M-G-M: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot
By Steven Bingen, Stephen X. Sylvester & Michael TroyanSanta Monica Press, 312 pages, $34.95
One of the greatest surprises I ever received came on the day that a former student arranged for me to watch a rare 1932 movie in Louis B. Mayer's private screening room at MGM. For one glorious afternoon, I was transported back to Hollywood in its heyday, an experience I had never expected to repeat—that is, until I read "MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot," by Steven Bingen, Stephen X. Sylvester and Michael Troyan. As Debbie Reynolds writes in her foreword: "Although the studio is gone, it lives on vividly in the pages of this remarkable and beautiful book." Both a fan's delight and a scholar's roadmap, "MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot" is stuffed with rare photos, production charts, studio maps, shooting schedules, budgets and insider quotes from both the famous and the not-so-famous who worked there. (Click below to read more)
Founded on April 18, 1924, MGM was the Rolls-Royce of the old Hollywood studios. On its streets walked, as the studio itself put it, "more stars than there are in the heavens": Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Hepburn and Tracy, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, and many, many more. Its roster of movies contains some of the most enduring and award-winning films in history: "Grand Hotel," "Ben-Hur," "The Wizard of Oz," "National Velvet," "Mrs. Miniver," "The Philadelphia Story," "Singin' in the Rain" and dozens of others. For those who love old movies, MGM was a romantic Ruritania. For those skeptical of its overly long and sometimes sentimental movies, it was closer to Freedonia, a perfect subject for satire.
Love it or hate it, MGM is hardly ever thought of as simply a place where people worked to make a living. For most people, Hollywood is a concept, not a physical space, but Ms. Reynolds locates it in reality. She calls MGM "my hometown, my prep school, my university. . . . I grew up there. . . . I learned about friendship and responsibility there. I laughed and cried there." Messrs. Bingen, Sylvester and Troyan (a trio of archivist, writer and historian) present MGM as a concrete environment without losing the wonder and magic that were its product. "Our goal," they write, "was to preserve, in print and memory, if not in brick and mortar, the actual physical place that was once MGM."
The authors have put together "complete and accurate maps of each of the main MGM lots." Page by page, a reader can "walk" around MGM as it once was—a highly organized, efficient modern factory. The first thing that stands out is the sheer size of the place—more than 175 acres of prime real estate. A 1932 aerial-view map of Lot One has a list of all the buildings and departments it took to manufacture dreams: a purchasing department, spaces for accounting, payroll and insurance, a property building (with clocks of all types, lamps in all shapes and sizes, and enough weaponry to outfit a large army), a barbershop and newsstand, a water tower, a power plant, and a first-aid department.
By 1934, MGM had more than 4,000 employees, including 61 stars and feature players, 17 directors and 51 writers, all under exclusive contracts. By 1941, there were 178 people working in the costume building alone, overseeing 250,000 designs from almost every historical period. The Irving Thalberg Administration Building (built in 1937-38 as a tribute to its namesake, who died in 1936) was a white Art Deco edifice nicknamed "the iron lung" because of its early air-conditioning system. It had 235 offices. Mayer's was on the third floor, smack in the center, and above him, on the fourth, was a private gym, an executive dining room and a chiropractic office. Apparently it took a lot of aching backs to release 52 features per year.
MGM had its own library and research department, which besides books and clippings had a supply of old Sears catalogs, menus from everywhere, 19th-century travel guides and esoterica such as specialized files on New York City manhole covers, World War II Quonset huts and French Foreign Legion caps. If you were an employee, you worked in a safe and gated environment (with a 50-man police force). You could eat good food at reasonable prices in the studio commissary ("MGM special chicken broth, $.50, with matzoh balls, $.60"). You labored within grounds that were beautifully landscaped and near special apartments for stars: The "first floor men" included Gable and William Powell. Your employer was financially secure. Every day a team of accountants kept track of the budget down to the last penny. "The Wizard of Oz" (1939) cost $2,796,230.30. It was clearly marked as "over budget" by $1,048,076.
The maps of MGM's famous sound stages and backlots (accompanied by lists of films shot on each) are particularly fascinating. "The Wizard of Oz" used Sound Stage No. 27 for Munchkin land. Esther Williams owned Stage No. 30, which had her swimming pool and underwater tanks. "The Thin Man" was shot entirely on Stage No. 9, and Joan Crawford ice-skated (on very thin ice) for "Ice Follies of 1939" on Stage No. 12.
A reproduction of the "Plan of Lot Number One" shows that MGM maintained a lake, a castle, New York streets, a French district, escarpment rocks, an Irish street, a small town, a Spanish hacienda, and much else, including, inexplicably, a cabbage patch. Lot No. 2, which F. Scott Fitzgerald said "under the moon" looked like "the backlot of 30 acres of fairyland," had a cemetery, Tarzan's jungle, Grand Central Station, a Southern mansion and one of MGM's most familiar sets, the home of Andy Hardy and his family. It was officially known as "the New England street" even though the Hardys lived in Ohio, and it was used by other movies, including Elvis Presley's 1957 "Jailhouse Rock."
The authors acknowledge assistance from film historians such as Kevin Brownlow, Leonard Maltin and Richard Schickel, as well as the staffs and archivists at Warner Bros. (the company that now controls most of the MGM material). "MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot" does not shirk the sad task of explaining clearly why the assets of MGM's proud legacy were eventually sold. The reasons for MGM's decline are complex and not easily summarized. They include bad management and the collapse of the Hollywood studio system.
The listings at the final auction in 1970 of what was once the most storied studio in Hollywood included "Star Wardrobes," "Antiques and Furniture," and an item that broke my heart: "one Magnificent Paddle Wheel Steamer" (the Cotton Blossom from the 1952 musical "Showboat"). Debbie Reynolds sums up the truth that everyone who loved all those great MGM movies has had to face: "Well, it's all gone now." Gone but not forgotten.
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