Film empire
reaches
end of era
By TOM BONNELLY
(C) 1973, The Washington Post
WASHINGTON— “M-G-M Scrams
Theatre Distribution” was the headline in
Variety. The accompanying story said that
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, for several
decades the acknowledged leader of the
motion picture industry, wasn’t folding up
entirely, as persistent rumors had it. No,
as Metro president James Aubrey ex
plained it, the company was pulling out of
theatrical film distribution because “the
bottom has fallen out of the market.”
Henceforth M-G-M would concentrate
on features for TV, he said, and on the
hotel business, and would make “highly
selective quality films,” no more than six
or eight a year, to be released theatrically
through other companies.
As far as veteran film fans are con
cerned (I have no hesitation in speaking for
them, being a V.F.F. in good standing
myself) the news that M-G-M, which once
turned out a movie every single week, is
going to make a mere half dozen films a
year, to be released through Paramount or
Twentieth or whomever, is only a mite less
shocking than the news that M-G-M had
vanished entirely and forever.
Chad Everett???
How could M-G-M the “Tiffany’s of the
industry,” the studio with “more stars
than there are in heaven,” have fallen so
low? It didn’t happen overnight. We
veteran film fans should have seen the
handwritting on the Metro wall as of the
mid-'60s when the once glittering roster of
great names was down to one major
contract player: Chad Everett. Chad
Everett??? That’s a star? To ask the
question is to answer it.
To go back to the glorious beginning,
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was officially
launched in 1924 with Louis Mayer as vice
president in charge of production. (Mayer
emigrated from Minsk, Russia, at the age
of 3, and got into the movie business via the
scrap metal business.)
In his history of the Metro corporation,
“The Lion’s Share,” Bosley Crowther
relates that at the dedication ceremonies
Mayer sat on a platform with Mae Murray
(the blonde with the bee-stung lips), Lon
Chaney (“Don’t step on it, it might be Lon
Chaney”), Ramon Navarro (one of M-G
M’s answers to Valentino), Antionio
Moreno (another Valentino challenger),
John Gilbert (who was to prove you didn’t
have to be a Latin to be a great lover), and
Lillian Gish. The Admiral of the Pacific
Fleet was also present. While telegrams of
congratulation from President Coolidge
and Secretary of Commerce Herbal
Hoover were read to the assemblage, a
shower of roses from the Governor of
California was dropped from a circling
plane.
Happy endings
When they gave him a large symbolic
key to the new studio, Maya, all choked up
with emotion, pledged that each M-G-M
picture would “teach a lesson.” He was no
doubt thinking of lessons like, “Be good to
your mother or God will strike you dead.”
Maya was very big on mothers and moral
finales. He was also big on happy endings;
he preferred, on the whole, that M-G-M
heroes should see the light before it was
too late.
His vision was shared by countless
millions of movie goers until — and when it
happened Maya wasn’t the only one who
couldn’t understand it — the world was a
different place and mothers were out of
style, especially in the movies.
Two of the big hits in the early M-G-M
days occasioned much strife, grief and
excessive expenditure. When the terrible
tempered Erich Von Stroheim refused to
permit the tempermental Mae Murray to
make a hig entrance for the waltz
sequence in “The Merry Widow,” Mae
called the director “a dirty Hun,” Von
Stroheim stalked off the set and Mayer
tried to replace him with another director.
The stagehands and the extras, loyal to
the master, refused to work and jeered and
threatened Mayer when he tried to take
command. Von Stroheim was called back
and Mae was persuaded to apologize. The
necessity for this galled Mayer at least as
much as it galled Mae, since the director
had infuriated the studio chief by casually
remarking that “practically all women
are whores.”
(In her autobiography Mae Murray told
how she went rushing to the train station to
retrieve her co-star John Gilbert, who was
so crushed by Von Stroheim’s brutal
criticisms that he wanted to leave
Hollywood forever. Mae swore that it was
only when she got to the depot that she
realized she was wearing nothing but a hat
and shoes.
