Birthday

It all began in 1924 because Marcus Loew's Eastern theaters needed more films. Neither Loew's own studio, Metro Pictures, nor his friend, Producer Louis B. Mayer, could keep up with the demand. The big chance came when another fledgling named Sam Goldwyn decided to unload his Culver City studio. Loew's Inc. put up $5,000,000 worth of stock for Goldwyn's lot and launched it, under Mayer's supervision, as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.*

Stocky, Russian-born L. B. Mayer, then 39 and an experienced film salesman, was especially sure of one thing: glamorous personalities were the movies' surest box office winners. Not everyone agreed with him, but by the time the screen started talking, L.B.'s star system had made M-G-M the most powerful voice in Hollywood. The studio splurged on giving its films a plushy elegance and a high gloss. If some happened to be mediocre entertainment, they were well insured at the box office with such names as Marie Dressier, Wallace Beery, Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and Clark Gable. During the '30's, while older film empires tottered, M-G-M saw to it that its parent, Loew's Inc., never skipped a dividend. For his pains, L.B. got 10% of the studio profits--a deal that made him a longtime fixture atop the annual list of U.S. big income-earners. (He now gets 7%.) He has earned his pay not so much for making good pictures as for picking good men for the job and keeping an eye on them. Until his death in 1936, Producer Irving Thalberg gave M-G-M its creative spark. After that, quality sagged, but last year--when the wartime movie boom had clearly ended--L.B. brought in Dore Schary to make repairs.

Now celebrating its 25th birthday, M-G-M is still Hollywood's biggest studio (31 stages and 3,700 employees), and the only one to have run so long with regular dividends and without merger, bankruptcy or reorganization. For the anniversary year, no special day has been set for a celebration. But last week M-G-M executives kept a date that came close enough for the milestone: they trooped to a birthday luncheon for 64-year-old L. B. Mayer.

-Sam Goldwyn got his billing in the new enterprise though he had no further connection with it. For millions of moviegoers, this has meant no end of confusion; for Goldwyn no end of publicity.

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