the police were notified, as the maid suggested — they had arrived first when both Mayer and Strickling lived in homes much further away from the Bern-Harlow house than the police station.
The unknown man, seen by neighbours to arrive with Strickling, was never identified, and the investigation police team apparently accepted the statements of Mayer and Strickling that he never existed.
Harlow was said to have spent the night at the home of her parents because she was worried about her mother’s health. Nobody admitted phoning from the Bern-Harlow home to her parents’ home despite telephone company records that logged a ten-thirty a.m. call. Was this made by Mayer or Strickling to make sure Harlow had arrived safely in her white limousine before the police were notified?
Mayer perhaps unwittingly let the cat out of the bag in 1943 when he briefly mentioned the tragedy. “We could do anything in those days, there was always a way to avert scandal,” he said. “We had the best lawyers, and the police officers who investigated were often far too captivated by the glamour of MGM to investigate too carefully. But we were sometimes quite stupid. Bern’s suicide note was written in green ink, and no one, not even me, noticed. But that’s not a story I want to talk about.”
In 1973 Howard Strickling revealed, without realising it, what Mayer was trying to hide thirty years earlier. In a television interview he talked about MGM’s fan-mail department. “The stars couldn’t possibly answer all the thousands of letters they received,” he said, “so we solved that problem by hiring a number of handwriting experts; let’s be honest, they were forgers, some of whom had served time for their handiwork. We offered them legitimate work using their talents. They could imitate the writing and signature of every important person on the lot. They signed almost every photograph that left the studio in the 1930s and 1940s.
“We had, at first, a little problem with this system. We had to be sure which were real signatures and which were the forgeries. So we arranged that everything the forgers wrote must be in green ink. They had fountain pens full of green ink, and ink pots to refill them. Everything they wrote that went out of the studio was in green ink. It worked as a safeguard and I never recall any problems from our hiring former convicts. They lived, as far as I know, exemplary lives.”
But did they? Could it be that the unidentified man who accompanied Strickling to the Harlow house was one of these forgers? Isn’t it reasonable, knowing of Mayer’s statement about green ink, that the studio forger wrote the “suicide” note, with a fountain pen he carried in his pocket, at the urging of Mayer and Strickling? If Harlow was at the house when the fatal shot was fired, that could account for the seven a.m. early call to Mayer.
Harlow was put under a doctor’s care at her mother’s house, and police who wanted to interview her were held at bay for a full week before he permitted her to be questioned. Police, who kept a car outside the house for the entire week, reported that Strickling and Mayer visited Harlow on several occasions and were permitted by the doctor to talk to her.
Was she kept on ice until her story for the police was perfected? Possibly. But all this does not make Harlow a murderer, as a number of newspapers hinted. But it does suggest she was present when the fatal shot was fired and was spirited away by Mayer or Strickling to make sure she was in no way involved in the tragedy. Harlow was never called to testify at the inquest and a finding of “suicide while of unsound mind” was announced.
An interesting footnote to the story is that several newspapers, not satisfied with the verdict, reported that the house maid vanished immediately after she had testified at the inquest. She was found two years later by a reporter who received a tip that she, and her husband, were living in a beautiful home in, of all places, Haverhill, Massachusetts. Neither worked but appeared to have a generous income from a source they refused to divulge. Only days after the story of her discovery was printed she and her husband again disappeared and there was never any further report of her location.
In 1933 Mayer faced another crisis. One of his most competent actors, Lee Tracy, had been sent with director Howard Hawks to Mexico to film Viva Villa. Tracy was fast becoming a big box-office name, despite the fact that he had one major problem. He drank too much. Hawks told Mayer he could control the difficult star, and Mayer agreed to the casting decision.
Mayer was to regret his decision when the telephone rang beside his bedside at three a.m. Hawks announced that “Tracy is in jail. Send someone with money to get him out.” Not waiting for any explanation, Mayer slammed down the phone, redialed, and yelled orders to his “action team.”
A plane containing lawyers and money men arrived in Mexico within two hours. An hour later Tracy was out of jail, and returned to Los Angeles in the same plane.
Hawks told the full story publicly to news reporters in 1970 when he was returning to Mexico, for the first time in thirty-seven years, with John Wayne to film Rio Lobo.
