flâneur

Founders: #173 Louis B. Mayer (MGM Studios)

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What I learned from reading Hollywood Rajah: The Life and Times of Louis B. Mayer by Bosley Crowther. ---- The reason so many people showed up at his funeral was because they wanted to make sure he was dead. [0:50] He is in that phalanx of men of aggressive bent who seized on the opportunities that an expanding civilization exposed. With them, he ascended to high places along an upwardly spiraling route that was there to be ascended by those who had the necessary stamina and drive. And, with some of them , he was unsettled and rendered dizzy by the heights, so that he could not control his footing when the road itself began to narrow and fall. [2:07] His own recollections of his early childhood were mercifully meager and dim. They were mainly recollections of being hungry. That was the only memory Mayer had of himself as a little boy. [7:01] How powerful and violent were the urges in the depths of the growing boy to break out of his immigrant encasement. [10:27] One of his favorite maxims had to do with behavior in adversity. “When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on." [11:55] He wanted to be a film producer. He wanted to get into that realm of fabricatio

[00:00:00] Mayer was dead now, his body wasted by the violent disease that had come upon him in the last bruising clash of his career. And so it has come to this funeral, the last ritual of the long and stormy career of Hollywood's most dynamic and momentous film producer, Louis B. Mayer. But how many in this solemn gathering knew the departed man? Who had seen beneath his surface? Did they know that he had often struggled through sleepless and terrifying nights, lashing himself with anxieties and piercing himself with doubts and fears? Did they know that he went into tantrums that were…

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