Lots of camels
“Ben Hut” had been in production in
Rome for many months under the auspices
of the Goldwyn company when Goldwyn
merged into M-G-M. George Walsh, a
muscular type specializing in rugged
outdoor dramas, had been cast as Ben
Hur. Maya- and Irving Thalberg, the
“wonder boy” who handled the “creative
end” of studio operations, hadn’t seen any
of the footage but they apparently stoutly
feared the worst, because they sent to Italy
f
company was called home, and the great
chariot race was shot on the home
grounds, in an Antioch colliseum
especially built for the film at a cost of
$300,000. It was the biggest movie set
erected up to that time (1925). M-G-M’s
vastly more expensive remake of “Ben
Hur” won the Oscar for “Best Picture” in
1959.
Through the years, Louis Mayer
demonstrated a powerful knack for
recognizing star material in its
preliminary stages. In 1924 he saw “The
Saga of Gosta Berling” in a Berlin
screening room and at once decided Greta
Garbo, the girl playing the second female
lead, had something special. He met her,
noted with disapproval that she had fat
arms and thick ankles, and told her
through an interpreter that “In America
our men don’t like fat women.” According
to Crowther, Garbo accepted this in
formation “thoughtfully.”
Mayer signed the fabulous face to a
contract and was agreeably surprised
when a much reduced Garbo arrival in
Hollywood; she had taken his advice and
looked the other way when they passed the
mashed potatoes.
It wasn’t long before Garbo and John
Gilbert were thrilling the world on screen
in “Love” (a version of “Anna Karenina”
with a happy ending) and off-screen, too,
via the fan magazines. Walter Winchell
MGM
TT-'—TT
tr
a new director, a new scenario writer, and
a new star, Ramon Navarro.
“Be sure to get plenty of camels in it!
Lots of camels!” shouted Mayer as the
party set out. Things continued to go
wrong in Rome, even with all that fresh
talent. A galley was set afire for a battle
scene, and the extras aboard it were in
structed to jump into the sea. According to
Bosley Crowther, the flames got out of
control, the terrified extras “tumbled pell
mell into the sea,” and it became apparent
that many of them had lied when eager to
make a few Lire, they had sworn that they
could swim.
Rescue launches had apparently saved
the day for all hands, but when the extras
had changed back into their street clothes
and left for home, “Hiree sets of un
claimed clothing were found remaining in
the dressing room.” It was felt that
Mussolini’s police wouldn’t take kindly to
the idea of Hollywood killing Italian work
men, so “the unit manager secretly rowed
the telltale bundles out to sea that night
and sank them in a weighted bag.” Two
days later the missing extras, still in the
costumes of Roman soldiers, showed up
and demanded their clothes: “They had
been picked up by a fishing vessel and
landed down the coast. The unit manager
happily reimbursed them for the loss of
their things.”
Garbo shrinks fat
After many other traumatic events,
including a riot between Pro-Fascist and
Anti-Fascist workmen, the “Ben Hur”
coined “Garbo-Gilberting” as a synonym
for love-making.
The romance was over and done with by
the time sound came in; then “Garbo
talks!’’ became a magic slogan, and John
Gilbert was laughed off the screen. His
voice sounded high and squeaky, the fans
decided, especially when he cried “I love
you! I love you! I love you!”
Gable pasutrized
Clark Gable, who became “a new kind of
hero” when he slammed Norma Shearer
around in “A Free Soul” (1931), went on to
become the biggest male box-office draw
in movies. He was bitter about being “put
out to pasture” when his contract expired
in 1954 and Dore Schary, who had suc
ceeded Mayer as studio head, decided in
an economy move that the 53-year-old
star’s $520,000-a-year salary was
prohibitive.
Joan Crawford, the first star to be
discovered and developed exclusively by
M-G-M and a real durability champ,
recently said, “Clark Gable was the king
of an empire called Hollywood. The em
pire is not what it was—but the king has
not been dethroned, even after death.”
Judy Garland. Is there anybody who
doesn’t know that up to the very last
minute they planned to cut “Over the
Rainbow” out of the classic “Wizard of
Oz”? Judy once said that she and
Mickey Rooney, her frequent co-star, were
kept “working days and nights on end.
They’d give us pep pills to keep us up after
we were exhausted. Then they’d take us to
the studio hospital and knock us cold with
sleeping pills—Mickey sprawled out on one
bed, and me on another.”
