MGM's Austrian-American Founder

Marcus Loew (1870-1927) was born to Austrian parents in New York City. A school dropout at the age of nine, Loew showed a talent for business by developing a chain of penny arcades. For a time he was in a nickelodeon partnership with another film magnate-to-be, Adolph Zukor. By 1912 Loew's Theatrical Enterprises consisted of 400 cinemas all across the country. Loew created Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer when he bought Metro Pictures in 1920, adding a controlling interest in Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Pictures in 1924.

The classic MGM logo features the famous
roaring lion (“Loewe” in German).

Goldwyn Pictures was the company created in 1916 by Samuel Goldfish (1882-1974) in partnership with Edgar Selwyn. Goldfish liked the new name so much, he legally changed his name to Goldwyn in 1918. (Samuel Goldfish wasn't his real name either, but an anglicized version of the name he had been born with in Warsaw: Schmuel Gelbfisz.) The Polish-born, Jewish Goldwyn preferred to work independently and did not take part in the new MGM deal. In 1923 he began his own company called Samuel Goldwyn Productions which soon became known for such quality productions as William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).

Louis B. Mayer (1885-1957) was born Lazar Meir in Ukraine, not far from Kiev. His Jewish parents are thought to have been of Austro-Hungarian origin. Suffering from repeated anti-Jewish pogroms, the family left for England in 1886 and then to Canada and the U.S. Moving up from a single nickelodeon in 1907, within ten years Mayer had formed his own production company. When Marcus Loew formed MGM, Mayer became vice president and general manager, a position he held until 1951.

It was under Louis B. Mayer's leadership that MGM became the biggest and most prestigious studio in Hollywood, attracting some of the film capital's best talent, both on-screen and behind the scenes. Mayer also brought in managers such as the legendary Irving Thalberg who had earlier worked for Carl Laemmle at Universal. MGM and its roaring lion symbol soon became synonymous with a unique cinematic style and elegance. The MGM slogan, "More stars than there are in the heavens," was only a slight exaggeration. The studio's roster of stars included Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Judy Garland, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, Mickey Rooney, James Stewart, Elizabeth Taylor, Spencer Tracy, and many more famous names. Many of the classic films of all time were produced in MGM's studios. The Wizard of Oz, Ninotchka, Ben-Hur, Mutiny of the Bounty, The Good Earth, and the many MGM musicals of the 1950s are just a few.

MGM Historical Highlights • 1924 - Merger of Metro, Goldwyn, and L.B. Mayer Pictures creates MGM. • 1950s - MGM's "Golden Musical Age" with stars such as Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra. • 1970 - Bought by Kirk Kerkorian; decline begins. • 1986 - Ted Turner takes over MGM, selling off parts of the studio. His interest is primarily in the MGM film library. • 1990 - MGM bought by Italian financier Gincarlo Parretti for $1.3 billion. • 1992 - Taken over by the French bank Credit Lyonnais. Heavy losses begin. • 1995 - Despite hits like Golden Eye, Get Shorty, and Leaving Las Vegas, MGM loses money. • Summer 1996 - With heavy losses, Credit Lyonnais wants to dump MGM. Kerkorian and Australia's Seven Network Ltd. buy MGM for $1.3 billion. • April 1997 - MGM buys Metromedia-controlled Orion Pictures, Goldwyn Entertainment Co., and Motion Picture Corp. of America, adding 2,200 titles to the MGM library, bringing the total to 3,800 films. MORE > MGM Historical Timeline from MGM

But the lion's roar was starting to fade by the time Kirk Kerkorian bought the company in 1970. He promptly made severe personnel cuts, sold off most of the studio's real estate, and let famous MGM film memorabilia go for a fraction of its real value. Kerkorian then used the proceeds from the sell-off to expand his hotel-casino investments. MGM pulled out of the film distribution business in 1973. After 1980 the MGM story is a complex sequence of wheeling and dealing, with the MGM brand name and identity becoming more diluted with each successive trade.

By 1983 MGM had become MGM/UA Entertainment, a merger of MGM and United Artists. Enter Ted Turner of CNN fame. He bought MGM/UA in 1986, but sold much of it off because he was primarily interested in the vast MGM film library (which includes early Warner Brothers and RKO movies) for his cable television programming. By 1990 MGM had become the property of Italian financier Gincarlo Parretti; in 1992 the French state-owned bank Credit Lyonnais took over the studio from the bankrupt Parretti and managed to loose $3.7 billion in the movie business over the next several years. By summer 1996, Credit Lyonnais was desperately trying to find a buyer for its money-losing studio. One possible buyer was - yes - Kirk Kerkorian. With Australian partner Seven Network Ltd., Kerkorian paid $1.3 billion for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.

In April 1997, the MGM owned by Seven Network and Kerkorian announced an acquisition that more than doubled the size of the MGM film archives. For $373 million in cash and the assumption of $200 million in debt, MGM added 2,200 films from Metromedia International and took over most of Metromedia's entertainment assets, including Orion Pictures, Goldwyn Entertainment, and Motion Picture Corporation of America. (Metromedia kept the Landmark Theatre Group and its 138 movie screens in the U.S.)

Around the same time, Santa Monica-based MGM announced another separate licensing deal with the German media mogul Leo Kirch to provide MGM films for the Kirch Group's pay-TV network, beginning in 1998. But by 2000, Kirch had gone bankrupt and MGM was once again on its way to being profitable.

Copyright © 1997-2003 Hyde Flippo. All rights reserved.

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MGM Web Site

MGM Historical Timeline - A chronology from the MGM coprorate site