Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Irving Thalberg Boy Wonder to Producer Prince by Mark A. Vieira Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince by Mark A. Vieira. Our systems have detected unusual traffic activity from your network. Please complete this reCAPTCHA to demonstrate that it's you making the requests and not a robot. If you are having trouble seeing or completing this challenge, this page may help. If you continue to experience issues, you can contact JSTOR support. Block Reference: #ad35ede0-d0db-11eb-85f9-b35f87982b20 VID: #(null) IP: 116.202.236.252 Date and time: Sat, 19 Jun 2021 08:52:28 GMT. Hollywood’s Forgotten Heroine Norma Shearer Was ‘One of the First Feminist Movie Stars’ The Funhouse! Take a Tour of Pink and Carey Hart's Santa Barbara Home. 'Eight Is Enough' Cast Then and Now: See the Stars Reunited. See the Most Adorable Photos of Barbra Streisand's Granddaughter Westlyn. Inside Clint Eastwood's Tight-Knit Family! Meet the Actor's 8 Kids. Kevin Costner Has 7 Amazing Kids — Meet His Blended Family. In The Divorcee , Norma Shearer’s character has an affair to take revenge on her cheating husband. Before the Hays Code dictated morality in movies, this risqué comedy about a love triangle among New York socialites thrilled and titillated audiences. Norma’s free-spirited portrayal won her the 1931 Oscar for Best Actress over Greta Garbo and Gloria Swanson. Like the progressive women she often played, Norma was among a rare breed of actresses including Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford and Carole Lombard determined to have control over their careers. “Norma believed that she had the right to have input on every level,” says Mark A. Vieira , author of Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince, exclusively to the latest issue of Closer , on newsstands now. “She often portrayed characters who had aspirations because she was an ambitious and career-minded person herself.” She had to be. Norma’s father had lost his construction business overnight, forcing her to support herself from a young age. “She had no other choice but to seek a career and be self-determining,” says Vieira. These qualities attracted the attention of Irving Thalberg, MGM’s young hotshot producer. “She was already a star when he invited her to a premiere,” explains Vieira. “He was drawn to Norma’s intelligence and eagerness to learn.” The couple married in 1927, with studio head Louis B. Mayer acting as best man at the ceremony. Three years later, they welcomed Irving Jr., followed by his sister, Katherine, in 1935. But their happiness didn’t last. In 1936, Irving died of pneumonia at age 37. “It was traumatic,” says Vieira, who explains that like the fiery heroines she often played onscreen, Norma was forced to sue MGM for the percentage of the profits it owed her late husband. “In a way it was fortunate. It forced her to get up and fight,” he says. Norma prevailed in court and continued to act, but her heart wasn’t in it anymore. She retired from films in 1942. “Norma always had integrity,” says Vieira. “She really was one of the first feminist movie stars.” For this story and more, pick up the latest issue of Closer magazine, on newsstands now. Screen Saver. "The picture business can only exist,” observed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer mogul Irving Thalberg in a long letter to a fellow studio executive in 1933, “on the basis of real entertainment, glamour, good taste, and stars.” Thalberg adhered to that formula for much of his intense, frequently brilliant career as one of Hollywood’s most influential producers in the age of the studio system. By the time he penned these words—he was in his early thirties and beginning to fear that the assembly-line approach introduced at other big studios would forever compromise the kind of filmmaking he espoused—he had already helped launch the careers of Clark Gable, Ramon Novarro, Marie Dressler, Joan Crawford, and Greta Garbo and overseen such acclaimed films as Ben-Hur , The Big Parade , The Broadway Melody , and Grand Hotel . Though not all Thalberg’s pictures were box-office jackpots (several of his more ambitious projects never earned back their investments), when he died of pneumonia in 1936, at the age of thirty-seven, the triumphs attributed to the “Boy Wonder of Hollywood” were not merely the stuff of studio lore. The tale of Thalberg, as Mark Vieira tells it in his engaging new biography, Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince , is “as romantic and improbable as a silent-movie plot.” It begins in the attic apartment of a Brooklyn brownstone located in what was then a German-Jewish enclave, where young Irving entered the world in May 1899. He was pronounced a “blue baby” due to a congenital heart condition that caused notable discoloration and the initial prognosis anticipated a maximum life expectancy of thirty years. Thalberg’s childhood was filled with health setbacks, and he was bed-ridden with rheumatic fever for a year