Jean Harlow. Ava Gardner. Margaret
Sullivan. Rosalind Russell. Lana Turner.
“Look,” said Adela Rogers St. John,
“Let’s not get mixed up about the real
Lana Turner. Hie real Lana Turner is
Lana Turner. She was always a movie star
and loved it. Her personal life and her
movie star life are one.”
Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.
William Powell and Myrna Loy. Jeanette
MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. Greer
Garson and Walter Pidgeon. Marie
Dressier and Wallace Beery. Marie
Dressier and Polly Moran. Crawford and
Gable. Metro had more teams than any
other sudio.
Mayer loves “Sin”
John, Lionel and Ethel. Metro had more
Barrymores than you could shake a stick
at.
Helen Hayes. Irving Thai berg, whose
ability to re-edit and reshape flops into hits
is called legendary, is said to have taken a
piece of garbage called “Lullaby” and
converted it into “The Sin of Madelon
Claudet,” which won an Academy Award
for Helen Hayes (1931-32). “Madelon” was
still garbage, but Louis Mayer loved it,
and so did large audiences.
Johnny Weismuller. Frank Sinatra.
Fred Astaire. Gene Kelly. Robert Mon
tgomery. Lauritz Melchior. Margaret
O’Brien. Red Skelton. Eleanor Powell.
Lawrence Tobbett. Robert Taylor. Laurel
& Hardy. Lucille Ball. June Allyson. Is
there anybody who didn’t work for Metro?
“Grand Hotel.” “Mutincy on the
Bounty” (the Gable-Laughton version).
“San Francisco.” “Camille.” “The Thin
Man.” “The Good Earth.” “Captains
Courageous.” “Night Must Fall.” “A
Night at the Opera.” “Meet me in St.
Louis.” “Singing in the Rain.” “An
American in Paris.” “The Philadelphia
Story.” No doubt about it, they turned out
a nifty entertainment at Metro from time
to time.
To be sure, they also turned out a lot of
gilded corn over the years: dated high
society dramas about wives unjustly
accused of carnal error, sappy operettas
(“The Affinity of MacDonald and Eddy for
bad plots is amazing” wrote one critic),
imbecilic Esther Williams specials (“Just
so much water over the dame”), dreary
costume dramas (Clark Gable spent years
trying to live down “Parnell”), and techni
colored hodge-podges advancing the
curious proposition that stardom awaited
any ingenue soprano lucky enough to get
an audition with Jose Iturbi.
Comes the smiling cobra
In 1969, James Aubrey, formerly the
president of the CBS television network,
called “The Smiling Cobra” for his
ruthless ways in business and other things
for his support of such shows as “The
Beverly Hillbillies” and "Petticoat Junc
tion,” was named president of a much
eroded Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In its April
2 issue of this year, Newsweek hailed him
for having fashioned a “remarkable
comeback” for M-G-M.
The smiling cobra hacked away at
assets that dripped Hollywood sentiment,”
says Newsweek. He sold Andy Hardy’s old
auto and Judy Garland’s red “Oz” slippers
and several warehouses full of theatrical
properties to a Los Angeles auctioneer for
$1.4 million. He sold 187 acres of the back
lot to a housing developer. He made
movies like “House of Dark Shadows” and
“Shaft” and “Skyjacked” and they
cleaned up. “We measure a movie by its
box office,” said Aubrey. “We don’t care
about awards and reviews.” As we take
leave of Aubrey in this April 2 issue of
Newsweek, he has moved on from three
years of producing B movies to the
manufacture of such attractions as “Pat
Garrett and Billy the Kid” and “The Man
Who Loved Cat Dancing.”
Back to that recent Variety. The bible of
show biz says that the returns on Metro’s
three summer releases—“Billy the Kid”
and “Cat Dancing” and “Shaft in
Africa”—were “grim,” Various
Hollywood observers said all along that
selling props and back lot acreage is no
substitute for making movies. If Aubrey
produces more “highly selective quality
films” like those most recent examples,
Leo the Lion will be a species more en
dangered than even the most pessimistic
students of the cinema scene had thought.