Louis B. Mayer - biography, date of birth, place of birth, filmography, clips, Producer.
July 4, 1884, Minsk - October 29, 1957, Los Angeles - American film producer. The real date of his birth remained unknown - presumably July 12. When he received American citizenship, he chose July 4 as his birthday - US Independence Day; moreover, he first indicated 1884, and then 1885.
Fearing pogroms, the family emigrated when Lazarus was about two years old to the United States and settled in Rhode Island.
The family then moved to the Canadian city of Saint John, where Lazarus went to school.
In 1904, nineteen-year-old Louis left St. John and went to Boston, where he continued to earn a living in the "metallurgical" business for some time, but soon married Margaret Schoenberg, and took odd jobs to support his family, and thanks to the occasion got a job in a cinema. Louis and Margaret lived together until 1947.
Mayer, with the help of family and friends, rented and refurbished a run-down 600-seat Gem Theater in Haverhill, Massachusetts that had been used to show burlesque, and opened its first Orpheum on November 28, 1907. ... To overcome the bad reputation of this once-owned community building, Mayer decided to start screenings with a religious film; years later, he called the first film "From the Manger to the Cross", although most sources date this film to 1912. Within a few years, Mayer took over all five Haverhill theaters. Then he formed the Gordon-Mayer partnership with Nathan H. Gordon, which controlled the largest theater network in New England.
In 1914, the partners established their own distribution agency in Boston. Mayer paid D.W. Griffith $ 25,000 for the exclusive rights to screening the 1915 New England film The Birth of a Nation. Mayer in 1916, together with the millionaire Richard A. Rowland (Richard A. Rowland) created in New York the corporation "Metro Pictures" with his film studio. In the same year, the first film by producer Louis Mayer - "The Big Secret" was released.
Two years later, Louis Mayer moved with the firm to Los Angeles out of fear of the Film Patent Company. In the same year, he terminated his partnership with Roland and formed his own production company, Louis B. Mayer Pictures, into which he recruited the already famous Vitagraph actress Anita Steward. The first production of the company was in 1918 the film "Virtuous Wives". In partnership with BP Schulberg, the Mayer-Schulberg studio was created.
Mayer was successful, however, in April 1924, Marcus Loew - owner of the Loews Theaters network acquired and merged three film companies - Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures by Samuel Goldwin and Mayer Pictures - into the corporation. Metro Goldwyn Meyer (MGM) under its control from New York. Mayer, in his Los Angeles-based VP of Operations, effectively ran MGM for the next 27 years. In 1925, Mayer produced his most successful film, Ben-Hur.
Lowe died in 1927, leaving control of MGM to Nicholas Schenck. In 1929, the owner of a rival studio of Fox Film Corporation (Fox Film), William Fox, organized the purchase of a controlling stake in the company from Schenk. Louis Mayer and Irving Thalberg were outraged - they were co-founders of MGM, but they were not informed about the deal; this worsened the already tense relationship between Schenck and Mayer. Mayer approached the Justice Department and through his political connections secured an antitrust charge against Fox. The fact that Fox was seriously injured in the summer of 1929 in a traffic accident, as well as the stock market crash in the fall of 1929, put an end to the company amalgamation, even if the ministry approved. Nevertheless, Schenck blamed Mayer for the collapse of the deal and did not forgive him.
Mayer wanted to see in films the so-called "healthy entertainment", fear of God, patriotism, family values ??- all this came to escapism. He often ran into production manager Irving Thalberg, who preferred complex and critical work. He eventually pushed him out of the business while he was recovering from a heart attack in 1932. During the transition period, Mayer ran the studio, replacing his son-in-law, D. Selznik. Mayer later took over the post himself when Thalberg died in 1936.
Louis Meyer made MGM the most financially successful film studio in the world, the only one that paid dividends to shareholders during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Under Mayer, MGM has produced many successful films with darling actors such as Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Lon Cheney, Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow, Judy Garland and many more. Mayer himself became the highest paid wage earner in the United States, with a seven-figure income.
Louis Meyer had a reputation for being a tyrannical business man, who was guided by rationality when choosing suitable subjects for films, and was said to have narrow views. Often he insisted and sought to rework the script, intervened in the direction. To many, he was remembered as a very unpleasant person who did not disdain in relations with stubborn actors to reach anger, threats, blackmail. In particular, well-known producer Michael Balcon, who was forced to work for her from November 1936 to May 1938, was greatly relieved to leave MGM. However, Katharine Hepburn referred to him as a "good person" (she personally signed her contracts with Mayer), and young actresses such as Debbie Reynolds, June Allison and Leslie Caron revered him as their own father.
An active member of the Republican Party, Mayer was deputy chairman from 1931-1932 and chairman of the board of its branch, the California Republican Party, from 1932-1933. Supported, in particular, Herbert Hoover, who became president of the United States, and Joseph McCarthy, the future senator. He and Thalberg played a part in the defeat of Upton Sinclair's EPIC reform movement in California in 1934, pioneering modern public relations and a set of specially made mock short films attacking Sinclair.
By 1948, with the introduction of television and a change in public opinion, MGM suffered significant losses. In addition, the Supreme Court decided that the link between the film studio and the cinema network should be severed.
MGM's corporate office in New York in 1948 ruled that screenwriter and director Dor Sheri, recently hired by RKO Radio Pictures, could return - he preferred more progressive and left-liberal themes and did not work with Mayer. In 1951 MGM was left without an Oscar for the third time, which provoked a new conflict between Mayer and Schenck. Sheri was re-hired as production manager. Sheri's activities were in stark contrast to Mayer's principles, and he delivered an ultimatum - either he or Sheri, after which he was fired by Schenck. Mayer tried to overthrow Schenk on the board of directors, but failed. He had to retire.
Read also about Jacques Offenbach.All Information About: Louis B. Mayer - Biography, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Filmography.
Author: Jane Watson |
