Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s emblem, which has opened thousands of movies since 1924, is the most recognized corporate symbol in the world. Not just in the entertainment industry, it should be noted, but of any industry, anywhere, in the history of human civilization. But MGM has been a competitively insignificant force in the motion picture industry for nearly as long as it once, decades ago, dominated that industry. In fact, the MGM lion now presides not over movies alone, but over thirty world-class resorts, and is, or has been, also a recognized leader in the fields of real estate, theme parks, casinos, golf courses, consumer products, and even airlines, all around the world. But the MGM mystique remains. This book is a look at what made MGM the Mount Rushmore of studios, how it presented itself to the world, and how it influenced everything from set design to merchandising to music and dance, and continues to do so today.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's emblem, which has opened thousands of movies since 1924, is the most recognized corporate symbol in the world. Not just in the entertainment industry, it should be noted, but of any industry, anywhere, in the history of human civilization. But MGM has been a competitively insignificant force in the motion picture industry for nearly as long as it once, decades ago, dominated that industry. In fact, the MGM lion now presides not over movies alone, but over thirty world-class resorts, and is, or has been, also a recognized leader in the fields of real estate, theme parks, casinos, golf courses, consumer products, and even airlines, all around the world. But the MGM mystique remains. This book is a look at what made MGM the Mount Rushmore of studios, how it presented itself to the world, and how it influenced everything from set design to merchandising to music and dance, and continues to do so today.

M-G-M: Hollywood’s Greatest Backlot is the illustrated history of the soundstages and outdoor sets where Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer produced many of the world’s most famous films. During its Golden Age, the studio employed the likes of Garbo, Astaire, and Gable, and produced innumerable iconic pieces of cinema such as The Wizard of Oz, Singin’ in the Rain, and Ben-Hur. It is estimated that a fifth of all films made in the United States prior to the 1970s were shot at MGM studios, meaning that the gigantic property was responsible for hundreds of iconic sets and stages, often utilizing and transforming minimal spaces and previously used props, to create some of the most recognizable and identifiable landscapes of modern movie culture. All of this happened behind closed doors, the backlot shut off from the public in a veil of secrecy and movie magic. M-G-M: Hollywood’s Greatest Backlot highlights this fascinating film treasure by recounting the history, popularity, and success of the MGM company through a tour of its physical property. Featuring the candid, exclusive voices and photographs from the people who worked there, and including hundreds of rare and unpublished photographs (including many from the archives of Warner Bros.), readers are launched aboard a fun and entertaining virtual tour of Hollywood’s most famous and mysterious motion picture studio.

MGM Style is an overview of the career and achievements of Hollywood’s most famous art director. Cedric Gibbons was the supervisor in charge of the art department at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studios from its inception in 1924 until Gibbons chose to retire in 1956. Lavishly illustrated with over 175 pristine duotone photographs, the vast majority of which have never before been published, this is the first volume to trace Gibbons’ trendsetting career. At its height in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Gibbons was regularly acknowledged by his peers as having shaped the craft of art direction in American film; his work was recognized as representing the finest in motion picture sets and settings. Gibbons and his associates constructed the villages, towns, streets, squares and edifices that later appeared in hundreds of films, and whose mixed architecture stood in for army camps and the wild west, Dutch New York and Dickensian London, ancient China and modern Japan. Inspired by the work of Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus masters, as well as the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris and Frank Lloyd Wright’s experiments with open planning, Gibbons championed the notion that movie decor should move beyond the commercial framework of the popular cinema

In 1924 Metro Pictures merged with Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Productions, to become MGM and so make film history. This book takes an inside look at the studio: the people who ran it, the writers, the directors and the stars.

Paramount: City of Dreams brings to life the operations of the world’s grandest movie lot as never before by opening its famous gates and revealing – for the first time – the wonderful myriad of soundstages and outdoor sets where, for one hundred years, Paramount has produced the world’s most famous films. With hundreds and hundreds of rare and unpublished photographs in color and black & white, readers are launched aboard a fun and entertaining “virtual tour” of Hollywood’s first, most famous and most mysterious motion picture studio. Paramount is a self-contained city. But unlike any community in the real world, this city’s streets and lawns, its bungalows and backlots, will be familiar even to those who have never been there. Now, for the first time, these much-filmed, much-haunted acres will be explored and the mysteries and myths peeled away – bringing into focus the greatest of all of Hollywood’s legendary dream factories.

