Merchant of Dreams - Hardcover

Higham, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1556113455 ISBN 13: 9781556113451

Publisher: Dutton Adult, 1993

Synopsis

A look back at Mayer's Hollywood discusses his birth in the Ukraine, his boyhood in Canada, his entry into show business, his early years as a film pioneer, and his legendary stars and star system. 50,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Movie mogul Louis B. Mayer (1885-1957) is often depicted as a lecherous ogre, but film biographer Higham ( Errol Flynn ) humanizes the M.G.M. titan in this revelatory, wonderfully vivid biography based on archival files and interviews with the Mayer family and surviving M.G.M. executives. The multifaceted Mayer is portrayed as a hypochondriac haunted by his mother's painful death, an absentee husband whose extramarital romances pushed his mentally disturbed wife to multiple suicide attempts, and a stern yet loving despot who protected his homosexual stars and covered up alleged acts of manslaughter by John Huston and by Clark Gable. Higham reveals how director Victor Saville, a British intelligence agent in WW II, swayed Mayer to make anti-Hitler movies. He offers new details about Mayer's close ties with Herbert Hoover, his betrayals of and by Irving Thalberg and his detestation of Greta Garbo, for whom he provided a cover when she worked as a British agent fighting Hitler. This star-studded, gossipy bio is packed with indelible anecdotes and on-set lore. Photos.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Ukrainian-born Lazar Meir graduated from Canada's St. John High School as Louis Mayer in 1902 and by 1912 was a successful film exhibitor in the northeastern United States. In Hollywood he helped create and drive the classical studio system by supervising productions, while finding and nurturing talent. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer became a great studio under Mayer's regime. By turns callous, empathetic, vulgar, and loving, Mayer hobnobbed with government figures at many levels, including the presidency. The wealth of information here is en grossing because Higham ( Elizabeth and Philip , Doubleday, 1991) balances the often shocking personal habits of stars and executives with nitty-gritty filmmaking details. Merchant of Dreams deserves a place beside Ethan Mordden's The Hollywood Studios ( LJ 5/15/88) and Neal Gabler's An Empire of Their Own (Crown, 1988).
- Kim Holston, American Inst. for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters, Malvern, Pa.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dutton Adult
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 1556113455
• ISBN 13: 9781556113451
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 488