8/19/24
Newsletter #642
The Crack of Dawn
The movie mogul who seemed to have the most difficulty adjusting to the post-World War II era was MGM president, Louis Mayer.
Louis Mayer (real name, Lazar Meir, Jewish, born in Russia, and raised in New Brunswick, Canada) started as a theater owner in Massachusetts in 1907. By 1910 he owned the largest chain of theaters in New England. He formed Metro Pictures in 1916, by merging it with several other smaller production companies, then sold it out and formed Louis B. Mayer Pictures. In 1924 came the big merger, orchestrated by Marcus Loew and Nicholas Schenck at Loew’s Theaters. They merged Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Pictures, with Louis Mayer ending up as president of the amalgamated Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (although it was owned by Marcus Loew of Loew’s Theaters).
By the late 1920s, MGM had become the classiest (if not necessarily the best) studio in Hollywood, with stars like Clark Gable, Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo. And Louis Mayer reigned supreme throughout the 1930s and into the ‘40s. Then came World War II. In 1947, MGM recorded its first-ever end-of-year financial loss.
Nobody knows why Nicholas Schenck, who ran Loew’s, and Louis Mayer didn’t like each other, but they didn’t, and their animosity went back to about 1908. So Nick Schenck hired screenwriter and former production head at RKO, Dore Schary, to be the head of production at MGM. Dore Schary (real name, Isidore Schary, Jewish, born in Newark, New Jersey), was an extremely interesting man, and an odd choice to run MGM.
MGM posted another loss for 1947, and it was commonly thought that the studio’s films were out of date. In 1949 Louis Mayer loudly objected to Dore Schary’s first production, Battleground (1949), saying that no one wanted to see war pictures anymore. Battleground turned out to be the biggest hit of 1949. Suddenly, Dore Schary was the boy genius, the new Irving Thalberg and Louis Mayer didn’t know a hit when he had one.
Up until then, Dore Schary had written and produced quite a long string of hit films. Schary’s winning streak started when Dore Schary won an Oscar for Original Story for Boy’s Town (1938), then it continued all throughout the 1940s, with Young Tom Edison (1940), Edison, the Man (1940), Journey of Margaret (1942), which was a hug hit, starring Margaret O’Brian.
Sharey made Bataan (1943) with Robert Taylor and it was big hit. Then Dore Schary produced Lassie Come Home (1943) with young Elizabeth Taylor that was just an enormous hit. Schary accepted an offer to go to work for David O. Selznick's Vanguard Films as head of the production. He produced I'll Be Seeing You (1944), The Spiral Staircase (1946), Till the End of Time (1946), The Farmer's Daughter (1947) with Loretta Young, and The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947) with Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple. All of these films were critical and commercial successes.
Meanwhile, not only had MGM films stopped making money, they also stopped winning the Oscar for Best Picture. MGM won in 1939 with Gone with the Wind (which was actually a Selznick International film distributed by MGM) and again in 1942, with Mrs. Miniver (made by William Wyler on loan-out from Samuel Goldwyn) then not again until, interestingly, 1951 with An American in Paris (1951).
In 1951 Louis Mayer put it on the line to Nick Schenck regarding Dore Schary, saying it’s him of me. This happened during the production of John Huston’s film, The Red Badge of Courage (1951). A journalist named Lillian Roth wrote a book about the making of The Red Badge of Courage called Picture, that’s quite a good. The book depicts the tense atmosphere at MGM at the time.
Nick Schenck, who never liked Louis Mayer to start with, chose Dore Schary and Louis Mayer was forced out of the company bearing his name. Mayer went into an uneasy retirement. He died in 1957 at the age of seventy-three.
This was the beginning of the end for the movie moguls running Hollywood. During his rule, Dore Schary did choose some very interesting films to make, but certainly didn’t turn MGM around. He made, The Next Voice You Hear… (1950), Take the High Ground! (1953) with Richard Widmark, and Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) with Spencer Tracy, which are all good movies that made money, but none of them set the woods on fire.
The next movie he made was called The Last Hunt (1956), which is why I began thinking about Dore Schary in the first place. The film stars Stewart Grainer and Robert Taylor as buffalo hunters in the old west. The film begins with a written disclaimer, and I’m way paraphrasing: When the herd of buffalo at Yellowstone Park become too numerous, they must thin the herd. This is a necessary procedure that would be done whether we were filming or not. The Yellowstone Park has kindly granted us permission to photograph the process. Thank you. Dore Schary, President of MGM.
What you quickly find out is that hunting buffalo is not like Dances with Wolves, where they are riding really fast chasing the running buffalo, the reigns clamped in their teeth, shooting with a Winchester rifle shooting at the massive buffalo in full stride, that then comes crashing to the ground. No, that’s not what happens. First of all, these hunters have big-ass Sharps buffalo rifles. But most interestingly, at least to me, was that apparently, if you shoot a buffalo, for real, it doesn’t spook, or even rattle the other buffalo. They just go on chewing gas. They may look up, but that’s it. If you have a Sharps buffalo rifle, you can shoot buffalo all day and all night, as long as you have enough ammunition and there are any buffalo remaining. In any case, The Last Hunt is not a great movie, but it’s all right. Both Stewart Granger and Robert Taylor make good conniving assholes.
Dore Shary only lasted one more year, then he too was shit-canned. But he has always seemed like an odd choice to replace Louis Mayer.
And there you have it.
Thank you for sharing this very interesting story. I learn something new every day with you! 😊