Flashback, April 1924: Merger Sends MGM Roaring

A century ago this month, what became the most structured—and successful—studio in Hollywood’s Golden Age was formed with the merger of Metro Pictures Corp., Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Productions.

Though theater chain magnate Marcus Loew orchestrated the deal, the prime mover for the next 27 years in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer—MGM for short—turned out to be a Ukrainian emigrant who not only celebrated American values onscreen, but even pushed his actual birthdate up to July 4 to coincide with that of his adopted country.

In his office in Culver City, studio head Louis B. Mayer may not have been the most hated movie mogul (that dishonor probably goes to Jack L. Warner), but he was the most paternalistic—an executive you wanted on your side and dreaded to cross.

Those in “L.B.”’s lair might find themselves subject to shouting (MGM president Nicholas Schenck, who, upon Loew’s death, dealt with the theater side of the business from New York), groping (young musical star Judy Garland, who, according to notes for an unpublished memoir, claimed she finally summoned the nerve to tell him to stop), and crying (matinee idol Robert Taylor, who, after having his boss cry on his shoulders, gave up his demand for more money).

Directors might fume at rushed production schedules, favorite scenes left on the cutting-room floor, or being replaced mid-production.

But all of these C-suite theatrics produced as many as 50 films a year, including Gone With the Wind, all-star vehicles like the Oscar-winning Grand Hotel, beloved musicals such as The Wizard of Oz —and, in 1937, in the midst of the Great Depression, a princely yearly salary of $1.3 million for Mayer.

The roaring lion appearing at the start of its films may have been MGM’s most instantly recognizable branding element, but its most important asset was its stable of actors.

“More Stars Than There Are in Heaven,” the studio’s advertising slogan went—a boast that held true from the silent era (e.g., Greta Garbo, Jack Gilbert, Buster Keaton, Lon Chaney) well into the coming of sound (Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow, Gene Kelly).

The Culver City complex was a true movie factory—“scattered over six separate lots, cramped and shedded and separated from one another by public thoroughfares,” with Lot 1 given over to stages  dressing rooms, and offices, according to James Curtis’ 2011 biography of the studio’s most respected actor, Spencer Tracy.

Here, stars were manufactured virtually from whole cloth (Lana Turner, Ava Gardner), shrewdly redesigned when found to be imperfect elsewhere (Tracy, Wallace Beery, and Marie Dressler); or imported from Europe (Garbo and Hedy Lamarr).

It all stemmed from Mayer’s frequently expressed belief that the movies were the only business where the assets walked out the gate every night, and Thalberg’s understanding that “without stars, a company is in the position of starting over every year.”

And, long before Hollywood went endlessly to the well with the “Star Wars” and Marvel series, MGM milked the commercial value of multi-film franchises, including:

*The 12 Tarzan movies made by Johnny Weissmuller from 1932 to 1948;

*The six “Thin Man” movies starring William Powell and Myrna Loy;

*The nine Doctor Kildare movies made by Lew Ayres;

* Mickey Rooney’s 15 “Andy Hardy” films from 1937 to 1946;

*The 10 “Maisie” comedies with Ann Sothern as a lovable Brooklyn showgirl; and

* The “aqua-musicals” of “America’s Mermaid,” Esther Williams.

Several Mayer lieutenants were crucial in churning out all this product:

* Irving Thalberg: Nicknamed the “Boy Wonder” by the press and “The Last Tycoon” by F. Scott Fitzgerald (who fictionalized him as the title character of his posthumously published Hollywood novel), he served as production head of the new studio and a kind of surrogate son to Mayer, before dying of pneumonia, after a dozen years of overwork as the epitome of a Hollywood creative producer, at age 37.

* Eddie Mannix: Installed as a studio snitch by Nicholas Schenck, he soon went over to Mayer’s side, where, as general manager, he became LB’s indispensable “fixer”—soothing insecure stars, along with squelching innumerable scandals involving pregnancies, fatal auto accidents, abortions, a precursor of Harvey Weinstein's sexual harassment crimes—and, some have argued, the murder of “Three Stooges” director Ted Healy.