“Tracy had been drinking heavily after we had finished filming and he went to his room in the hotel we had taken over, to rest. When he woke up he needed to go to the bathroom, and in his confused state he went out on the balcony and urinated down on the street below. This might have been forgiven, except for the fact that he wasn’t aware the Chapultepec Military Cadets were marching below. The Mexican authorities took it as an intentional insult and Tracy was hauled off to jail.
“Mayer’s ‘hit squad’ arrived before morning and Tracy was released. I was told it cost more than $100,000 to grease the palms of police officers and government officials. But it worked, and Tracy was whisked away before they could lay charges.
“Mayer called me at nine o’clock and said he was sending a replacement for Tracy. I told him I refused to accept a substitute, that we had done all but a few scenes and could finish without Tracy. I told him if he insisted on a substitute I wouldn’t direct the film.
“He answered simply that if I didn’t I would never work for him again. And I didn’t. He said he would blacklist Lee Tracy and he could do it in those days, he was a very powerful man. Tracy never worked at MGM again. He had a big hit on Broadway with Front Page, and was expected to repeat that success when a film of the play was made in Hollywood. But Mayer blocked him by buying the film rights and hiring Pat O’Brien to make the film.
“Mayer told every studio head that he would never lend them any of his stars if they used Tracy. And he told the actors at MGM that if any of them appeared anywhere with Tracy he would throw them out of Hollywood. No one dared go against Louis B. Mayer in those days.”
Joseph Mankiewicz, the renowned writer, producer and director, told a humorous story about Mayer in 1953. “Warner Brothers had just had a massive hit with the musical 42nd Street,” he told the trade paper, Variety. “I was called into his office. Mayer banged his finger on the front page of the trade paper that headlined Warners’ success. ‘Joseph,’ he said, ‘we’ve got to beat them at their own game. I want a script on my desk next week.’ ‘What’s the theme?’ I asked him. ‘Theme,’ he said. ‘You decide the theme. I’ll give you the title. We’ll call it 43rd Street.’”
Mayer never forgot Florence Lawrence and her co-operation with him when she visited his Orpheum Theatre in Haverhill, Massachusetts, in his early days in the film industry. When he heard that she was in financial trouble he sent his car to bring her to MGM. There, he presented her with a proposal. “I will put you under a lifetime contract at MGM and will promise you not extra roles, but the best parts we can find for you.”
Lawrence was overwhelmed. She is said to have wept in his office. But she didn’t forget other former silent era stars who, like her, were down on their luck. When she told Mayer of their plight he immediately ordered two of his top aides to locate and bring to the studio any of the silent stars who were found to be living in poverty.
The list reached twenty before Mayer felt he had tracked down everyone who needed help. He put people like King Baggott, Flora Finch, Lillian Rich, Barbara Bedford, Naomi Childers, and Mahlon Hamilton on lifetime contracts. As with Florence Lawrence, he promised them roles in MGM films. He kept his promise.
It was two years before news of his generosity leaked out. The news stunned the industry, which had never seen this generous side of Mayer’s makeup before. Some writers brushed the generosity aside by saying it was nothing more than a distasteful publicity stunt. But most newspapers ran stories congratulating him, and more than 5,000 letters were said to have reached him at MGM from fans applauding his move. Asked for a comment, he said, “If we can’t look after our own, who will? They were once stars, and at MGM they will always remain stars.”
Some of the former actors asked to be given chances to shine in new fields as camera operators, make-up artists, or directors. Several made the transition very successfully and became productive members of the MGM family. One became a gateman at MGM, at his own request. “I can meet the fans here,” he said. “I’ll bet I’m the only gateman in Hollywood who signs dozens of autographs every day.”
Mayer made visits to Canada in 1936 and 1939. On the first trip he was the guest of honour at a luncheon given by the City of Saint John and presented with a “Freedom of the City” scroll. He is reported to have visited the grave of his mother, and talked with a hotel porter who was one of his friends in his schooldays.
In 1939 he visited Fredericton, and was given an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws by the University of New Brunswick, and another “Freedom of the City” scroll from the mayor.
That same year he was listed by the Securities and Exchange Commission as the highest salaried executive in the United States. He received $1,296,503, seven times as much as the president. He held this title for six straight years.
