Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer Paperback – November 17, 2012

Good read on old Hollywood. It's always been a cesspool; just gets darker with the passage of time... If you like reading H'wood history, this is a good one for your library. Louis B Mayer was a mogul, possibly the original mogul with as much power as any so-called 'mogul' operating today. What he had that they don't was a sense of decorum and decency--skewed perhaps in some areas--but he knew what the country wanted from his product, films, and what he could give them. Time passed and he didn't move with it so he was ousted... But you do have to admire him and what he accomplished...Scott Eyman is very knowledgeable re: the history of Hollywood and its founding denizens and stars. His research is meticulous and his presentation of it excellent... You won't be disappointed.

Interesting book about LBMayer and old Hollywood. This is a very detailed, well researched book. It’s not quite as readable as this authors book on John Wayne and Cary Grant. Those were wonderful to read all the way through. This bogs down a little in places, but is still a good read.

This is not just simply a fair and balanced character portrait of a controversial dream factory titan. It's also a poignant historical good old days time machine trip that celebrates the class and glamour and the power and glory of old Hollywood. Through the poverty stoked tunnel vision of a naturalized Canadian immigrant scrap metal salesman whose refurbishment of a run down New England theater ultimately led to his becoming the foremost substantive taste arbiter of classic American cinema, it's a sweeping epic tale of rare drive and fate fortunate circumstance.With his start benefiting from local gentry who donated their time to help in showplace real estate renovation, after he built up enough movie house capital to move out west into production, the Loew's theater chain conglomerate combined Metro, his modest but profitable East LA operation and the Goldwyn Culver City lot into an iconic triumvirate monolith that would come to dominate the Hollywood golden age from the mid 1920s to the late 1940s, a quaint celluloid window of timeless quality that spanned from the silent era to talkies to the advent of the studio system.The power Louis B. wielded was as king of beasts in the Hollywood jungle who could make or break careers at will. Despite a reputation for manipulative histrionics, for generations as Tinseltown ring leader of A list royalty, he flourished because he had a romance with movies that overshadowed his control freak wrath as a little big shot. Yet it was all a ruse to build the brand name since during his tenure his stature was beholden to Loew's chairman nemesis Nick Schenck and stock holders in New York who could vote him out if and when profits waned.Nevertheless, after sickly second in command wunderkind Thalberg passed on and the Great Depression intervened in a hostile Fox takeover, in the wake of the shakeup Mayer found himself PC family value morale master of the biggest major studio on earth and chief architect of the most prolific star lineup and film library ever assembled in movieland. Mayer was the pioneer king of good will picture escapism and his life story stars as the host of our nostalgic yearning that misses old school media that mattered vs. the new corporate bean count focus groups of millennial mediocrities.He was not so much a creative production force as a boss with a sharp eye for talent, a roguish perfectionist streak and a heavy attitude for lighthearted filmfare. If he was a cutthroat with the personality to match, then it was part of the job to maintain his feared and respected status. Had he only gotten more back end stock options to compliment his lofty salary, he might have survived intact as a mover shaker beyond his lavish heyday. But by the time post war motion picture tastes had changed to film noir and home media competition came from television, his downfall spelled the end of an era.If there was a reason for Mayer's demise beyond generation gap jaded audiences, it was that too many cooks spoiled the movie-making by committee stew with as many as 40 producers on payroll overhead. Add to that not enough theaters to insure profits of big budget films and old guard downsizing was inevitable. However, in the end what was most heartbreaking was the eventual liquidation of MGM property assets by later owner Kirk Kerkorian and the loss of its priceless movie catalog to Ted Turner which had marked the metaphorical decline of Hollywood itself.This book is about a sentimental idealist showman at home as an entertainment mogul as long as he could sell positive myths and naive fairy tales of public fancy where most films were corny and had happy endings. Yet campy conservative optimism aside, real life is not so predetermined. And if it was, L.B. wouldn't have uttered the infamous epitaph "Nothing Matters" in his final hours. Still, as a salute to wholesome media Americana, this grand bio saga helps you live in the past when times were more simple and showbiz was run and ruled by sensitive old souls and not hipster juvenile delinquents.