* Howard Strickling: Head of publicity, the studio exec in charge of communication was, ironically, afflicted with a communication handicap of his own—stuttering. But, 24/7, he controlled access to the industry’s greatest assembly of talent, rewarding reporters who played ball and punishing those who didn’t.

* Howard Dietz: Head of advertising and publicity at the studio for 30 years, he not only came up with its famous lion (an idea he borrowed from the mascot of his alma mater, Columbia University), but also pursued a simultaneous sideline as the lyricist partner of Arthur Schwartz.

The landmark 1948 Supreme Court case United States v. Paramount effectively ended the quarter century of studio dominance by outlawing the block-booking system of selling multiple films to a theater as a unit and by recommending the breakup of studio-theater monopolies.

Three years later, Nicholas Schenck finally resolved his multi-decade clash with Mayer by persuading the studio’s board of directors to replace the mogul with writer-producer Dore Schary, who would suffer the same fate as his predecessor five years later.  

By the 1960s, MGM’s onetime ability to achieve profit margins even with handsomely mounted productions had devolved into boom-or-bust blockbusters that left it vulnerable to takeovers. It’s now a subsidiary of Amazon. 

Quote of the Day (Kenneth Roberts, on a Colonial Action Hero)

“The man himself was thick That was my first impression, one of solid thickness: not mental thickness, but physical — a kind of physical unkillableness, it might be called.

“His lips were thick, and so was his long, straight nose. His hands, clasped before him on the table, were enormous and muscular; and their fingers, pallid by comparison with the brown of his face and hands, looked parboiled, as though left overlong in water. Beneath his large eyes the flesh was puffy; and his shoulders, sloping down from a bull-like neck, filled his buckskin hunting shirt so solidly that the leather might have been shrunk to fit them. The breadth of his chest and upper arms gave him the look of holding a deep breath….

“Yet when he spoke, his manner was genial, as though he addressed an equal — which was contrary to the attitude of important military men, according to my understanding. When he smiled, it was hard to tell the meaning of his smile. It might have been considered admonitory, or kindly, or even as sheepish, depending on the state of mind of the person to whom he spoke; but to me it seemed to indicate that he was, at heart, a good-natured man.”—American novelist Kenneth Roberts (1885-1957), Northwest Passage (1937)

For about two decades in the last century, Kenneth Roberts was a perennial presence on bestseller lists with his sprawling works of historical fiction. More than 40 years ago, when I was a student assistant at my local library, his novels could still be found on shelves. But when I went looking for a copy of Northwest Passage, perhaps his most famous one, I couldn’t get my hands on it, so I ordered it through Amazon.

I doubt that you’ll find many college English classes that will cite Roberts as a creator of an innovative or dazzling style, the way they might with Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Hemingway. But as the above passage shows, he could write vividly.

You can practically see in your mind’s eye the historical figure he was describing: Major Robert Rogers, a colonial military leader in the French and Indian Wars whose unconventional tactics foreshadowed the modern “Special Forces.” (I briefly described his life in this blog post from four years ago.)

Once they bought this novel and dreamed of adapting it for film, executives at MGM must surely have had one of their studio actors in mind for the role: Spencer Tracy. The two-time Oscar winner might not have possessed the matinee-idol looks of Clark Gable. 

But his bulk (solid at this time in his late 30s, overweight as he aged) strongly suggested Rogers, and his naturalistic style of acting gave him an everyman quality seen more recently in the likes of Gene Hackman, Brian Dennehy and Ed Harris.

I remember as a child seeing Tracy in the 1940 movie made from Roberts’ novel. (Well, it turned out only to be the first half of it, but that’s a story for another day.) I couldn’t imagine anyone better able to lead a group of men through all manner of perils than the Major Rogers he created onscreen, including the memorable “human-chain” scene across a treacherous river.

Not unlike Tracy himself, Rogers— at least as imagined by Roberts—could find something within himself to win the respect of all kinds of men. But at bottom, his appeal may have rested—as suggested by Tracy’s smile in the accompanying picture here—on the fact that he was “a good-natured man.”