during high school. But the time in bed, Vieira suggests, served as an apprenticeship of sorts, allowing Thalberg to immerse himself in reading everything he could get his hands on—classics and pulps, plays and biographies, philosophy and history; all the sources and lessons he would draw on later in his career. Vieira spends the bulk of his energies charting Thalberg’s meteoric rise, from his teenage start as the assistant to Universal boss Carl Laemmle, to his “mature” years at MGM, where he spent close to a decade and a half toiling away at a feverish pace as vice president in charge of production. By 1926, merely three years after MGM’s founding and after Louis B. Mayer had brought Thalberg on board, the studio boasted the highest earnings of any in Hollywood. Crediting Thalberg, then in his mid-twenties, with the success, the New York Times referred to him as an “old head on young shoulders”; it wasn’t long before Screenland magazine pronounced him the “hit-maker.” Due to his youthful appearance, Thalberg was often mistaken for an assistant—his future wife, Norma Shearer, on meeting him in 1923, thought he was an “office boy”—yet behind that sweet, innocent facade was, at least as some of his collaborators and competitors saw him, “the toughest and most ruthless man in the industry.” Known for his habits of flipping a twenty-dollar coin high in the air and munching on corn flakes during screenings, Thalberg was famous for his frequent insistence on retakes and his occasionally autocratic behavior toward writers, earning him the moniker Napoleon Thalberg. “Movies aren’t made,” he once insisted. “They’re re made.” His strident tampering was a source of great dismay to many directors. During the production of China Seas , for example, after several unwelcome interventions in which Thalberg dictated to the editors and coached the actors, Tay Garnett pushed back. “Irving, you’ve hired me as director,” he told him. “You’ve given me the best stars in the business and spent a million dollars—and now you won’t let me direct the picture. I didn’t come to Metro to be a stooge!” Thalberg was not unwilling to acknowledge his own wrongdoing and acquiesced in this instance. Film history has long been told from the vantage point of the director or the star, or focused our attention on a specific genre, period, or national cinema, but rarely has it come from the perspective of the producer. Vieira’s biography offers an unusually animated and revealing tour of Hollywood in the 1920s and ’30s. His detailed accounts of the personalities and the productions are replete with wonderful anecdotes: Thalberg imported William Strunk Jr., of The Elements of Style fame, from Cornell University to help with the treatment of Romeo and Juliet . When Strunk arrived at the studio—it’s hard not to picture Barton Fink—Thalberg explained to the literary scholar what was expected of him: “Your job is to protect Shakespeare from us.” Strunk responded by telling Thalberg how the bard used to gather his stories without paying royalties or sharing authorship, finally making a pronouncement that is somehow appropriate for understanding not only Renaissance England but also the age of Thalberg: “Shakespeare would have made the best movie producer in history.” Perhaps, but Thalberg was a pretty close second. Noah Isenberg is the author, most recently, of Detour (British Film Institute, 2008) and the editor of Weimar Cinema: An Essential Guide to Classic Films of the Era (Columbia University Press, 2009). THE STARLIGHT STUDIO. Adrian: A Lifetime of Movie Glamour . (With Leonard Stanley) Rizzoli USA, 2019. Forbidden Hollywood: The Pre-Code Era . Running Press, 2019. Into the Dark: The Hidden World of Film Noir . Running Press, 2016. Clifton’s and Clinton: A Cafeteria and a Crusader . (With Edmond Clinton) Angel City Press, 2015. Cecil B. DeMille: The Art of the Hollywood Epic . (With Cecilia de Mille Presley) Running Press, 2014. Majestic Hollywood: The Films of 1939 . Running Press, 2013. George Hurrell's Hollywood: Glamour Portraits, 1925-1992 . Running Press, 2013. Harlow in Hollywood . (With Darrell Rooney) Angel City Press, 2011. Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince . University of California Press, 2009. The Making of “Some Like It Hot.” (With Tony Curtis) John Wiley and Sons, 2009. Hollywood Dreams Made Real: Irving Thalberg and the Rise of M-G-M . Harry N. Abrams, 2008. Earn Qantas Points on eligible Booktopia orders* Simply link your Qantas Frequent Flyer membership number to your Booktopia account and earn points on eligible orders. Either by signing into your account or linking your membership details before your order is placed. Shop thousands of Books, Audio Books, DVDs, Calendars, Diaries and Stationery, then proceed to checkout. Earn 1 Qantas Point per $1 spent. Your points will be added to your account once your order is shipped. Click on the cover image above to read some pages of this book! Hollywood in the 1920s sparkled with talent, confidence, and opportunity. Enter