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THALBERG, IRVING 1899-1936

MOVIE PRODUCER

Boy Wonder

Irving Thalberg became an icon of American success mythology, but he did not rise from poverty; his German-Alsatian Jewish family was middle class. A Brooklyn boy who had not finished high school because of illness, Thalberg was employed at eighteen as a secretary in the New York office of Universal Pictures; he became general manager of the California studio when he was twenty. The story went around Hollywood that he was running a major studio before he was old enough to sign the payroll.

M-G-M

In 1923 Thalberg joined Louis B. Mayer as vice president of the Mayer Company. When Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was formed by Loew's, Inc., in 1924, Thalberg became second vice president and supervisor of production. Mayer as president and Thalberg built the largest and most successful studio in Hollywood, based on its stable of stars and expensive productions. The M-G-M slogan was "More stars than in the heavens," and the studio roster included Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Clark Gable, Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Spencer Tracy, and Thalberg's wife, Norma Shearer. His achievements resulted from his management skills, his decisiveness, and his movie sense. He had a strong understanding of movie structure and was able to supervise an entire production. Slim and handsome, Thalberg was mild-mannered; yet he imposed his will on associates and inspired their loyalty.

Classic Movies

The M-G-M reputation for movies with story value was credited to Thalberg, whose taste and expertise were especially well focused on screenplays. Working closely with writers whom he treated with the courtesy due to well-paid business employees, Thalberg routinely overruled them. He was responsible for the resented but effective system of double-teaming writers on the same project, often without informing them. His willingness to remake presumably completed movies salvaged the discarded Sin of Madelon Claudet, an Academy Award winner for Helen Hayes. The silent productions Thalberg took personal responsibility for included The Merry Widow (1925), The Big Parade (1925), Ben-Hur (1926), and Flesh and the Devil (1927). His first musical, The Broadway Melody (1929), won the Academy Award for best picture.

Thalberg and Mayer

Born with a heart defect and not expected to have a long life, Thalberg repeatedly worked until he collapsed. In 1933 while recuperating from over-work, he was removed by Mayer as head of production. Although Mayer claimed that the move was intended to prolong Thalberg's life, Hollywood insiders believed that Mayer had become resentful of Thalberg's eminence and irate at his insistence that his earnings be commensurate with his responsibilities. Thereafter Thalberg ran his own unit within M-G-M, producing The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), A Night at the Opera (1935), Romeo and Juliet (1936), The Good Earth (1937), and Camille (1937). A paternalistic employer, Thalberg was credited with defeating a strike vote by the Screen Writers Guild.

The Last Tycoon

After Thalberg's death from pneumonia, Helen Hayes said, "He died of genius/ Irving Thalberg has become a legendary American figure: the self-made business leader as culture hero. His legend has been perpetuated by F. Scott Fitzgerald's appropriating him as the model for Monroe Stahr, hero of the novel The Love of the Last Tycoon.