This Day in Military History (Robert Rogers, Special Ops Pioneer, Dies)

May 18, 1795—Major Robert Rogers, a New Hampshire soldier whose tactics and leadership of an elite unit of unconventional warriors in the French and Indian War foreshadowed the modern “Special Forces,” died alone and impoverished at age 63 in London, far removed from the brilliant exploits in the North American wilderness that made him famous throughout the 13 American colonies.

If you are wondering what a picture of buckskin-clad Spencer Tracy is doing in a post about an 18^th-century military commander, it is because the great actor spurred my interest in this legendary but flawed soldier by playing him, with his usual intensity and conviction, in Northwest Passage, King Vidor’s 1940 adaptation of the bestselling novel by Kenneth Roberts. 

I can still remember being enthralled as a child by numerous scenes in this epic Technicolor tale of daring and survival—notably, a “human chain” that enables “Rogers’ Rangers” to cross a torrential river.

With America more than a year away from entering World War II, Rogers’ exploits showed how America, with little of the intense training that characterized Continental soldiers, could still revolutionize warfare by teaching a motley force unconventional new tactics. 

“Rogers’ Rangers” represented a sharp break with the English tradition of military service, where commissions were bought and common soldiers were drilled to march in strict formation. In contrast, the soldiers that Rogers molded were woodsmen, provincials, farmers, and Indian scouts, all ready to follow their charismatic leader in asymmetrical warfare where traditional methods could not find traction.

The film ended in triumph for Rogers and his soldiers. MGM had originally subtitled their feature “Book One: Rogers’ Rangers,” in the hope that its success would convince the studio’s most acclaimed male star that he should come back for the second half of the Roberts novel. 

But Tracy, exhausted by its arduous on-location filming, saw the downbeat second half of the book as a reason why it should not be filmed. “I’ll play him [Rogers] up to the point where he has achieved his objective, but I’ll be damned if I’ll play him when he becomes a drunkard. Audiences won’t want to see him in that stage of life.”

Offhand, I can think of only two epic films that challenged audiences with second halves that saw their real-life heroes suffer the kind of shattering disillusionment and death that Tracy saw as box-office poison: Lawrence of Arabia and Reds, about the American journalist who served as an eyewitness-participant in the Russian Revolution, John Reed. Northwest Passage, about an American further removed in time, would have been an even harder sell in tracing how its hero subsequently failed at politics, business, and marriage. 

The great 19^th-century historian of the colonial conflict between England and France, Francis Parkman, summed up Rogers’ opposing tendencies in Montcalm and Wolfe: 

“He had passed his boyhood in the rough surroundings of a frontier village. Growing to manhood, he engaged in some occupation which, he says, led him to frequent journeyings in the wilderness between the French and English settlements...He does not disclose the nature of this mysterious employment; but there can be little doubt that it was a smuggling trade with Canada. His character leaves much to be desired. He had been charged with forgery, or complicity in it, seems to have had no scruple in matters of business, and after the war was accused of treasonable dealings with the French and Spaniards in the west. He was ambitious and violent, yet able in more ways than one, by no means uneducated, and so skilled in woodcraft, so energetic and resolute, that his services were invaluable.”

A few of Rogers’ exploits were especially noteworthy, not only for the way he employed speed and surprise against the French and their Native American allies but also for the hardships endured by him and his men:

*The St. Francois Raid, the climax of a 150-mile march, much of it through marshy bog, that ended in the destruction of an Indian village that had served as the launching pad for several deadly raids into the northern colonies; 

*The Second Battle of the Snowshoes, in which, after attempting to ambush the French, Rogers’ men had the tables turned on them—surviving by the skin of their teeth (including, a possibly apocryphal tale claims, by sliding 400 feet down a sheer cliff to a frozen Lake George; and 

*The 1760 capture of Fort Detroit and other French outposts, secured after Rogers and the Rangers marched west—through enemy forests not even charted by the English.

