Irving Thalberg – MGM's Premier Producer
Creative Genius Behind Hollywood’s Most Powerful Studio
Dec 19, 2008
Irving Thalberg was born on May 3, 1899 in Brooklyn New York. At 17, he contracted rheumatic fever after a sickly childhood. He was married to actress Norma Shearer and her connection to him catapulted her into one of the most famous stars of the 1930’s. Thalberg was subsequently troubled with a bad heart, a condition which plagued him for his entire life.
Irving Thalberg at Universal Studios
In 1918, when Thalberg was just nineteen years old, he landed the job of private secretary to Carl Laemmle, head of Universal Pictures in New York - the most powerful studio in the industry. Thalberg’s tenacity and workaholic ethics proved him a worthy asset and within a year he was promoted to supervise the California production site for the studio.
Thalberg worked magic on many productions, and despite his young age had no problems standing his ground against some of Hollywood’s most powerful directors. Notoriously, he and Erich von Stroheim butted heads on the films Foolish Wives & Greed, and subsequently Thalberg fired him from his next picture. His handling of these conflicts with such an industry heavyweight along with his impressive producing skills earned him the title of the “Boy Wonder”.
Irving Thalberg at MGM
In the early 1920’s Louis B. Mayer lured Thalberg away from Universal to produce small films for his self-named production company. Meanwhile, theatre tycoon Marcus Loew had merged his company, Metro Pictures, with Goldwyn Pictures. In need of a management team, he brought on Mayer and Thalberg to handle this task and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was formed. It was at MGM that Thalberg controlled all aspects of production for the films the studio generated up until the mid 1930’s. While Mayer worked the management side, Thalberg was the creative genius and working as a team they created the most powerful studio of Hollywood’s golden era.
Years of hard work and successful films continued through the evolution of the talkies, but as a result Thalberg’s health suffered. In 1931 he received an Academy Award for his production work on Grand Hotel. Thalberg never credited himself in his movies and is famously noted for saying, “Credit you give yourself is not worth having.” Although he received the award alone, Grand Hotel was co-produced by his good friend Paul Bern, who received no accolades. The next year Bern was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head, a case which was never solved. Thalberg’s own reaction to his friend’s death was to fall into his own deep depression.
In much need of rest, Thalberg requested a sabbatical. However Joseph Schenck, then head of the corporation, would only respond by offering more money to the ailing producer and demanding more work. After Mayer learned that Thalberg’s salary was now greater than his own, the partnership began to unravel. In December of 1932, at the age of 33, Thalberg suffered a heart attack. While recuperating away from the studio, Mayer reacted by garnering a group of producers to fill Thalberg’s shoes. Upon his return in late 1933, Thalberg found that he had ultimately been replaced and reduced to minor producing activities.
Irving Thalberg died in September of 1936. He was thirty seven years old. As was one of the founding members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, after his death, the Academy created the Irving G. Thalberg Award which is given to “Creative Producers, whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production.” Some recipients of this award have been great names such as Alfred Hitchcock, Walt Disney and David O. Selznick.
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