Louis B. Mayer Articles

Rex Ingram (top); Barbara La Marr, Ramon Novarro, in Ingram's Trifling Women (bottom) St. Patrick's Day always reminds me of silent-era filmmaker Rex Ingram, among whose silent-era efforts are The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Prisoner of Zenda, Scaramouche, Mare Nostrum, The Magician, and The Garden of Allah, and whose birth — as Reginald Ingram Montgomery Hitchcock — took place in Dublin on Jan. [...]

Marion Davies in King Vidor's Show People Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which decades ago was the most financially stable of the Hollywood studios, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday. MGM — initially Metro-Goldwyn — was formed through the amalgamation of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and Louis B. Mayer Productions in 1924. Goldwyn, by then no longer associated with Samuel Goldwyn, was the largest production company of the [...]

John Gilbert, Greta Garbo in Rouben Mamoulian's Queen Christina Just a few days ago I was wondering if Turner Classic Movies would devote a day to the likes of John Gilbert, one of the biggest movie stars of the silent era — or any era, really. Though mostly forgotten today, Gilbert starred in numerous box-office and critical hits from 1923 to 1928, a relatively brief [...]

Tyrone Power III: Gay Rumors, Errol Flynn So if Tyrone Power was off having gay liaisons while he was at Fox, it was in another part of the world in someone's sub-sub-basement (while he was working 18 hours a day at Fox), because if Darryl Zanuck even had so much of a whiff of it, that would have been itsville. Case in point: William Eythe. [...]