Comments on: Scott Eyman – Lion of Hollywood – The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer http://max256.bearstrong.net/2010/12/30/scott-eyman-lion-of-hollywood-the-life-and-legend-of-louis-b-mayer/ 256 words or less - or your money back! Sat, 04 May 2013 17:25:46 +0000 hourly 1 By: Bjørn Stærk http://max256.bearstrong.net/2010/12/30/scott-eyman-lion-of-hollywood-the-life-and-legend-of-louis-b-mayer/#comment-965 Thu, 13 Jan 2011 06:17:19 +0000 https://max256.wordpress.com/?p=3459#comment-965 Mayer seems to have been a patriarch type of leader. He wasn’t an asshole as such, and could even be very generous, but he was primarily the great patriarch of the MGM family, and how he treated you depended mostly on whether you were part of that family or not. So the important thing was that you were loyal. And then you’d have a home for life. Otherwise, you were cast out in the darkness, and did his best to make sure you “never work in this town again”.

He had a reaction similar to what you mention to Billy Wilder’s 1950 movie Sunset Boulevard. Not “hey, this is a great movie”, but “how could he!”

]]> By: Petter http://max256.bearstrong.net/2010/12/30/scott-eyman-lion-of-hollywood-the-life-and-legend-of-louis-b-mayer/#comment-964 Tue, 11 Jan 2011 19:05:54 +0000 https://max256.wordpress.com/?p=3459#comment-964 I recently read an interview Kurt Vonnegut did with Budd Schulberg, legendary screenwriter – On the Waterfront – “I could have been a contender”, and novelist, his most noted being _What Makes Sammy Run_ which was a skewering of Hollywood by a Hollywood insider. Bud’s father, a Hollywood muckety muck in his own right, pleaded with Bud not to publish it, telling him he’d never work in Hollywood again it he did. Bud published it. The following – copied and pasted from the interview was Mayer’s reaction. (BTW- the interview is linked to in the Wikipedia article on Bud).
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I heard that at a meeting of the producers’ association presided over by Louis B. Mayer and the head of MGM, Mayer had looked down the long table at my father and said, “B.P., I blame you for this. Why didn’t you stop him? You should have stopped him!” My father said, “Well, as a matter of fact, Louie, I did write to him—” Mayer said, “Well, you know what I think we should do with him? I think we should deport him.” He really meant it. In Mayer’s mind he was the king of a country. Hollywood was like Liechtenstein or Luxembourg. The district attorney was on the studio payroll; you could and did commit murder, and it wouldn’t be in the paper. That was the kind of power that he wielded.
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Mayer – I’d bet dollars to donuts (or kroner til smultringer) that the mogul in the Coen Brothers _Barton Fink_ was based on Mayer.

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