Rogers’ career after the end of the French and Indian Wars marked a tragic fall from grace. He had made an enemy of General Thomas Gage, a rival of Rogers’ commander and mentor, British General Jeffrey Amherst. Gage, as Parkman indicated in the passage I quoted earlier, brought charges of treason against Rogers and had him hauled to Detroit in chains.

Rogers was acquitted following a trial. But, at the start of the American Revolution, he made a worse enemy in George Washington, who, because of the major’s extensive travels in the colonies as unrest spread against English rule, suspected that Rogers was a Loyalist spy. 

Forced to choose side, Rogers elected to fight against the New Englanders he grew up with, even playing a role in one of the earliest English intelligence coups of the war: the capture of Nathan Hale. But he was removed from a leadership role of “The Queen’s Rangers,” and his drinking and indebtedness mounted until he faded into obscurity far from home. 

Nevertheless, his contribution to American warfare remains. It not only was maintained through his aide John Stark, who would win the Battle of Bennington for the colonials in the American Revolution, but through his “Rules of Ranging,” a set of guidelines for guerrilla warfare that is still distributed by the U.S. Army Ranger School.

Quote of the Day (Ian O’Connor, on Palmer and Nicklaus)

“Palmer had a deep but friendly voice; Nicklaus sounded like someone who'd spent ten minutes sucking helium from a balloon. Palmer hit the ball right to left; Nicklaus hit it left to right. Palmer hit it low; Nicklaus hit it high. Palmer landed balls in ponds and hayfields; Nicklaus landed them on fairways and greens. Palmer had a hacker's cut only a mother could love; Nicklaus enjoyed a user’s-manual swing. Palmer was a stab-and-jab putter; Nicklaus stroked through the ball. Palmer made eye contact with everyone; Nicklaus only made eye contact with the pin. Palmer was prompt for his appointments; Nicklaus was often tardy.”—Ian O’Connor, Arnie and Jack: Palmer, Nicklaus, and Golf's Greatest Rivalry (2008)

Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus are on the short list of great sports rivals, along with the likes of Russell vs. Chamberlain, Borg vs. McEnroe, and Bird vs. Magic. As demonstrated insightfully by Ian O’Connor (like me, an alum of St. Cecilia, Englewood, NJ) here, the golf legends’ looks, personalities and styles of play made for the kind of contrasts that sportswriters love.

With 18 victories in major tournaments versus seven for his rival, Nicklaus got the better of Palmer over his long career. But there was a reason why Palmer, who died of heart disease over the weekend at age 87, was called “The King.”

There had been great golfers—Jones, Hagen, Snead, Hogan—before Palmer rose to prominence in the late Fifties, and there would be others (Woods) afterward. But none exuded the dash, drama, friendliness, charisma—the sex appeal, if you will—of Palmer. And the lucrative endorsement deals won for him by agent Mark McCormick paved the way that other golfers would gratefully follow.

But what also fascinates me about Palmer is that nickname, “The King,” possessed by another magnetic figure still active when the golfer was starting out in the Fifties: Clark Gable. Like Palmer, the star of Gone With the Wind enjoyed a rivalry, made up in equal parts of friendship, admiration and envy, with another male, an up-and-coming actor at their studio, MGM: Spencer Tracy.

Like Nicklaus, Tracy used a steely concentration to vault to the top of his profession. And, like the golfer, he earned more honors for his work, winning two Best Oscar Oscars and nine nominations, versus one Oscar and three nominations for Gable. But Tracy and, at the start of his career, Nicklaus were burly men who could not match Gable and Palmer in physical attractiveness or, for that matter, natural crowd-pleasing exuberance. (In the case of Palmer, there was also pull-out-all-the-stops style, memorably encapsulated in the 1973 book that expressed his "philosophy of golf": Go for Broke. Who doesn't love a come-from-behind, thrilling finisher?)

For their part, Gable and Palmer wished they had the laser focus on their craft that helped Tracy and Nicklaus adapt to almost any situation on film sets or on the green.