In the late 1930s Mayer started to build one of the finest racing stables ever assembled in California. Over a ten-year period, his horses won more than $10 million in purse money. His breeding showplace, at Perris, in Riverside County, produced some of the finest thoroughbred horses ever to race in the United States.
In 1950 he decided to sell his vast turf holdings. The Los Angeles Examiner reported that he disposed of his prized stables “like it was the greatest production of his film studio, and with the dignity which had been the trade mark of his entire career.”
In 1943 he broke the colour barrier that had, until that time, given coloured (as they were then called) actors only supporting and secondary roles in the major studios. Often segregated in the studio commissaries and kept apart from white actors in dressing rooms and make-up rooms, they were made equal at MGM with one stroke of Mayer’s pen.
Announcing his intention to film Cabin in the Sky, he signed a document that stated no one would, in future, be employed at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer if they in any way discriminated against coloured performers. He wrote a memo to every department head that said, “All coloured performers and other employees of MGM will, in future, have the same access as white performers and employees to all the facilities of this studio.” He kept his word, showing others the way, by dining in the studio commissary every day for a week with the star of Cabin in the Sky, Ethel Waters. They are reported to have “walked arm in arm back to the sound stage each day following lunch.”
In 1944 Mayer shocked the industry by announcing that he and his wife Margaret would separate on a trial basis. Instead of a fortieth wedding anniversary the studio was planning for Mayer and his wife, they had to handle a morose Mayer who for several months seemed too preoccupied to carry out his daily routine.
In 1947 Margaret and Louis Mayer were divorced. Mrs. Mayer received $3.2 million in a settlement that was made before the case reached the courts. The couple were friendly in court and the proceedings were over in less than fifteen minutes. “I simply feel I must get on with my own life,” said Margaret Mayer. “His work is now his wife and his life. There is no room for me any more.”
In 1948 he eloped to Yuma, Arizona, with Lorena Danker, the forty-two-year-old widow of a popular radio announcer, Danny Danker. When the press heard of his visit to Yuma they headed there in droves, only to find that every move they made was controlled by the Yuma police, directed by Mayer’s “publicity man” Howard Strickling, who was, apparently, still manipulating police departments.
Louis B. Mayer, with June Allyson and James Stewart, celebrating MGM’s silver anniversary in 1949.
During his career as the “Hollywood Rajah,” as Bosley Crowther’s book about Mayer was called, the mogul received many honours. He was cited for outstanding American activities by the California Department of the American Legion, and received the Gold Citizenship Medal, the highest award given by the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
France made him an officer of the French Legion of Honour. Czechoslovakia gave him the Cross of the Order of the White Lion. Mexico presented him with the Order of the Aztec Eagle. Jewish War Veterans of the United States voted unanimously to give him their Gold Medal of Merit.
But the honour he most revered was the special Oscar he received in 1950 for his twenty-seven years of achievement in the film industry. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had finally recognized the man who was their founder. When he reached the podium to receive his award he was so overcome with emotion that he wasn’t able to speak. He merely bowed to the audience, which was standing applauding, and ran off the stage.
On June 1, 1951, Mayer left MGM for the last time. Dore Schary, the man he brought in to replace Irving Thalberg, had gradually fallen out of favour with Mayer. Schary took his beef to MGM’s parent company in New York, and won the support of the board of directors. Mayer resigned and left the studio he had built from nothing to greatness. He never again passed through the studio gates.
The following year he was named chairman of the board and technical advisor to the Cinerama Corporation. The floundering company obviously hoped his name would bring them the extra capital they needed, but it didn’t happen, and a few years later the company ceased operations.
That same year he received the Lewis Milestone Award from the Screen Producers Guild for his contributions to the motion picture industry. “It is ironic,” said Mayer when he received the award, “that I am getting an award named for a director and producer who I gave his start in our industry. But I am honoured, very honoured, to be with all my friends today.”
Sy Weintraub, then head of Sol Lesser Productions in Hollywood, picked up on what he considered an omission by the film industry, and proposed to George Stevens, then president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, that an award be given annually to the person in the film industry who does most to recognize and encourage new talent. “This should be named the Louis B. Mayer Award, to perpetuate the memory of the man who did more than any other man to recognize and nurture new talent.” The Academy board promised to study the matter, but nothing more was heard of the proposal.
