Hollywood's mightiest mogul started out pushing a junk cart in New Brunswick
Louis B. Mayer left school at twelve to collect scrap metal for his struggling immigrant father. Within decades he was running MGM, the most prestigious studio in Hollywood, helping found the Academy behind the Oscars, and earning a reputation that swung between devoted father figure and ruthless controller of stars' lives.
Even his birth is murky. Mayer liked to say he came from Minsk, but historians Charles Higham and Scott Eyman place it in Dymer near Kiev, matching his own 1912 naturalization papers. Official documents offer 1882, 1883 and 1885 as his birth year; the date usually given is July 12, 1884. His Jewish parents, Jacob and Sarah Meir, lived on Long Island before settling in Saint John, New Brunswick, where Yiddish was the household language.
His father's scrap business, J. Mayer & Son, barely kept the family afloat, so young Louis roamed the streets with a cart. A tin merchant named John Wilson began handing him unwanted copper trimmings, and Mayer counted him as his first partner; on later visits to Saint John he laid flowers on Wilson's grave. Evenings at the York Theatre gave him a taste for vaudeville. At 20, in 1904, he moved to Boston.
In Haverhill, Massachusetts, he took over the Gem, a shabby 600-seat burlesque hall, and reopened it on November 28, 1907, as the Orpheum. To shake off the building's reputation he later screened a religious film, From the Manger to the Cross. Before long he owned all five of the town's theatres, and a partnership with Nathan H. Gordon built New England's biggest cinema chain.
MGM was founded in 1924. Mayer handled budgets and approved productions while Irving Thalberg, still in his twenties, oversaw the films themselves. Mayer preached wholesome entertainment and hunted relentlessly for new talent, but he also pushed Judy Garland onto diets, drugs and brutal schedules. He co-founded AMPAS in 1927, once chaired California's Republican Party, and was forced out as vice president in 1951 when parent company Loew's wanted better profits. He died on October 29, 1957.
Source: Louis B. Mayer