Irving Thalberg of Brooklyn, who survived childhood illness to run Universal Pictures at twenty; co-found Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at twenty-four; and make stars of Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, and Jean Harlow. Known as Hollywood's "Boy Wonder," Thalberg created classics such as "Ben-Hur, Tarzan the Ape Man, Grand Hotel, Freaks, Mutiny on the Bounty, " and "The Good Earth, " but died tragically at thirty-seven. His place in the pantheon should have been assured, yet his films were not reissued for thirty years, spurring critics to question his legend and diminish his achievements. In this definitive biography, illustrated with rare photographs, Mark A. Vieira sets the record straight, using unpublished production files, financial records, and correspondence to confirm the genius of Thalberg's methods. In addition, this is the first Thalberg biography to utilize both his recorded conversations and the unpublished memoirs of his wife, Norma Shearer. "Irving Thalberg" is a compelling narrative of power and idealism, revealing for the first time the human being behind the legend. Industry Reviews. "Vieira has accomplished something quite extraordinary. This is the definitive volume about a towering figure in the history of Hollywood." -- Leonard Maltin Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy "Vieira has written the definitive biography of Thalberg." STARRED REVIEW -- Teri Shiel Library Journal "The third biography of Thalberg, and far and away the most thoroughly researched, comprehensive, and penetrating . as close to definitive as any biography of Irving Thalberg is likely to get." -- Joseph Epstein The Weekly Standard "Vieira writes with great verve and enthusiasm, and he has a flair for narrative movement that suits these exponents of the new storytelling . well written and extensively researched." -- David Thomson New Republic "If you want to know about Hollywood's Golden Age, then you must know about Thalberg. And if you want to know about Thalberg, then you must read this book." -- Anthony McKenna Screening The Past "Among the many virtues of Mark Vieira's biography is the use he makes of the story conferences preserved in the MGM archives." The Economist "Vieira's work is both exhaustively researched and beautifully presented, rich in detail yet compulsively readable. If you want to know about Hollywood's Golden Age, then you must know about Thalberg. And if you want to know about Thalberg, then you must read this book." -- Anthony McKenna Screening The Past "This is a worthy, well-documented account of [Thalberg's] life." -- R. D. Sears Choice "A well-researched and readable biography." -- David Yezzi Wall Street Journal "This is a sympathetic, diligent, and intelligent account of a wondrous era in Hollywood." Jewish Book World "Vieira has put the enigmatic producer back in the spotlight with his biography . a thorough and readable book." -- Matthew Rovner Forward "Vieira's excellent biography reveals a master player. [and] sheds much needed light upon significant, influential life." Magill's Literary Annual / Salem Press "The jury has been out for 70 years on the MGM studio chief, even though F Scott Fitzgerald immortalised him as the "last tycoon". Was Thalberg art's gift to Hollywood, with his well-bred epics (Romeo and Juliet, Marie Antoinette)? Or was he a mogul playing to the middlebrow? Read this impressively researched study and decide." -- Nigel Andrews Financial Times "An engaging new biography . an unusually animated and revealing tour of Hollywood in the 1920s and '30s." -- Noah Isenberg Bookforum "An important book on a pivotal figure in Hollywood history. Vieira's biography is an invaluable resource." -- Camille McCutcheon, University of South Carolina Upstate Jrnl Of American Culture "Vieira takes students of movie history deep into the bowels of MGM." -- Robert Fulford The National Post "A fast-paced and well-researched new biography of Thalberg." -- Kent Jones Film Comment. The Talkies The Golden Silents p. 81 All-Talking, All-Singing, All Profitable p. 89 The Production Coden p. 111 "His Brain is the Camera" Visiting Royalty p. 131 New Morals for Old p. 161 The Right to Be Wrong p. 185 Hollywood Icarus p. 199 The Thalberg Unit The New Setup p. 223 Honor with Credit p. 24? "To Hell with Art!" p. 266 The Crown Prince of Hollywood "Napoleon Thalherg" p. 295 A Feverish Energy p. 315 A Labor of Love p. 335 The Gods Are Jealous p. 354 The Legacy Unfinished Projects p. 377 Marie Antoinette p. 383 Epilogue p. 395 Appendix: The M-G-M Films of Irving Thalberg p. 399 Notes p. 405 Select Bibliography p. 447 Acknowledgments p. 463 Index p. 467 Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. ISBN: 9780520260481 ISBN-10: 0520260481 Series: 000394716 Audience: General Format: Hardcover Language: English Number Of Pages: 526 Published: 9th October 2009 Publisher: University of California Press Country of Publication: US Dimensions (cm): 22.89 x 16.79 x 4.23 Weight (kg): 0.96 Edition Number: 1.