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.He worked very hard for it.His business methods and habits were strange,but they earned huge dividends.The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer executiveoffices were a white wooden building, and Thalberg s office was on thesecond floor.He had a private projection room which had three desks, acouple of pianos and about thirty armchairs.He was seldom there before 10a.m.But once there he devoted all his energies into ensuring that thecompany produced the best films in the world.His life story is anotherversion of the American myth of the ordinary guy who makes it to the top ofthe tree.After leaving high school in Brooklyn, he worked as an office boy inUniversal Pictures, where he had been discovered by Carl Laemle, Snr.,who was an executive producer, associated particularly with the success of AllQuiet on the Western Front in 1930.Thalberg s major business activity seemed to be talk and he used wordsquietly, sacredly and preciously, almost like a poet.He was fragile in 125The Last Tycoon: Fitzgerald as Projectionistappearance and less than 5 2 in height.He used his hands to great effectwhen he spoke and was given to pacing up and down his office with his handsclasped behind his back when deep in thought.His voice was always calmand contained, as if he was determined to be sparing in its use.The itemsnoticeable on his desk were his dictaphone, a large box of cigarettes which henever opened, plates of apples and dates which he frequently dipped into andmany bottles of medicine.He did not give out the impression of massivelygood and robust health.All those who have written about the professional qualities possessedand employed by Irving Thalberg agree that two particular qualities wereoutstanding: his ability to deal thoroughly with all aspects of motion pictureproduction, and his ability to come up with ideas.To an outsider theactivities of a typical day in Thalberg s working life might seem to lackcohesion and purpose.But he knew what he was doing, and the industryknew that he knew.Mae D.Huettig gives a reasonable account of what heactually seemed to do for a living:There is naturally no chance that Mr.Thalberg s activities willfall into routine.His efforts follow no pattern whatsoever, exceptthat they consist almost exclusively of talk.He deals with actors,whose simple wants of avarice or vanity he finds it easy toappease.He deals with writers, with whom he seldom commitsthe unpardonable blunder of saying: I don t like it, but I don tknow why. He is ceaselessly aware of Delores Del Rio s giftedhusband, Cedric Gibbons, who designs MGM scenery, and of thetall, twittering hunchback Adrain, who drapes MGM s loveliestbodies.He deals with M.E.Greenwood, the gaunt studiomanager, who used to be an Arizona faro dealer and now tellsMGM s New York office how much the company has spent everyweek and how much to place on deposit for MGM s account atthe Culver City branch of Bank of America.Through Mr.Greenwood, and sometimes more directly, Irving Thalbergobserves the two thousand of the skilled but unsung: grips ,assistant cameramen, mixers , cutters, projectionists, carpenters,unit managers, artisans, seamstresses, scene painters.Often hecalls a group of these underlings into the projection room toconsider pictures with him.2But none of this Thalberg-supervised activity would have existed had it notbeen for the ideas which were the genesis of all movies.Here Thalberg s 126Robert Giddingsgenius was even more apparent, his mind a seeming fount of good basicscripting ideas as well as brilliant ideas about points of detail.Thalberg could sense the basic need at the very core and centre of amovie; it was his idea to borrow Tallulah Bankhead from Paramount to givemuch needed zest to Tinfoil.Rasputin and the Empress (1932) gave LionelBarrymore one of his biggest and best rôles, but it was Thalberg s idea to havethe movie directed by Richard Boleslavsky, the Polish stage director who cameto Hollywood in 1930 from the Moscow Arts Theatre (he went on to directThe Painted Veil, Clive of India and Les Misérables).It was Thalberg whorecognized and exploited the particular gifts of Howard Hawks, who had beenin the industry since 1918 and who had become a household name certainlyfrom Scarface 1932 on; Hawks had a penchant for grainy realism and action-packed drama as well as very polished and professional comedies.(He madeThe Criminal Code for Thalberg in 1931.) He encouraged the verycosmopolitan talents of Sidney Franklin, who directed Beverly of Graustark(1926), The Last of Mrs.Cheyney (1929), Private Lives (1931), Smiling Through(1932), The Guardsman (1932) and The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1933) andwent on to produce the immortal Mrs.Miniver in 1942.The many-sided W.S.Van Dyke was another director in Thalberg s stable, whose films includedWhite Shadows in the South Seas (1928), Trader Horn (1931), shot on safari inAfrica, Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), which introduced the greatest of all ape-men, the former Olympic athlete Johnny Weissmuller, Manhattan Melodrama(1934) and the still very impressive disaster movie prototype, San Francisco(1936).Sam Wood, director of A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, whohad a gift for football and college pictures and left his mark on Goodbye Mr.Chips (1939) and directed the future president of the United States in KingsRow in 1942, was another of Thalberg s favourites.Edgar Selwyn, master ofsoggy melodrama, who directed such films as Night Life of New York, The Girlin the Show, War Nurse, The Sin of Madelon Claudet, Turn Back the Clock and TheMystery of Mr.X, is additional evidence of Thalberg s range of interests, as wasTod Browning, who made his name directing early masterpieces of thecinema s gothic horrors: The Unholy Three, London After Midnight, Dracula andFreaks.3 A director whose talents and inclinations might have seemed the mostsuited to Thalberg s taste was Clarence Brown, who specialized in rather fussyperiod subjects The Last of the Mohicans, