HOLLYWOOD DREAMS MADE REAL: IRVING THALBERG AND THE RISE OF M-G-M – Q&A with Mark Vieira

Author and photographer Mark A. Vieira (right), who has been a friend for a number of years, has recently written no less than two books on Irving G. Thalberg, the young MGM mogul whose high-quality productions earned him both a reputation as Hollywood's "Boy Wonder" and a special place in Oscar history as the name attached to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Memorial Award given to “creative producers whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production.” Thalberg even inspired a F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, the unfinished The Last Tycoon.

Now, Mark's two books may cover the same ground in terms of subject matter, but they're radically different in terms of approach to same:
Hollywood Dreams Made Real: Irving Thalberg and the Rise of M-G-M (Harry N. Abrams, 2008), is an art book comprising more than 250 photographs — about 200 of which previously unpublished — in addition to an anecdotal survey of Thalberg’s career, whereas Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince is a thorough, critical biography, which will come out via the University of California Press in September.

Hollywood Dreams Made Real is a stunner. Among the series of production and publicity images, and film stills are those showing a sexy Nina Mae McKinney in King Vidor's 1929 all-black musical drama Hallelujah; Joan Crawford looking like she's about to melt into her Adrian gown in a publicity shot for the 1930 melo Our Blushing Brides; Greta Garbo and John Gilbert in a magically lit shot from Queen Christina (1933); and, inevitably, a Norma Shearer headshot by George Hurrell. (I say "inevitably" because Shearer was Thalberg's wife and Hurrell was Mark's subject in Hurrell's Hollywood Portraits. Shearer can be seen above with Thalberg and Sid Grauman, he of Grauman's Chinese Theatre.)

Also, silent star Mae Murray (above, top photo, in The Masked Bride) looking like she's had one too many in Circe the Enchantress (1924); Lon Chaney at his most vampiresque in the legendary (and lost) London After Midnight (1927); Robert Montgomery and Constance Bennett sharing an idyllic moment in the pre-Coder The Easiest Way (1931); director Sidney Franklin paired up with a water buffalo on the set of The Good Earth (1937); and (again) Norma Shearer, unrecognizable, about to have her head chopped off at the end of Marie Antoinette (1938).

Plus Shearer again, looking as puppy-eyed as her dog in a publicity shot for the 1934 drama The Barretts of Wimpole Street; George Cukor directing Garbo and Lenore Ulric on the Camille (1937) set; and a beautifully reproduced still from Romeo and Juliet (1936), with Shearer's 34-year-old Juliet in bed while Leslie Howard's 42-year-old Romeo is just about ready to close the curtains so the (not-so) young lovers can have a little privacy. (Mark writes that the Production Code's Joseph Breen "warned Thalberg to avoid filming any 'action of Romeo and Juliet lying on the bed, fondling one another in a horizontal position, and pulling one another down.'")

And the book features more — many, many more images.

That said, Hollywood Dreams Made Real is not only a picture book. Mark provides extensive information on Thalberg's career, his films, and the Hollywood of the 1920s and 1930s. For instance, regarding the unavailability — which lasts to this day — of the 1932 Joan Crawford vehicle Letty Lynton:

"[The money-losing historical drama Rasputin and the Empress, starring Lionel Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, and John Barrymore, above] also became the first to cause MGM a libel suit; the prince on whom John [Barrymore]'s character was based sued MGM — and won. Then a plagiarism suit was filed against MGM for the popular Joan Crawford film Letty Lynton. The playwrights of Dishonored Lady [Edward Sheldon, Margaret Ayer Barnes] claimed that Thalberg had appropriated their story of the 'Edinburgh poisoner.' MGM had to pay a settlement and permanently withdraw Letty Lynton."

(I probably should mention that the Hollywood Dreams Made Real cover shows Crawford, shot by George Hurrell, in a publicity pose for the unlucky Letty Lynton. And that the tale of Edinburgh's Madeleine Smith later became vehicles for Hedy Lamarr, as Robert Stevenson's Dishonored Lady in 1947, and for Ann Todd, as David Lean's Madeleine in 1950. Now, someone at Time Warner should find a way to show Letty Lynton again after all those years.)

I haven't read Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince, yet, but Mark describes it as "the first Thalberg book to be written in strict chronology, using unpublished production files, financial records, and correspondence to elucidate his methods. It is also the first to use transcripts of Thalberg’s conversations and notes from Shearer’s unpublished memoirs to illuminate the human being behind the legend."

For those totally unfamiliar with Irving Thalberg's career, here's a (very) brief history of the producer's Hollywood years:

Born in New York City in 1899 to German immigrant parents, by the time he was 21 Thalberg had already become head of production at Universal. By the time he was 25, he was second-in-command (after father figure-turned-nemesis Louis B. Mayer) at the newly formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Among the dozens of motion pictures Thalberg produced, supervised, and/or helped to develop are the blockbuster The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), made while he was still at Universal; Greed (1924, above, a very dead ZaSu Pitts), which pitted him against extravagant — and strong-willed — filmmaker Erich von Stroheim; The Merry Widow (1925), a box-office sensation directed by Stroheim and starring superstars Mae Murray and John Gilbert; King Vidor's The Big Parade (1925), the biggest domestic box-office hit of the 1920s, also starring John Gilbert; and the troubled Ben-Hur (1925), starring Ramon Novarro, a potential white elephant that was turned into the biggest worldwide blockbuster until Gone with the Wind fourteen years later.

Also, the satirical Marion Davies vehicle Show People (1928); the lurid Lon Chaney melo West of Zanzibar (1928); Greta Garbo's first talkie, Anna Christie (1930); the African adventure Trader Horn (1930); the tearjerker The Champ (1931), which earned Wallace Beery a best actor Academy Award; and the saucy Jean Harlow (above, with Clark Gable and Wallace Beery in China Seas [1935]) comedy Bombshell (1933).

And more: the Academy Award-winning Grand Hotel (1932), with a stellar cast that included Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, and Joan Crawford; the Ernst Lubitsch musical classic The Merry Widow (1934), starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald (above); the Academy Award-winning sea-faring drama Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), which pitted Clark Gable against Charles Laughton; and A Night at the Opera (1935), which rejuvenated the career of the Marx Brothers.

Ah, there were the Norma Shearer vehicles as well, among them Lady of the Night (1925, right), in which Shearer is excellent as a good girl and her not-so-good look-alike; The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927), in which she received co-star billing along with Ramon Novarro; The Trial of Mary Dugan (1929), her first talkie; and the creaky but enjoyable The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1929).

Plus The Divorcee (1930), which earned her a best actress Academy Award; the racy pre-Coder Let Us Be Gay (1930, above, lower photo), in which Shearer is superb as a wronged wife-turned-woman of the world; the Academy Award-nominated The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934); the overripe society drama Riptide (1934, above, top photo); and the aforementioned Romeo and Juliet (1936), in which the thirty-something Shearer (beautifully) incarnates the teenaged lover.

Thalberg, I should add, for better or for worse was a hands-on producer. He decided to shorten the multi-reeled Greed; to bring the out-of-control Ben-Hur (above, Ramon Novarro) troupe from Italy back to Hollywood; to reshoot the Helen Hayes vehicle The Sin of Madelon Claudet — which was to earn the actress an Academy Award; and to spend more money so as to make the grand Queen Christina even grander.

Ironically, Thalberg's sole on-screen credit for an MGM production came after his death. Thalberg's father figure-turned-nemesis-turned father figure again, Louis B. Mayer, insisted that Thalberg's name be shown prominently in a title card inserted before the opening credits of the 1937 drama The Good Earth, released four months after Thalberg, who had always suffered from ill health, was felled by pneumonia at the age of 37 on September 14, 1936. The title card read: To the Memory of Irving Grant Thalberg We Dedicate This Picture, His Last Great Achievement.

"Everybody felt distracted at Irving's death," producer Albert Lewin later remarked. "It was kind of an earthquake, not only for Metro, but for the industry. He had been universally loved and admired. The entire industry was shaken by his death."

Alexander Kirkland, Norma Shearer in Strange Interlude (1932)

Among those who have been honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Award, first handed out in 1938, are Darryl F. Zanuck (three times), Hal B. Wallis (twice), David O. Selznick, Walt Disney, Samuel Goldwyn, Arthur Freed, Cecil B. DeMille, George Stevens, William Wyler, Alfred Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman, and more recently, Steven Spielberg, Billy Wilder, George Lucas, Clint Eastwood, Norman Jewison, Warren Beatty, and Dino de Laurentiis.

Mark has agreed to answer a few questions (via e-mail) about the subject of his two books for Alt Film Guide. Please click on the link below.

Mark Vieira photo: Lois Tryk