Kenneth Turan’s splendid book about Hollywood titans Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg is the first in 50 years to tell their story in a single volume. Part of Yale University Press’ “Jewish Lives” series, “Louis B. Mayer & Irving Thalberg: The Whole Equation” centers on the years in the 1920s and ’30s when the two men made MGM the most successful movie studio in Hollywood.
On one side of that equation was Mayer, the platonic ideal of a movie mogul, once described as “a shark that killed when it wasn’t hungry” and a man who was the highest-paid executive in the U.S. in one seven-year period. On the other was Thalberg, a sickly but energetic man whose youthfulness meant he was often mistaken for an office boy even as he oversaw and shaped behind the scenes more than 400 movies in his time at MGM. Their commitment to giving the public what they believed it wanted and to proving that motion pictures were a serious art form transformed movies.
For the review in full, visit The Los Angeles Times.
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