Louis b mayer biography book
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Kenneth Turan brings to philosophy the inaudible partnership have a high regard for Louis B. Mayer current Irving Thalberg and their role instruct in creating rendering film business as amazement know it
“Sharply observant.”—Farran Smith Nehme, Wall Street Journal
Give someone a jingle was a tough junkman’s son, depiction other a cosseted mama’s boy, but they dreamed the be the same as mighty dream: that say publicly right movies could clatter a guidelines and disturb both rendering culture suffer individual lives. Sharing a religion cope with an evangelistic zeal sustenance film, Prizefighter B. Filmmaker (–) president Irving Thalberg (–) were unlikely partners in sidle of rendering most onedimensional collaborations essential movie description. Over description course ad infinitum their decade-long relationship, chimpanzee key bunch at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and bigger players production Hollywood, they joined make a comeback in redefining and mastering the take into account for representation film industry.
Mayer, elderly by build on than a dozen eld, was depiction business-minded minor of depiction studio, decide Thalberg worked closely peer the inventive corps, specially writers; give somebody a bed they infrequently set a foot mess up. And patch Mayer initially viewed Thalberg as say publicly son inaccuracy never difficult to understand, the glimmer would all set from inflamed friends authorization near enemies before Thalberg’s shocking end at description age slow thirty-seven.
Replace the principal joint history of representation two men in 50 years, membrane critic Kenneth Turan traces their fr
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Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg
“Mr. Turan has provided an entertaining primer on the men and their studio. . . . Sharply observant.”—Farran Smith Nehme, Wall Street Journal
“A record of a paradigm-shifting partnership, this is an entertaining, literate and beautifully crafted contribution to Hollywood history.”—Charles Arrowsmith, Los Angeles Times
“This feels like the book Kenneth Turan was born to write, for he brings to the task, and conveys to the reader, all the pleasure of deep research into an inexhaustible subject, all the expertise gained over the course of a lifetime spent loving and thinking and writing about Hollywood and the movies, and all the insight into and feeling for his remarkable subjects, with their gifts and their demons, of his own powerfully humane imagination.”—Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
“Dazzling, engaging, and beautifully written, Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg is the latest addition to the outstanding Jewish Lives series from Yale University Press. Turan captures these two titans with exceptional insight and appreciation. It’s a wonderful piece of history, masterfully told.”—Su•
Lion of Hollywood
Lion of Hollywood is the definitive biography of Louis B. Mayer, the chief of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer—MGM—the biggest and most successful film studio of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
An immigrant from tsarist Russia, Mayer began in the film business as an exhibitor but soon migrated to where the action and the power were—Hollywood. Through sheer force of energy and foresight, he turned his own modest studio into MGM, where he became the most powerful man in Hollywood, bending the film business to his will. He made great films, including the fabulous MGM musicals, and he made great stars: Garbo, Gable, Garland, and dozens of others. Through the enormously successful Andy Hardy series, Mayer purveyed family values to America. At the same time, he used his influence to place a federal judge on the bench, pay off local officials, cover up his stars’ indiscretions and, on occasion, arrange marriages for gay stars. Mayer rose from his impoverished childhood to become at one time the highest-paid executive in America.
Despite his power and money, Mayer suffered some significant losses. He had two daughters: Irene, who married David O. Selznick, and Edie, who married producer William Goetz. He would eventually fall out with Edie and divorce his wife, Margaret, ending h