He is also called the creator of the so-called "star system" at MGM, which included the most prominent film actors and actresses. Meyer's real name was Lazarus Meir. He was also referred to simply as "L.B." He truly believed in the power of cinema and went to great lengths to ensure that MGM had "more stars than there are in heaven."
Louis Meyer was born perhaps July 12, 1884 into a Jewish family in the Ukrainian town of Dymer in the Russian Empire. His parents were Jacob Meir and Sarah Melzer. He had two sisters, Etta and Ida born in 1878 and 1884 respectively. During those difficult times, the Meir family emigrated to the United States in 1887, where they settled in Rhode Island, living there until 1892. At this time Lazarus had two more brothers, Rubin (born April, 1888) and Jeremiah (born April, 1891). In 1892 the family moved to St. John, New Brunswick, Canada, where the Meir children attended school. There they were frequently exposed to the antisemitic antics of bullies and Lazarus was often involved in street brawls. Here in Canada, the father of the family started his own business, founding the company J. Mayer & Son. which was a scrap metal dealership. Soon after, in 1904, the 19-year-old Lazar Meir left home and went to the United States to Bompton, where he founded his scrap metal business and where he married Margaret Schoenberg, with whom he lived until 1947. He had to toil at many jobs, as the business was not always generating sufficient income.
Early career
Working odd jobs, Louis Meyer once got a part-time job at a movie theater. That's how the idea of his own movie theater came about. He leased and completely renovated the Gem Theater in Haverhill, Massachusetts, with the support of friends. The theater had a seating capacity of 600. On November 28, 1907, Meyer opened his first movie theater, which became known as the Orpheum. In order to dispel the cinema's bad past reputation, Meyer decided to show a religious film on the opening day. Within a few years he was already the owner of five cinemas in the city, and together with Nathan Gorodon he created the Gordon-Meyer Partnership, which operated the largest network of film and theater institutions in New England.
In 1914 Gordon and Meyer founded their own film distribution agency in Boston. It was also at this time that Mayer bought the screening rights to the then popular film "The Birth of a Nation" within New England, made in 1915, from the D.W. Griffith for $25,000. In 1916 Mayer became a partner with the famous film producer Richard Rowland, jointly founding the Metro Pictures Corporation, a talent development agency in New York City.
In 1918 Mayer moved to Los Angeles, which is not surprising. After all, even then the city was becoming the center of the film industry. Here he founded his own film studio Louis B. Mayer Pictures Corporation. The company's first product was the film "Virtuous Wives", released in 1918. In the same year, Mayer co-founded the Mayer-Schulberg Studio with film producer B. P. Schulberg. The turning point for Louis Mayer, however, was 1924. That year in April, Marcus Lowe, owner of the Loews Theatres cinema chain, merged three major film studios - Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures and Mayer Pictures by buying controlling stakes in the companies. The new corporation became known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, or MGM for short. For the next 27 years, Mayer was the irreplaceable head of the studio, which during that time became the largest and most successful feature film studio.
MGM's top boss.
As head of the studio, Louis Meyer made MGM into the most financially successful film production studio in the world. He always valued and regarded family values as central to the film, unlike production manager Irving Thalberg, who had a slightly different opinion. Their relationship soon deteriorated over their differences, and in 1932 Meyer fired Thalberg while he was on sick leave due to a heart attack. Soon Talberg died in 1936. And Meyer took over production himself. He became the first person in American business history to receive a salary of $1 million. During the 10 years since 1937 Louis Meyer was the highest paid man in the United States, earning $ 1,300,000, which translated to $ 19,886,977 today.
Under Louis Meyer, MGM produced many successful films with such movie stars as Judy Garland, Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Clark Gable and others. At the same time Meyer was considered a very oppressive and ruthless director. In negotiating with actors about the salaries, he sought to leave the payment at a fairly low level, resorting to all kinds of ways, including blackmail. But despite this, Katharine Hepburn described him as a "good man" and claimed to have personally negotiated many of her contracts with Mayer personally. Elizabeth Taylor described Mayer as a monster, but other actors such as Robert Taylor, Greer Garson, and Hadie Lamarr saw him as the right man for the role of father.
The Late Years.
By 1948 MGM had significantly lost its market position. This was aided by the advent of television becoming popular. MGM's glory days were at an end due to a U.S. Supreme Court decision that banned the monopoly relationship between movie studios and the movie theater chains that screened their films. Meyer attempted to regain the position of the film industry by hiring a young and creative screenwriter, Dora Schary, whose views and interests differed from Meyer's conservative interests. Conflict began to grow between Meyer and studio owner Nicholas Schenk. It largely contributed to the fact that in 1951 the studio for the third time in a row was left without the main measure of success for all movies - an Oscar award, while Schary began to bring its successes. Eventually Schenk decided to fire Meyer as CEO after 27 years at the helm of the company.
