Louis Burt Mayer

 Louis Burt Mayer (July 12, 1885 – October 29, 1957)

He was a film producer and co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios (MGM) in 1924. Mayer was skilled at developing star actors, including child actors, then placing them in consistently slick productions, such as musicals or comedies, for which MGM became famous. Under Mayer's management, MGM accumulated the largest concentration of leading writers, directors and stars in Hollywood. Growing up poor and quitting school at 12 to support his family, he later moved to Boston and purchased a small vaudeville theater. After expanding and moving to Los Angeles, he teamed up with Irving Thalberg, and they developed hundreds of high quality story-based films, noted for their wholesome and lush entertainment. Mayer liked his stars to portray an idealized vision of men and women, family life, virtue, and patriotism, all presented in the present world they lived in. He believed that movies should not be a reflection of life, but be an entertaining escape from life. Mayer handled the business part of running the studio, such as setting budgets and approving new productions, while Thalberg, still in his twenties, ran all MGM productions. During his reign at MGM, after Thalberg's early death in 1936, he had enemies as well as admirers. Some stars did not appreciate his control over their lives, while others saw him as a father figure, important in their lives. Joan Crawford said "Mayer was my father, my father confessor, the best friend I ever had," while Ricardo Montalban recalled that "he really thought of the people under contract as his boys and girls."

Nevertheless, he believed in wholesome entertainment and went to great lengths so that MGM had "more stars than there are in the heavens". Mayer also wanted the studio to develop a number of child stars, necessary for producing family-oriented stories. Jackie Coogan, then 11, marked the studio's debut using child stars with his role in The Rag Man in 1925. During Hollywood's golden age, MGM had more child actors than any other studio, including Jackie Cooper, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Freddie Bartholomew, Margaret O'Brien, Elizabeth Taylor, and Roddy McDowall. The post-war years saw a gradual decline in profits for MGM and the other studios, which gradually led to Mayer's resignation in 1951. Mayer died of leukemia on October 29, 1957, at age 72. He is interred at Home of Peace Cemetery in East Los Angeles, California.