Movie studios are the wondrous, almost magical locales where not just films, but legends, are created. Unfortunately, these celebrity playgrounds are, and always have been, largely hidden from public view. Although some movie studios offer tours, few guests from outside the Hollywood community have ever been witness to the artistry, politics, and scandals that routinely go on behind the soundstage walls and away from the carefully orchestrated scenes visible to them from their tram carts. In this book, studio staff historian and Hollywood insider Steven Bingen throws open Hollywood’s iron gates and takes you inside the greatest and yet most mysterious movie studio of them all: Warner Bros. Long home to the world’s biggest stars and most memorable films and television shows, the Warner Bros. Studio lot functions as a small city and is even more fascinating, glamorous, and outrageous than any of the stars or movies that it has been routinely minting for more than ninety years. Accompanied by stunning behind-the-scenes photos and maps, and including a revealing backstory, this book is your ticket to a previously veiled Hollywood paradise.

Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling are virtually unknown outside of Hollywood and little-remembered even there, but as General Manager and Head of Publicity for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, they lorded over all the stars in Hollywood's golden age from the 1920s through the 1940s--including legends like Garbo, Dietrich, Gable and Garland. When MGM stars found themselves in trouble, it was Eddie and Howard who took care of them--solved their problems, hid their crimes, and kept their secrets. They were "the Fixers." At a time when image meant everything and the stars were worth millions to the studios that owned them, Mannix and Strickling were the most important men at MGM. Through a complex web of contacts in every arena, from reporters and doctors to corrupt police and district attorneys, they covered up some of the most notorious crimes and scandals in Hollywood history, keeping stars out of jail and, more importantly, their names out of the papers. They handled problems as diverse as the murder of Paul Bern (husband of MGM's biggest star, Jean Harlow), the studio-directed drug addictions of Judy Garland, the murder of Ted Healy (creator of The Three Stooges) at the hands of Wallace Beery, and arranging for an unmarried Loretta Young to adopt her own child--a child fathered by a married Clark Gable. Through exhaustive research and interviews with contemporaries, this is the never-before-told story of Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling. The dual biography describes how a mob-related New Jersey laborer and the quiet son of a grocer became the most powerful men at the biggest studio in the world.

Hollywood is a transitory place. Stars and studios rise and fall. Genres and careers wax and wane. Movies and movie moguls and movie makers and movie palaces are acclaimed and patronized and loved and beloved, and then forgotten. And yet… And yet one place in Southern California, built in the 1920s by (allegedly murdered) producer Thomas Ince, acquired by Cecil B. DeMille, now occupied by Amazon.com, has been the home for hundreds of the most iconic and legendary films and television shows in the world for a remarkable and star-studded fifty years. This bizarre, magical place was the location for Tara in Gone with The Wind, the home of King Kong and Superman, of Tarzan and Batman, of the Green Hornet, of Elliot Ness, of Barney Fife, of Tarzan, of Rebecca, of Citizen Kane, of Hogan’s Heroes and Gomer Pyle, of Lasse, of A Star is Born and Star Trek, and at least twice, of Jesus Christ. For decades, every conceivable star in Hollywood, from Clark Gable to Warren Beatty, worked and loved and gave indelible performances on the site. And yet, today, it is completely forgotten. Pretty much anyone alive today, from college professors to longshoremen, have probably heard of Paramount and of MGM, of Warner Bros. and of Universal, and of Disney and Fox and Columbia, but the place where many of these studio’s beloved classics were minted is today as mysterious and unknowable as the sphinx. Hollywood’s Lost Backlot: 40 Acres of Glamour and Mystery will, for the first time ever, unwind the colorful and convoluted threads that make for the tale of one of the most influential and photographed places in the world. A place which most have visited, at least on screen, and which has contributed significantly and unexpectedly to the world’s popular culture, and yet which few people today, paradoxically, have ever heard of.

The winner of the 2019 Peter C. Rollins Book Award This is the first comprehensive history of MGM from its origins in 1905 to the present. Following a straightforward chronology corresponding to specific periods of film industry history, each chapter describes how successive managements adjusted their production strategies and business practices in response to evolving industrial and market conditions. As the production subsidiary of the Loew’s Inc. theatre chain, MGM spent lavishly on its pictures and injected them with plenty of star power. The practice helped sustain MGM’s preeminent position during the heyday of Hollywood. But MGM was a conservative company and watched as other studios innovated with sound and widescreen, adjusted to television, and welcomed independent producers. By the 1960s, the company, sans its theatre chain, was in decline and was ripe for a takeover. A defining moment occurred in 1969, when Kirk Kerkorian, a Las Vegas entrepreneur, made a successful bid for the company. There followed a tumultuous thirty-six-year period when Kerkorian bought and sold MGM three times. Meanwhile, MGM never regained its former status and has functioned as a second-tier company to this day. Focusing on MGM’s top talent – such as Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg, David O. Selznick, and Arthur Freed; directors King Vidor and Vincente Minnelli; and stars of the screen Greta Garbo, Judy Garland, Clark Gable, and Mickey Rooney – and award-winning films, this book highlights the studio’s artistic achievements and status within the industry.