the underbelly of the business

[Harlett O'Dowd]

not sure this is the best place to post this - so moderators, feel free to do with this as you will.

2 talkie era questions -

1) what do you consider the best written account (for lay people) of Fox's hostile takeover bid for MGM in 1929 - not just in how it brought down Fox, but also in who made money off of the deal (The Loew brothers?) and just what exactly was the lay of the land once the dust settled?

2) just what happened to Universal in 1935-36 that saw the ouster of the Laemmles? IIRC, there was also industry-wide protests from actors during this time claiming unfair business practice in that just about everyone (producer, studio, etc.) in town was claiming an agent's fee on every actor's services. OK if you're a 5k/week star, less so if you're a $100/wk contract player.

I don't know if these last two events are related by anything other than timeframe. I know stage actors won some concessions in 1935 as the nation began to crawl out of the Depression, but I don't know the story about film actors during this time.

Thanks!

[Daniel Eagan]

2) just what happened to Universal in 1935-36 that saw the ouster of the Laemmles? IIRC, there was also industry-wide protests from actors during this time claiming unfair business practice in that just about everyone (producer, studio, etc.) in town was claiming an agent's fee on every actor's services. OK if you're a 5k/week star, less so if you're a $100/wk contract player.

I don't know if these last two events are related by anything other than timeframe. I know stage actors won some concessions in 1935 as the nation began to crawl out of the Depression, but I don't know the story about film actors during this time.

Can't help on your first question or about actors, although labor unrest was widespread throughout the industry in the late 1930s.

I love The Genius of the System by Thomas Schatz. He goes into detail about Universal, providing daily costs and budgets to show exactly why the Laemmles' methods so upset stockholders. Basically, the Laemmles' prestige pictures made no economic sense. Directors like John Stahl and James Whale spent enormous amounts on movies that didn't make very much money, whereas serials, horror films, and B-Westerns were making enormous profits.

Stahl shot 80 hours of footage for Magnificent Obsession, for example; Owen Beebe shot 16 hours of footage for the 4-hour serial Secret Agent X-9, which had a total budget of about $125,000 -- compared to $260,000 just for the cast and director of My Man Godfrey.

[drednm]

If I remember right, John Gilbert was about to land a big contract with Fox about the time of the merger, but he signed with MGM after the dust settled.

MGM was the big winner and the biggest game in town....

[gjohnson]

Reiterating what Daniel said,

Universal's distribution system was built around the small markets, which helped them clean up with their bread-and-butter programmers. When Junior tried to push them into the top ranks with his prestige pictures he found that there were few big city theaters available for his products on a regular basis and that their small town distributors were not as interested in the A pictures.

Gary J.

[CoffeeDan]

If I remember right, John Gilbert was about to land a big contract with Fox about the time of the merger, but he signed with MGM after the dust settled.

John Gilbert's contract was up for renewal in March of 1929, and initially the studio (Louis B. Mayer in particular) saw this as a good excuse to let him go, as his last couple of pictures, THE COSSACKS and MASQUES OF THE DEVIL, had not done well at the box office. Gilbert had already received an attractive offer from Joe Schenck to produce and direct his own films at United Artists.

But when Fox learned of Gilbert's impending departure, they insisted that Gilbert be part of the MGM package, or the merger wouldn't happen. Gilbert, realizing the position he was in, gave MGM what he felt was a list of impossible demands for the renewal of his contract. Once he was turned down, he figured, he could go to UA with a clear conscience.

To Gilbert's surprise, MGM gave him everything he wanted (including $250,000 a picture, above-the-title billing, and story approval, among other things) and signed him to a new three-year contract to seal the deal with Fox. However, the financing on Fox's end fell through, and so did the merger.

[Jim Reid]

I first read about Fox's takeover try in Mayer & Thalerg, The Make Believe Saints, by Samuel Marx. Marx was an insider at MGM at the time.

[Chris Snowden]

If I remember right, John Gilbert was about to land a big contract with Fox about the time of the merger, but he signed with MGM after the dust settled.

John Gilbert's contract was up for renewal in March of 1929, and initially the studio (Louis B. Mayer in particular) saw this as a good excuse to let him go, as his last couple of pictures, THE COSSACKS and MASQUES OF THE DEVIL, had not done well at the box office. Gilbert had already received an attractive offer from Joe Schenck to produce and direct his own films at United Artists.

But when Fox learned of Gilbert's impending departure, they insisted that Gilbert be part of the MGM package, or the merger wouldn't happen. Gilbert, realizing the position he was in, gave MGM what he felt was a list of impossible demands for the renewal of his contract. Once he was turned down, he figured, he could go to UA with a clear conscience.

To Gilbert's surprise, MGM gave him everything he wanted (including $250,000 a picture, above-the-title billing, and story approval, among other things) and signed him to a new three-year contract to seal the deal with Fox. However, the financing on Fox's end fell through, and so did the merger.

My understanding is that the merger was nullified on anti-trust concerns. Louis B. Mayer was a prominent donor to the Republican Party, and after he personally dropped in on President Hoover to make his case, the Commerce Department took up the matter and shot down the merger. William Fox had just been in a very serious auto accident and was helpless to intervene. The nullification had a lot more to do with politics than with business, but it was another falling domino in a succession of setbacks that ultimately drove him out of business and into prison.

I've been wishing for years now that someone would research and write a serious history of the rise and fall of William Fox, because it's a fascinating story. Paging Scott Eyman!

[gjohnson]

The lawsuit was definitely a bump in the road but if there was one thing those old moguls knew about it was to instigate and drag out court cases. Fox was still fighting the antitrust case into the early 30's. I'd say it was the car accident that really halted the merger. While Fox laid in the hospital near death the bank financing he had lined up evaporated and just as he began to recover the Crash hit and wiped him out. That effectively ended all merger talk. Nick Schenck only respected bank accounts, not lawsuits.

