What I learned from reading Hollywood Rajah: The Life and Times of Louis B. Mayer by Bosley Crowther.
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 something quite different and apart from the bursts of anger that he often put on to make a point did they know that in the silence of his bedroom he would sweat and grovel and moan?
Samuel Goldwyn, who never loved Mayer remarked at the end the reason so many people showed up at his funeral was because they wanted to make sure he was dead.
It is no wonder that Mayer with his concentration of power and his unassailable position from which to throw weight in the community was one whose attentions and favors were sought and whose counsels on matters largely swayed the movie industry.
Those whom he favored regarded him as a demigod those whom he did not thought of him as a monster.
Studios and stars, individuals and companies waxed and waned.
Mayer held strong for three decades.
David Selznick proclaimed that Louis B.
Mayer was the greatest single figure in the history of the motion picture industry.
It is my hope that this observation of the life and times of Louis B.
Mayer will help serve to illuminate more than a Hollywood type more than the monolithic figure of Mayer.
For I find that this man is characteristic of a large group of magnates and tycoons who have marched across the landscape of industrial America.
With them, he is in the phalanx of men of aggressive Bentley 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 much so that he could not control his footing when the road itself began to narrow and fall.
I wish to offer this volume as an inspection of one of those giants.