Page11Lots of Hollywood stories are told about Louis B. Mayer, but usually the first reel is missing. "The key to it is Saint John, this is where he grew up, where his tendencies developed, where his character formed."
In 1887, when Louis B. Mayer was barely two years-old, the family emigrated from Minsk, Russia to Canada, settling in Portland where they rented a shabby tenement flat near the foot of Main Street. For a mere subsistence the father, and eventually the growing boy, peddled and gathered miscellaneous junk. An accidental conversation in a Germain Street tailor shop brought to light the future Hollywood tycoon's natural affinity to the world of make-believe. As old Mr. Mayer knelt while stuffing scraps into a burlap sack the tailor began lamenting the minor aberrations of one of his own sons. Said the sympathetic Mayer, "I have one like that too, all he wants to do is hang around that new Opera House every chance he gets."
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A small group of professional businessmen had established the Opera House on Union Street in 1892 and by 1903 were showing films of the Boer War. As time passed they increased this output by screening a short one in between each vaudeville act. Louis in later years recalled that it was at the Opera House he had seen his first movie. |
His relationship with his parents and the hard-bargaining skills he picked up while helping his father in the scrap metal business left their mark on the films Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer made and the relationships he had with his production chiefs, from Irving Thalberg to Dorie Shary.
"He absolutely adored his mother, but he didn't have a lot of warmth for his father. The relationship with his mother was the most interesting. The rest of his life, the sentimental way of looking at women came through."
That attitude flickered through Thalberg and on to the screen, but it also could be revealed a little more bluntly.
When leading man John Gilbert made some disparaging remarks about women in general, and included mothers in his description, he was beaten up by Mayer.
"He was a powerful man. From working with scrap metal, he moved into ship salvaging. He was working out without working out."
The Mayer's made painfully slow headway as they advanced from peddling, to junk collecting, and then to the more prosperous occupation of ship salvage. With the family now out of real poverty, the restless Louis seeking broader outlets, at the age of 19 went to Massachusetts where he finally entered the field to which he seemed born, the theatre.
His first big coup was for distributing The Birth of a Nation, on which contract he made half a million dollars, the base of his fortune to come. Mayer caught on fast to the schemes and tricky maneuvers of his rivals, created the star system, borrowed, loaned, and traded big name actors as casually as a little boy down at Long Wharf swapping baseball cards. Mayer discovered Greta Garbo, promoted her to the hilt, while careful to keep the cameras off her fat ankles. Louis returned to Saint john about four times, once for a normal family get together, a couple of times in 1913 during his mother's final illness, and lastly in 1939.
While Mayer, who in the 1930s became the highest paid executive in America, got his interest in literature and the theatre from his mother, he relied on the creative talents of men like Thalberg. With no son of his own and not the closest of relationships with his father, however, Mayer was often looking for more than just good films.
"He kept looking for a son." The fact that he was unable to establish a lasting relationship with any of his right-hand men, with Shary finally dumping him out of the MGM management in 1951, should provide much of the drama and intrigue in the film. "He was an incredible man. A man with a bundle of contradictions. From his mother he was a very sentimental man, but he was a tough negotiator when dealing with others."
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