Customer Reviews

Merchant of Dreams: Louis B. Mayer, M.G.M., and the Secret Hollywood

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Being a huge fan of classic Hollywood, I snapped this book up and devoured it quickly, thoroughly enjoying all the juicy bits and behind the scene information. Once I got over the initial excitement of so much gossip all at once, I took a closer look, and found that in many, many instances, Higham gets the most basic information completely wrong. Information that is laughably easy to verify. For example:

1. Norma Shearer and Irving Thalberg's daughter is named Katherine, not Barbara. She was born in 1935, not 1936.
2. Ted Healy died from injuries suffered in a bar brawl, kidney failure, and alcoholism, not from a heart attack brought on by Mayer. He was 41, not 45, when he died.
3. Jean Harlow never had an affair with her stepfather, Marino Bello; in fact, she hated him. And she didn't encourage her friends and colleagues to invest in his "gold mines," either.
4. John Gilbert didn't die of a heart attack. He was given a sedative by his nurse, had an adverse reaction, and choked to death while unattended.

And so on...

In addition, Higham is very partial to some stars and absolutely hates others; these attitudes come across in Mayer's biography so strongly that they are often distracting from the story itself. Garbo is a monster of selfishness. Crawford is a bed-hopping tramp. Shearer is a terrible snob. Some of which may be true, but I'm sure these people had their good sides, too, but you won't find such balance here.

At first glance, there is quite a bit of fascinating, never-before-known "information" in this book. After realizing how little the author checks his facts, though, I have to wonder if any of these incredible tales are true, or even close to true.

In his prologue, Higham tells us that much of the information he discloses has been drawn from hitherto sealed government files. Its more believable that he had long conversations with Howard Strickling, since Strickling was head of MGM's publicity department during the reign of Louis B Mayer, and the one responsible for the covering up of the secret lives of the stars. I guess the fun about gossip is in the discovery of the sordid details. Perhaps it's then only fair that I drop some of the names mentioned and let you discover the particulars. There's actually not a lot that was previously unknown to me. There's the death of Jean Harlow's husband Paul Bern, and then later the death of Harlow herself. The day of the lamentable shortage of knockworst in the commissary when no jockstraps could be worn under tights. The not too surprising inclination of Garbo's mentor Mauritz Stiller. Garbo's repeated no-shows for marriage to John Gilbert, and Mayer's dislike of Gilbert stemming from behaviour long before Garbo came into the scene. Why Garbo never bore a child. The fate of the footage of extras being drowned in Ben-Hur. The men killed by both Clark Gable and John Huston. Lee Tracy's forced retirement. How George Cukor nearly lost the job of directing Camille, as well. The supplier of drugs to Judy Garland. And Leni Riefenstahl's attempts to join MGM. The scandals seem to dissipate once we hit World War 2, or is that Higham's focus is more on Mayer's infidelities, and eventually his clashes with Nicholas Schenck and Dore Schary? Higham also presents a filmic history of the studio and it's output. I wish he'd only given us more dirt, because I get the impression that these scandals are just the tip of the iceberg.

Louis B Mayer looms larger that few others over the Golden Age of Hollywood, though he is little understood as his own man. He battled with John Gilbert. He was fond of Katharine Hepburn. He drove Judy Garland to what eventually would become her ruin, and then tried to save her when it was too late. Mayer certainly could be cruel, vindictive, petty, lecherous, and tyrannical, but at the same time he was hopelessly sentimental, emotional, prudish, family-oriented, unlucky in love, and had conflicted relationships with his equally strong-minded daughters. As a businessman, he ruled like a father. No smut, No tawdriness. Family fare. That was his motto. He tried, often unsuccessfully, to live it himself. And much less successfully to do so for his staff. MGM employees were his children and he covered up their exploits from homosexuality (illegal at the time and even more of a career killer than it is now), to assaults, to allegedly even murder. Mayer was successful. He was a showman and a purveyor of glamour. He wanted the best and hired the best. Though he was himself deeply right wing he hired David Ogden Stewart, Dalton Trumbo, George Cukor, Katharine Hepburn, all big-time liberals. He was smart enough to let artists do what they did best as long as it was clean.