If you love movies, you need to read this book. It's a sad read because so much of the glory of the past, of what made MGM, is gone forever. It's sad that in less than a 100 years, what was a magnificent organization, has been reduced to a shadow of itself.And so, is even more important to read this book, to dig into the historical archives like only the author can do, and discover the indomitable passion that built MGM through the life of L.B. Mayer.This is an important book for anybody who loves cinema history. So much of what we do today had been influenced by the life of all the players of that era and the most influential art form of the time, movies, have been shaped by the will of L.B. Mayer.As they say: they don't make them like this anymore

I enjoyed reading this book; however, I found it jarring at times. I've always said it was a mistake to stop teaching sentence diagramming in grade school. I think this book proves my point. It's a great yarn and has a lot of good information as well as all of the Hollywood dirt. That said, the writing could have been more clear--excessive use of reflexive pronouns left me re-reading more than one passage. Thoughts that should be separate sentences find themselves as subordinate clauses in lengthy awkward paragraphs. Despite its subject matter and presumably myriad dynamite photos out there, the photograph section was pretty stingy. In a Hollywoood bio, this is definitely a negative. Overall a good read, but requiring more effort than it should have. I don't like when I have to edit passages myself to make them make sense.

Don’t buy it big ripoff

The story seems quite interesting but it is very annoying to read because pages keep coming loose. The very first page was loose and it went downhill from there. I will keep trying but I am very close to throwing it in the bin and putting the whole thing down to bad luck this time.

This book is the best biography of Louis Mayer that I have read so far. Filled with comments from those who knew him (and either loved or hated him) it presents many the many facets of Mayer's larger-than-life personality and allows the reader to make up their own mind as to whether he was a cuddly uncle or a manic ego. Personally I was won over to him because of his kindness to old silent stars who had fallen on hard times (Mayer employed them as extras at MGM). He never forgot a kindness - mind you he never forgot a slight either!

La crainte que l'on pourrait ressentir en ouvrant cette copieuse biographie de presque 600 pages serait que son sujet -le mythique Louis-B Mayer- ne soit qu'un alibi pour explorer l'histoire de la MGM via ses stars et ses films les plus légendaires. Que nenni : les premières pages de Lion of Hollywood donnent d'emblée le ton en s'attachant immédiatement au petit homme rondouillard d'origine juive sur lequel continuent de circuler toutes sortes de rumeurs faisant de lui un mégalomane lubrique, brutal et tyrannique. En suivant son parcours qui débuta sous les rudes auspices de l'Ukraine de la fin du XIXème siècle pour le conduire sous les sunlights de la ô combien cinématographique Californie, Scott Eyman dresse le portrait en demi teintes d'un homme ambitieux, insaisissable, qui put être simultanément un saint et un démon. Si l'on croise bien évidemment au fil des pages des noms de comédiens,de réalisateurs et de producteurs prestigieux (sa collaboration houleuse avec Thalberg est longuement évoquée) ces allusions n'éclipsent jamais le sujet de l'étude en se concentrant notamment sur la famille hautement dysfonctionnelle de Louis telle la farouche haine entre ses deux filles la richissime Eddie Goetz et Irene Selznick, productrice au théâtre d'un Tramway nommé désir. Ecrit dans un anglais fluide largement accessible, Lion of Hollywood the life and legend of Louis B. Mayer offre l'avantage de dépoussiérer une figure encore aujourd'hui trop systématiquement réduite à un cliché.

This book is not specifically about Louis B. Mayer.It is about the early history of American cinema.There are so many tangents leading away from the main character, it makes reading frustrating.If one wants to know about the early history of American cinema, it's a good book.There should be a title change.