By the time of their deaths in the 1960s, Gable and Tracy, each secure in his own achievement, viewed the other with considerable respect. So did Palmer and Nicklaus as they became senior citizens. This week, the Web site of “The Golden Bear” prominently featured a photo of the two men smiling and hugging. The caption underneath noted graciously about Palmer: “He was the king of our sport and always will be.”

Quote of the Day (Fr. Flanagan of Boys Town, on At-Risk Youths as ‘Children of God’)

“I know when the idea of a boys’ home grew in my mind, I never thought of anything remarkable about taking in all of the races and all of the creeds. To me, they are all God’s children. They are my brothers. They are children of God. I must protect them to the best of my ability.”—Fr. Edward Flanagan (1886-1948), on Boys Town, quoted in Hugh Reilly and Kevin Warneke, Father Flanagan of Boys Town: A Man of Vision (2008)

Wednesday marked 130 years since the birth, in County Roscommon, Ireland, of Fr. Edward Flanagan, the founder of Boys Town, which offers education and a home for the poor and wayward boys of Omaha. During his lifetime, he was celebrated for his non-punitive treatment of at-risk youth at the orphanage, typified by his famous statement, “There is no such thing as a bad boy.'”

With the passage of time, it’s easy to see that hundreds of thousands of these youths would have been better off if even more attention had been paid to this astute, compassionate cleric.

His mission was actually inspired by his humanitarian work with homeless and jobless men in 1916. As he listened to them, he was struck by a common theme in their lives: their lack of an intact, stable, loving family. He determined that he would do all he could to ensure future children would not suffer a similar fate.

Fr. Flanagan’s work at Boys Town attracted widespread notice, including from Hollywood. The 1938 film Boys Town earned Spencer Tracy, in the role of Fr. Flanagan, his second consecutive Best Actor Oscar.

Having earned an Oscar nomination two years before for playing a priest in San Francisco, the actor was not eager to wear the collar again onscreen. Additionally, he was nervous about playing a person who was still alive--something he had never done before.

According to James Curtis’ biography Spencer Tracy, once the actor decided to take on the role, he sat down for a face-to-face meeting with his subject. “I knew he was studying me…as searchingly as I studied him,” Flanagan recalled, astonished how the actor took in “the way I sat in the chair, the way I talked, the way I pushed the hair back from my forehead.”

The stocky American Tracy did not physically resemble the tall, bespectacled priest with the slight Irish brogue. But his intense preparation and a charm to match his subject’s enabled him to pull off one of his most acclaimed performances.

Fr. Flanagan used the additional publicity brought by the film to travel around the world to promote his vision of treatment of youths. Eventually, he traveled to 31 states and to twelve countries in Asia and in Europe. (He was, in fact, in postwar Germany when he died unexpectedly in 1948.) It is estimated that nearly 90 programs across the globe are directly inspired by his example.

The Irish native, however, was keenly disappointed by his reception back home. When he finally returned to Ireland in 1946, 42 years after coming to America, he visited prisons and industrial schools for youth. He minced no words about the shortcomings of what he saw and heard, calling the reform schools “a scandal, un-Christlike, and wrong.”

The Irish government reacted furiously to his sharp criticism, according to an article on the Web site Irish Central by John Fay. Minister for Justice Gerald Boland said he was “not disposed to take any notice of what Monsignor Flanagan said while he was in this country, because his statements were so exaggerated that I did not think people would attach any importance to them.”

“I wonder what God's judgment will be with reference to those who hold the deposit of faith and who fail in their God-given stewardship of little children," Flanagan worried when he returned to the U.S. 

The extent of that failure was revealed six decades after his prescient warning. In 2009, after a nine-year study, Ireland’s Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse concluded that molestation and rape were "endemic" in boys' facilities, that girls were subject to their own systematic humiliation and degradation, and that government inspectors failed to stop the Dickensian horrors in the church-run reform schools.

“Long after I’m forgotten, Father Flanagan will go down as one of the great humanitarians of the century,” Spencer Tracy predicted. He was wrong about the first part of that sentence, but right about the second: advocates in Omaha are now promoting the cause of Fr. Flanagan's canonization.