 This is the SF Productions Podcast Network. More stars than there are in heaven. From the Puff Culture Bunker, I'm Mindy. And I'm Mark. You can check out our audio podcast, How I Got My Wife to Read Comics on iTunes, or on our website SFPodcastNetwork.com. We're continuing our history of the movie studios with the big player during the golden years of Hollywood, MGM. As you might suspect, Metro Goldman Meyer was the result of a merger. Actually, more of a buyout. Marcus Lowe had invested heavily in the new medium of motion pictures, with theaters mostly in the Midwest and East Coast. Like many theater moguls, he also invested in movie studios in order to ensure a constant supply of product for those theaters. A parallel to today's media's conglomerates adding their own streaming services. Lowe had already bought out Metro Pictures in 1919 and Goldwyn Pictures in 1924. He needed someone to run the actual production business, and Louis B. Meyer, at that time head of an eponymous movie studio, approached Lowe to fit the bill. Lowe brought him out, bought him out, and put LB in charge, and MGM was born. I love this quote from Louis B. Meyer. The idea of a star being born is bourgeois. A star is created carefully and cold-bloodily, built up from nothing, from nobody. Age, beauty, talent, least of all talent, has nothing to do with it. We could make silk purses out of Sal's ears every day of the week. Meyer brought over his head of production, young wonderkind Irving Thalberg, which was a good move. Meyer inherited a logo from Goldwyn, the classic circle with Leo the Lion, and the motto Ars Gratia Artis, Arts for Art's Sake. MGM moved into high gear, making over 100 films in the first two years, including the first full version of Ben Hur in 1925. Lowe passed away in 1927, putting Nicholas Schrenk in charge of the overall company. He turned around and almost sold Lowe's and MGM to Fox, which was only thwarted by Meyer's legal machinations and the onset of the Great Depression, which almost wiped out Fox. A major focus of MGM was to scoop up talent, and they did so with gusto, a studio system and long-term contracts for their stars. Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Norma Shear, Lon Cheney, Buster Keaton, and Wallace Berry were major silent stars, and as MGM moved to talkies, they added Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Jeanette McDonald, and Nelson Eddy to name a few. Speaking of talkies, MGM tiptoed into that medium, doing some experiments before Broadway Melody in 1929, a box office hit, and winner of Best Picture Oscar. We're also experimenting with color going back to sequences in the uninvited guest, 1924, and the big parade, 1925, both in two-strip Technicolor, which was green and red. Modern three-strip, green, red, and blue, wouldn't go past shorts and experiments until 1938's Sweethearts with the operatic Eddie and McDonald. Speaking of shorts, MGM released Hal Roach's series, Laurel and Hardy, our gang, and Charlie Chase. The association lasted until 1938 when they brought out our gang, running through 1944. MGM also introduced the All-Star Movie with Grand Hotel in 1932 featuring Garbo, Crawford, Berry, and John and Lionel Barrymore, Drew's grandfather and great-uncle, respectively. Mayor and Thalberg began to fight over the tone of MGM's films. Mayor wanted more glamour while Thalberg wanted more literary works, such as Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935, The Good Earth, 1936, and Marie Antoinette, 1938. Unfortunately, Thalberg didn't live to see the latter passing away in 1936 at the young age of 37. The Thalberg Memorial Award is still given out at the Oscars for producers whose body of work reflected consistently high-quality films. After a long fight among the studios, David O. Selznick and Meyer worked out a deal to use Gable in Gone with the Wind. If MGM got the profits, and the film showed in Los Theatres, this also involved a massive search for the role of Scarlett O'Hara, eventually going to Vivienne Lee. A 70s TV movie dramatized the process with Morgan Brittany as Lee in a final-shot cameo. The 1939 film would go on to sit atop the all-time box office adjusted for inflation at $1.8 billion, including all the re-releases. 1939 was a huge year for the studio which wasn't originally a hit but would pay huge dividends over time and Boys Town, along with Gone with the Wind. The 30s in general were good to MGM. They were the only studio to stay in the black during the Depression, betting that people would want to forget their lives for two hours in favor of glamour and music. The studio rolled into the 40s and the war years with films reminding people of the past. Meet me in St. Louis, Little Nelly Kelly, and The Harvey Girls, all with their biggest star of the time, Judy Garland. MGM pushed the model more stars than there are in the heaven as they celebrated their successes with class pictures showing most of classic Hollywood lined up, even lassy. Meyer had begun to depend on what was called the College of Cardinals, major producers that controlled the output. Unfortunately, they headed toward sequels and unoriginal materials. Output was cut to 25 films a year and some of the top