MetroGoldwynMayer Essay Research Paper The history of

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Essay, Research Paper

The history of the illustrious film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, more commonly known as MGM, begins with Marcus Loew, a first-generation American and son of Austrian immigrants, who began purchasing penny arcades in 1905 with his business partner, Adolph Zukor. They were soon buying up motion-picture theaters, and by 1912, when Zukor struck out to form the production company Famous Players (which eventually became Paramount), Loew had his own business, Loew's Theatrical Enterprises, which owned hundreds of movie houses. Russian-born Louis B. Mayer, who'd come to the States as a child with his parents, was a successful film distributor by 1915, thanks to the profits from his handling the New England release of D.W. Griffith's classic The Birth Of A Nation. Merging with other small distributors, he formed the production company Metro Pictures Corporation in that year. Metro found success in the teens releasing popular films starring Mary Miles Minter (Always In Way, 1915; Barbara Frietchie, 1915), Ethel Barrymore (The Awakening Of Helen Richie, 1916; Our Mrs. McChesney, 1918), Viola Dana (The Gates Of Eden, 1916; The Microbe, 1919), Alla Nazimova (Eye For Eye, 1918; The Brat, 1919), and the one-reel comedies of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew (At The Count Of Ten, 1916; The Hypochondriac, 1917). In 1918 Mayer launched his own company, Louis B. Mayer Productions, and released several films starring Anita Stewart, including In Old Kentucky (1919). In the early 1920s Metro released a series of outstanding two-reel comedies from Buster Keaton, including One Week and The Goat; Keaton was also starred in a feature, The Saphead (1920). Loew and his associate Nicholas M. Schenck purchased Metro in 1920, insuring a steady supply for the theaters of Loew's, Inc. Metro's notable features of the early '20s include three hits directed by Rex Ingram: the war film The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse (1921), which made a star of Rudolph Valentino, and the swashbucklers The Prisoner Of Zenda (1922) and Scaramouche (1923). Keaton began directing his own features and made his first classics for Metro: Three Ages (1923), Our Hospitality (1923), Sherlock, Jr. (1924). Henry King directed Lillian Gish and Ronald Colman in the romantic drama The White Sister (1923); Nazimova starred in Camille (1921); and Viola Dana made such popular romantic comedies as Life's Darn Funny (1921) and Rouged Lips (1923).Mayer's company had less money than Metro, but it had the astute guidance of vice president and head of production, Irving Thalberg, whom Mayer had hired from Universal in 1923. His releases included several films directed by John M. Stahl (The Song Of Life, 1922; The Wanters, 1923; Why Men Leave Home, 1924) and Fred Niblo (The Famous Mrs. Fair, 1923; Thy Name Is Woman, 1924), as well as King Vidor's His Hour (1924) with John Gilbert. In the meantime, another independent production company, the Goldwyn Pictures Corp., started in 1917 and had released successful films starring Mary Miles Minter (Polly Of The Circus, 1917; The Bondage Of Barbara, 1919), Mabel Normand (Joan Of Plattsburg, 1918; The Pest, 1919), Geraldine Farrar (The Hell Cat, 1918; Shadows, 1919), and Will Rogers (Jubilo, 1919; Jes' Call Me Jim, 1920). Yet Goldwyn was in financial trouble by the early 1920s, despite such popular films as Sherlock Holmes (1922) with John Barrymore and the horror tale A Blind Bargain (1922) with Lon Chaney. In 1922, producer Samuel Goldwyn was forced out of the company he'd helped form, and in 1924 Marcus Loew merged with Goldwyn to form Metro-Goldwyn Pictures. From 1924-25 MG releases included Keaton's The Navigator (1924); Vidor's Wine Of Youth (1924) and Proud Flesh (1925); Tess Of The D'Urbervilles (1924) and The Sporting Venus (1925) with Blanche Sweet; and The Monster (1925) with Chaney. Mayer and his Louis B. Mayer Productions — along with Thalberg — also merged with MG, and in 1925, the studio, under the control of Loew's, Inc., was officially called Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with Mayer as vice president and general manager. Two big-budget productions which MGM inherited from Goldwyn met very different fates at the new studio. The epic Ben-Hur (1926), directd by Fred Niblo, opened to great fanfare and acclaim; a marathon adaptation of the Frank Norris novel "McTeague" by writer/director Erich von Stroheim was slashed from 24 reels to 10 and released as Greed (1924). Thalberg let von Stroheim direct The Merry Widow (1925), but kept him on a tight rein; after its completion, he left MGM. In the last years of the 1920s, MGM made its reputation for quality with a stream of hit silents. King Vidor directed the war film The Big Parade (1925) and the classic drama of ordinary people, The Crowd (1928). Lillian Gish starred in two admired films directed by Sweden's Victor Seastrom, the Hawthorne adaptation The Scarlet Letter (1926) and the classic frontier melodrama The Wind (1928). Sweden also provided MGM with an actress who quickly became one of the studio's superstars: Greta Garbo. The public embraced her in a series of romantic dramas, most notably her films opposite John Gilbert, Flesh And The Devil (1927), Love (1927), and A Woman Of Affairs (1928). Buster Keaton made Seven Chances (1925), Go West (1925), and his biggest box-office hit, Battling Butler (1926), for MGM; he then joined United Artists but returned to MGM for his final silents, The Cameraman (1928) and Spite Ma