Gary J.

[FrankFay]

Attempting to bribe the judge during his bankruptcy hearing did Fox absolutely no good. For the rest of his life he was a pariah in the profession.

[Chris Snowden]

Attempting to bribe the judge during his bankruptcy hearing did Fox absolutely no good. For the rest of his life he was a pariah in the profession.

I think he was something of a pariah anyway, widely considered a harsh, unpleasant person, seldom travelling to Hollywood from his base in NYC, ignoring the social circles that might have produced helpful alliances. His rocky beginning in the business taught him to see everybody as a back-stabbing competitor.

Unlike executives like Mayer and Laemmle, Fox never tried cultivating a friendly public persona for himself until it was way too late. Ironically, if he had tried to make the public like him, he probably would've succeeded, because he was a real underdog: a self-made man who stood up to the Patents Trust all alone and won, then built a huge film empire in the 1910s from the ground up, rather than through mergers. His was a real success story, perfectly in synch with the era. And then it all went wrong.

[Harlett O'Dowd]

I first read about Fox's takeover try in Mayer & Thalerg, The Make Believe Saints, by Samuel Marx. Marx was an insider at MGM at the time.

any good?

[CoffeeDan]

My understanding is that the merger was nullified on anti-trust concerns. Louis B. Mayer was a prominent donor to the Republican Party, and after he personally dropped in on President Hoover to make his case, the Commerce Department took up the matter and shot down the merger. William Fox had just been in a very serious auto accident and was helpless to intervene. The nullification had a lot more to do with politics than with business, but it was another falling domino in a succession of setbacks that ultimately drove him out of business and into prison.

I've been wishing for years now that someone would research and write a serious history of the rise and fall of William Fox, because it's a fascinating story. Paging Scott Eyman!

Stopping the merger on anti-trust grounds was the ace up Mayer's sleeve, but Fox's auto accident, coupled with his inability to raise enough solid cash in the wake of the stock market crash, doomed the merger before Mayer could play that card. The deal literally collapsed under its own weight.

I will admit that following the machinations of the Fox-MGM merger is both fascinating and confusing. After reading several unsatisfactory accounts that differed in details, I decided to dig into the trade papers and magazines of the time to get the story myself. It is probably the biggest research monster I have ever dealt with -- I even started a flow chart on my living-room floor so I could keep everything straight. There was so much bluster from both Fox and MGM about the other, it's hard to tell fact from fiction as well.

I can sympathize with Harlett about finding a far-reaching, easy-to-understand account of this chapter of film history. I think I got closer to the truth when I did my own research from contemporary sources, but the whole thing still makes my head spin. Anybody who can sort this whole mess out is a genius in my book.

[Jim Reid]

I first read about Fox's takeover try in Mayer & Thalerg, The Make Believe Saints, by Samuel Marx. Marx was an insider at MGM at the time.

any good?

I liked it, but it's probably been 25-30 years since I've read it. Looks like it can be gotten pretty cheap.

link

[Brooksie]

I first read about Fox's takeover try in Mayer & Thalerg, The Make Believe Saints, by Samuel Marx. Marx was an insider at MGM at the time.

any good?

I have just pulled my copy down from the shelf - it's a good solid read, inevitably colored (in both a good and a bad way) by Marx's own insider status but well worth seeking out.

I can't figure out whether the book's final line is supremely insightful or merely clever, but one way or another, it's one of the most memorable quotes from a biography, and one I always think of when I think of Mayer.

The Fox situation takes up around 10 pages, focusing on most of the details that have already been mentioned here, but for obvious reasons, focusing on the deteriorating relationship between Mayer and Thalberg, in which Gilbert became a pawn.

[FrankFay]

There's also a good bit about Fox's collapse in the documentary with the Murnau & Borzage set. (I hope they might reissue that set in a simpler format- I'd rate it A for content, F for packaging)

[Daniel Eagan]

I first read about Fox's takeover try in Mayer & Thalerg, The Make Believe Saints, by Samuel Marx. Marx was an insider at MGM at the time.

any good?

Samuel Marx is a good storyteller, but I don't trust anything he says, or writes.

That sentence should all be past tense, right?

[Frederica]

I first read about Fox's takeover try in Mayer & Thalerg, The Make Believe Saints, by Samuel Marx. Marx was an insider at MGM at the time.

any good?

Samuel Marx is a good storyteller, but I don't trust anything he says, or writes.

That sentence should all be past tense, right?

Except for the "not trusting" part, which should remain in both present and future tense.

[Jim Reid]

Samuel Marx is a good storyteller, but I don't trust anything he says, or writes.

Please expand on this. I really like the book. Why don't you trust what he says?

[Daniel Eagan]

Samuel Marx is a good storyteller, but I don't trust anything he says, or writes.

Please expand on this. I really like the book. Why don't you trust what he says?

Marx, like Garson Kanin and others, was a popular writer, not a serious one. He told stories that may or may not have been true, but that always reflected well on his own experience and judgment. When editing the book version of MGM: When the Lion Roars, I quickly learned not to trust what he said. Not that he was necessarily wrong or incorrect, just that I needed to corroborate his recollections with more reliable sources.

[Hal Erickson]

Garson Kanin always seemed to be on hand when famous actors began talking extensively about their careers and Hollywood history...or at least that's what one might be led to believe when reading his books.

My favorite questionable reminiscence was when Benny Rubin, in his self-published autobiography, claimed that it was he who advised Orson Welles to hire Gregg Toland for CITIZEN KANE.