EDGE San Francisco

In 1974, four-time Best Actress Oscar winner Katherine Hepburn made her sole appearance at an Academy Awards ceremony. She presented the Irving G. Thalberg Award to Lawrence Weingarten. This special Oscar honors an individual whose work embodies "a consistently high quality of motion picture productions." Who was Thalberg? He was the inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon. Movie buffs know him as Norma Shearer’s husband. In fact, he was instrumental in the creation of classic Hollywood studios, an early believer in the star system, and the man responsible for making the producer, not the director or the writer, king. Mark A. Vieira’s absorbing new biography Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince (U. of Calif. Press, $34.95) expertly chronicles his life and achievements.

Thalberg was an only, sickly child, born (1899) to Jewish parents in Brooklyn. Doctors doubted he would live past 21, but his fiercely protective mother devoted herself to his health. The frail boy read the classics, Shakespeare to Dickens. As a teenager, he worked for movie pioneer Carl Laemmle, then joined Louis B. Mayer at the nascent Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio in 1924. Thalberg, in charge of production, was called the "Boy Wonder."

Thalberg favored adaptations of established literary and theatrical works. He doubted that sound would be more than a novelty, but soon changed his mind. He was a key supporter of Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, the Marx Brothers, Jean Harlow, and Shearer. With Grand Hotel (1932), he released the first "all star" dramatic movie. Other significant films made under his aegis were Mutiny on the Bounty, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Private Lives, Romeo and Juliet, The Good Earth, Camille, and Marie Antoinette, completed and released after his 1936 death.

He balanced business issues - profitability - with artistic aspirations. When illness forced a sabbatical, Mayer took over and the two men, once very close, never trusted each other again. Ultimately, Thalberg was given his own unit at MGM, but other producers, including Mayer’s son-in-law David Selznick, also had that privilege. Vieira shows Thalberg contemplated forming his own studio at the time of his death.

Most film historians acknowledge his importance while dismissing him as "middle-brow" and decrying the power of producers, considered far less creative than directors or writers. But Vieira documents Thalberg’s excellent artistic judgment and understanding of what audiences liked. He rarely condescended to the public. He strongly believed in good writing and paid his scenarists well, often having several work on the same script. He was a relentless workaholic and perfectionist.

Vieira also balances the creative and business aspects of studio history. His description of how MGM was nearly acquired by William Fox of Fox Studios is riveting. He’s excellent at assessing Thalberg’s part in making Shearer "the first lady of Hollywood." She was a silent-screen star and had been signed by Mayer before Thalberg met her. Their 1927 marriage proved to be happy. Crawford would later complain about Shearer’s advantage in getting roles and famously said, "You can tell Miss Shearer I didn’t get where I am on my ass!" But Shearer had to overcome Thalberg’s opposition to get her Oscar-winning vehicle The Divorcee (30) because he didn’t see her as a sexually aggressive woman. That film - and another Shearer smash, A Free Soul (31) - alarmed the censors and forced Thalberg to negotiate what would ultimately be known as the Motion Picture Production Code. Unlike the fictional Susan Alexander Kane of Citizen Kane (41) or the real-life Marion Davies, whose career was ceaselessly promoted by her lover William Randolph Hearst, Shearer was often effective, and was a major box-office draw for over a decade.

Nonetheless, Crawford had a point. It’s unlikely Shearer would have played Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Juliet, or Marie Antoinette without Thalberg’s backing. She’s dreadful in the first and uneven in the others, both of which lost money because they were so expensive to produce. Ironically, Vieira concludes, "After 80 years of reissues, television, video, cable, and Internet exposure, Crawford appears to be Thalberg’s most enduring contribution to American culture."

Thalberg was comfortable around gay men, notably producer David Lewis, who lived openly with director James Whale. When director George Cukor was arrested for soliciting sex from a policeman, Thalberg had Mayer use his influence to get the charges dropped and kept out of the press.

Vieira writes movingly of Shearer’s grief at Thalberg’s death and how she dedicated herself to their two children. She fought a nasty battle with Mayer over payments due her as Thalberg’s widow, but prevailed. Three years after his death, she was top-billed in The Women (39), although Crawford stole the movie. Selznick offered her Scarlett O’Hara, but she declined. Vieira suggests that the producer may not have been serious. Her last two films failed and she retired, something Thalberg had been suggesting before he died. Vieira exposes Mickey Rooney’s fraudulent claim that he, as a teenager, was seduced by the widow Thalberg.

This is a superbly researched biography of a man who never put his name on a movie. It appeared once on screen, after his death, when audiences read that The Good Earth was dedicated to his memory. But as Vieira skillfully points out, his contribution to a major American industry and art-form cannot be overstated.