In January of 1957 Mayer made his last bid to make a comeback in the industry he loved. He and Jack Cummings, his nephew from Saint John, New Brunswick, who had produced many of MGM’s greatest musicals, including Kiss Me Kate, Lovely to Look At, Three Little Words, and The Broadway Melodies of 1937 and 1940, announced their intention to film the Lerner and Loewe musical from Broadway, Paint Your Wagon. “We expect,” said Mayer, “that filming will start in October at a studio to be named.” Mayer added “that neither Mr. Cummings or I will consider using MGM’s facilities.”
In August newspapers ran front page stories to say Mayer had entered Stanford Hospital in San Francisco for treatment of a “moderately severe” blood disorder. On September 15 he returned to his home in Bel Air, saying that he “felt much better and expected to be personally involved in the October start of Paint Your Wagon.”
On September 25 he was rushed to the University of California Medical Centre in Los Angeles, suffering from “severe anemia.” A hospital spokesman said on the following day that “Mr. Mayer is progressing satisfactorily.” No further bulletins were issued at Mayer’s request, and callers were simply told “he is doing well.”
On Tuesday, October 29, 1957, newspapers and radios around the world announced that Louis B. Mayer had died from leukemia. Most papers, including the New York Times, made the story front-page news.
The Los Angeles Examiner ran a headline that said, “A Giant Has Left the American Scene.” Tributes came from all parts of the world. Vice-president Richard Nixon said: “The motion picture industry has lost one of its really great geniuses, and I have lost a friend.” David O. Selznick, who had at one time been married to Mayer’s daughter Irene, said: “Louis B. Mayer was the greatest single figure in the history of motion pictures.” Samuel Goldwyn, who never before professed anything but hatred for Mayer, changed his tune. “Louis B. Mayer has made an immense contribution to the motion picture industry.” Jack Warner, his enemy for many years, said: “The industry that owes him so much will sorely miss one of its greatest creative minds.”
More than 2,000 people jammed Wilshire Boulevard Temple for the funeral service. Almost every big star of motion pictures attended. Spencer Tracy delivered the eulogy. Tracy said: “He stands head and shoulders above the mystic memory of Hollywood’s past.”
Jeanette MacDonald sang “Ah Sweet Mystery of Life.” She said later: “I promised him to do this a few years ago, but neither of us expected the sad day would come so soon.”
The pallbearers included Howard Strickling, the trouble-shooter who had stood by Mayer throughout his life.
Rabbi Edgar Magnin, a friend of Mayer for more than fifty years, officiated at the service. Some months after the service, when it was revealed that Mayer’s estate was less than $7 million, Magnin said he felt it should now be told that during the thirty years before his death he had given away in excess of $15 million to people in need. “If he heard of a family being burned out of their home, he arranged for the house to be rebuilt at his expense without anyone knowing the donor’s name. And he and I would travel to the site of the rebuilding and work side by side hammering in nails and doing anything else that had to be done. It was easy for us; outside Hollywood few knew him by sight, and he always felt that giving money was not enough. ‘You must give your person, too,’ he told me. Over the years we went where there were fires, tragedies, floods, you name it, and Louis B. Mayer, the ‘meanest man in Hollywood’ paid the bill.”
Mayer was buried quietly, with only his widow, Lorena, his two daughters, Irene [the former Mrs. David O. Selznick], and Edith [Mrs. William Goetz], and their four children attending the interment at the Jewish Home of Peace Cemetery.
Much of the $7 million that remained after taxes had been paid went to the Louis B. Mayer Foundation, set up some years before his death to provide money for medical research. His second wife and two daughters had been provided for prior to his death. The Foundation’s money was wisely invested, and figures released in 1993 showed that it had disbursed, in the thirty-six years since Mayer’s death, many more millions than the original bequest in grants to medical researchers and hospitals.
But, like Mayer’s generosity in his lifetime, the money had been given away quietly to the deserving researchers still seeking to find a cure for the leukemia that ended his life in 1957.
In 1986, the last chapter in the history of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was written when Ted Turner, the communications and sports mogul, bought the rights to all MGM films, and the Sony Corporation bought the biggest studio in the world and converted it into television production studios. On April 18, 1986, the MGM lion logo, eighteen feet in height, that had dominated the administration building at the Culver City studio since 1926, was dismantled and lowered to the ground before being carted away, perhaps appropriately, to a nearby metal scrapyard.