stars' contracts were dropped. As television began to creep in during the early 50s, MGM's extravagant budgets could no longer be sustained. They had to come to depend on a tentpole production to cover their annual profits and if that didn't work, they were in trouble. A bright spot was the Freed Unit, run by Arthur Freed as a semi-autonomous group of directors who reinvented the musical for more modern audiences. Films such as An American in Paris, Singing in the Rain, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Gigi would be big hits of the decade. By that point, Meyer was gone, ousted in 1951 by the MGM Board, replaced by Dory Sherry, who Meyer had brought in as the new Thalberg. Sherry was then settled with the duty of breaking the connection between Lowe's and MGM due to a Supreme Court decision, United States vs. Paramount Pictures Incorporated, that stopped studios from owning theaters. He wouldn't survive the process and was followed by a long string of execs, whom seemed to be able to turn things around. The studio system, where stars were essentially owned and managed, crumbled. Attempts to get into television, now the obvious future of the industry, had little success. MGM's animation unit, famous for the Tom and Jerry cartoons for a generation, was shut down, allowing that unit's producers, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, to start their own company. For a time in the late 50s and into the 60s, there seemed to be a light at the end of the tunnel, as MGM put out a string of hits. 1959's remake of Ben Hur, winning 11 Oscars. How the West was won, in 1962 with three Oscars. Dr. Chevago in 1965 with five Oscars. The Dirty Dozen in 1967 with one Oscar. And, 2001, A Space Odyssey in 1968 with one Oscar. Kept the studio afloat. Profits were spent to diversify the company, getting heavily into real estate. The use of financial raids resulted in new ownership, from Edgar Brotman Jr., one of the Seagram fortune, to Time Incorporated, to Kirk Kokorian. He was more interested in the cachet of the MGM name than the actual studio. He attached it to a series of casinos, MGM Grand, and severely downsized the actual studio operation, turning it into more of a holding company. Most films were being produced on location by then, leading the studio to distribute them. MGM's legendary collection of props were sold off. You see them show up at auctions regularly, and the back lot was sold for real estate development. The final production on the back lot was for That's Entertainment in 1974, a package of MGM clips with classic stars introducing them, which ironically became a big hit. There were a few bright spots in the 70s, Westworld, Soylent Green both in 1973, The Sunshine Boys 1975, and Network 1976. The latter co-produced with United Artists, a fellow studio that had also fallen on hard times. UA's huge failure, Heaven's Gate in 1980 resulted in their owners at the time, Transamerica, to sell them off to MGM, creating MGM UA Entertainment Company. A few hits, War Games and Octopussy both in 1983, weren't enough for the stockholders, and the company was split up into three units. By 1985, Turner Broadcasting, who was mostly interested in their film library, MGM UA, for 1.5 billion, selling the UA unit Bacter Cochorean, and later selling the actual MGM studio as well, the lot was sold to Loramar Pictures. Turner turned that film library, which consisted of all the pre-1986 MGM films, all the pre-1950 Warner Brothers films, which MGM had previously purchased, and the RKO Film Library, and they turned those into cable channels such as TNT, TCM, and Cartoon Network. This also put MGM UA back together, but more machinations followed. Italian financier Giancarlo Peretti brought MGM UA in 1991 and merged it with Francis Pathet, the latter actually coming out of the disastrous canon films that quickly fell apart in bankruptcy and lawsuits, with French financial firm Credit Leonese winding up as owner. Cochorean bought it from them later, selling to a group of hedge funds tied to Sony. Now, this went on and on over a decade, during which very little was actually produced by MGM. By 2006, we got actual output again, with 14 films going into 2007, much of it from the Weinstein Company. Meanwhile, UA had an agreement to be run by Tom Cruise and his production partners. MGM racked up $3.7 billion in debt by 2009 and entered bankruptcy the next year. They returned as a distribution company for both films and TV, with a myriad of agreements with various production companies. By then, the actual classic MGM studio was a memory of a generation earlier. What a sad story for MGM. Yeah, it really turned from the dominant force in the movie industry and at that point the entertainment industry to because they had such a huge amount of assets that were more historical in nature that financial companies went, ooh, we could use that for this and that and the other and the actual studio went away. Mm-hmm. Oh, well, that happens sometimes. You can always check out those MGM movies or you can check out our audio podcast how I got my wife to read comics on iTunes or on our website, sfpodcastnetwork.com From the Pop Culture Bunker, I'm Mindy. Thanks for watching.