Thalberg: The Last Tycoon and the World of M-G-M - Hardcover

Flamini, Roland

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517586401 ISBN 13: 9780517586402

Publisher: Crown, 1994

Synopsis

Profiles the influential Hollywood figure of the 1920s and 1930s, from his role in the creation of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, through his contributions to Hollywood history, to his untimely death at the age of thirty-seven. 15,000 first printing. National ad/promo.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Second full-fledged life of Irving G. Thalberg (the first being Bob Thomas's Thalberg, 1969), the Hollywood boy- wonder/producer (1899-1936) upon whom F. Scott Fitzgerald drew for his hero Monroe Stahr in The Last Tycoon. Flamini (Sovereign, 1991, etc.) has a winner in his magnetic subject--the unfailingly interesting genius and cofounder of M-G-M- -whom he separates neatly from the image created by Fitzgerald. Longtime Hollywood readers won't find a ton of new stuff here: Thalberg's life has been picked over by biographers of his wife Norma Shearer and by other historians of the M-G-M factory, not to mention folks in the Fitzgerald industry. But Flamini has found wonderful script conferences in which we see Thalberg plain and in action as he guides some 50 movies a year through production: We watch the producer walk up and down his office, flipping a $25 gold piece as he revises and invents before a generally silent team of co-workers. Though Flamini fails to credit Thomas's Thalberg as a source, as if his own were the first life of Thalberg--and though he at one point mistakes Blanche Sweet for Olga Baclanova in Tod Browning's Freaks--he writes well, avoiding clich‚s and half-baked conjecture, and keeps the reader alert through the sheer intelligence of his approach. Thalberg, we learn, was born with a congenital heart defect and was slated for early death. Bedridden for three years as a youth, he read widely, both novels and philosophy, later took business courses, came into film business in his teens, was studio manager of Universal City at age 20, then production chief at M-G-M, with a special affinity for the creative staff. Movies became his religion, while the glorification of his wife in stuffy ``quality'' productions set up his worst misfires. An essential glimpse into the hot center of early filmmaking. (B&w photographs) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Booklist:

Most modern-day movie fans know Irving Thalberg simply through the special Academy Award given each year that bears his name; however, Hollywood insiders know Thalberg as a pioneer, a man who, in his limited time, strove to make high-quality pictures that would give MGM Studios legitimacy in the world of art. Called "the boy genius" because of his youth and the innovations he sought to make, Thalberg always knew he was living on borrowed time due to a heart condition that doctors claimed would kill him by age 30. When he died in 1936 at age 37, Thalberg was married to Norma Shearer, one of the world's most glamorous movie stars, whose career he had helmed for several years in his trademark quietly intense manner. Flamini's solid, fact-driven narrative concentrates on Thalberg the man, tracing his forays into writing and his relationships with writers he thought would bring additional prestige to the studio, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner. The central antagonist opposite Thalberg is Louis B. Mayer, initially a mentor and later a jealous rival in the struggle for control of MGM, studio of "more stars than there are in heaven." And what stars! Here are Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow, Charles Laughton, the Marx Brothers, and the fabulous Garbo herself. Movie buffs will swoon over the stories of the making of such films as Camille and the silent versions of Ben-Hur, Mutiny on the Bounty, and A Night at the Opera. Thalberg's fascinating story reveals much about the workings of Hollywood's golden age. Joe Collins

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0517586401
• ISBN 13: 9780517586402
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 309