Higham likes to paint Mayer in Shakespearean terms being battled over like King Lear by his daughters. Neither Edie not Irene come off particularly well here. Mayer is a strict Victorian father and the girls are stubborn and willful, and ultimately very much like him. Irene, the more intellectual and grounded of the two defects from husband David O Selznick and become a successful Broadway producer to the delight and surprise of LB who never wanted his daughters to have careers in the first place. Even he can be wrong, though he never admits it. Overall, the girls seem montrously selfish, egged on by Dad's egotism. His later permanent rift with Edie over her husband's professional and political allegiances, haunts LB's later years as he becomes increasingly bitter and consumed by his anger over being ousted from MGM and his overwhelming fear of death. LB's wife of 40 years, Margaret Shenberg Mayer, seems like a cypher here. Her sudden mental collapse is rather nebulously explained by a combination of Mayer's infidelities, her hysterectomy, and her daughters leaving home. She certainly wasn't in the same intellectual league with LB, but her departure seems very sudden. There also the rest of the Mayers including LB's sociopathic brother Rudolph, his sons-in-law (David O and Bill Goetz), grandsons (Jeff and Danny Selznick), and his beloved mother, the spectre that haunted his entire life.

The biography does tend to the salacious side including charging Clark Gable with manslaughter and positing that Mayer paid $400,000 to cover up a similar act of manslaughter by John Huston. In current terms $400,000 would be around $5-6 million and it seems unlikely considering Huston was not yet an important player in the Thirties. Many MGM stars come off particularly badly such as Greta Garbo, Luise Rainer, and Joan Crawford. Much of the early part of the book is scandal after scandal in exhausting succession. On the other hand, there are a lot of surprises. LB and Ad Schulberg came out of left field for me (consider LB wanted Budd Schulberg booted out of the country for writing "What Makes Sammy Run?"). His proposition to her seems particularly funny describing him as "an overweight Romeo to her plain-faced Juliet" as he announces that they'll be "King Louis and Queen Adeline and rule Hollywood together". It's almost too funny to be true. LB's romances seem particularly pathetic. Dr. Jessie Marmorsten, when asked if she ever went to bed with him pounded her fist on the table and proclaimed: "Have you ever seen a picture of him?!" though she admitted that he did manage to steal a kiss on her foot when she wasn't paying attention. Besides Mrs. Schulberg and Dr. Marmorsten there were Ann Miller, Jean Howard, and Ginny Simms all of whom turned down both his marriage proposals (and sizeable cash incentives).

Overall, LB comes across as a showman and a visionary. Like Henry Ford and Coco Chanel, he conceived of MGM as a company which produced a consistant, quality product. He simply would not let the talent get in the way. He was tough and frugal. He came from nothing and ended up at the top of the heap of the second largest industry in America, after the automobile industry. And he kept on fighting right until the end. His death seems particularly harrowing because there is a sense that he hasn't really finished. Even though he's 75, there's enough fight in him to sustain 10 men half his age. It was a love of showmanship and a profound sentimentality that sustained this essentially conservative, unsophisticated man in a tawdry, glamourous business for several decades. Mayer is Hollywood. He came there when it was dirt roads and left when it was the single greatest cultural force in American life. What Mayer and men like him created continues to have profounf importance on how we are entertained today, nearly a hundred years later

There's a lot that's been written about Louis B. Mayer and his reign over MGM during Hollywood's studio system heyday because a lot happened, and because it's hard to know what really happened. This was a time when public persona was everything and much was swept under the carpet of public standing. While I had to wonder, from time to time, where the author got his information, I thought this was a pretty good read. By the end, I thought, "Well, that was one version." If you're keen to learn as much as you can about Hollywood's bygone era, I would say include this book, but don't make it your only one about Mayer, MGM, or the studio system.

I very much enjoyed this biography of L.B. Mayer and his dream factory, so much so that I read it twice. It containes a lot of rich historical information. I love history and I love the movies. This book was right up my alley. (Pardon the cliche.)A must read for people who love stories about famous men and how they made their fortune.

Like the previous reviewer, I also have some questions/concerns about Higham's accuracy. I've read at least 5 other books about Thalberg, Shearer & MGM, & several things here are new to me including allegations that the Thalberg Shearer marriage was shaky (I've always read the exact opposite previously), & that Thalberg had a tendency to scream at people when he was angry (I've previously read that his persona tended to be quite mild mannered). I'd be very interested to hear other Mayer/Thalberg/Shearer biographer's opinion of this book's accuracy. I also question the allegations that Walt Disney was a Nazi sympathizer amongst others. My 2 star rating is with the assumption that the book is factually inaccurate.

To me it pretty much reads as one scandal after another..... there may be SOME truth in that!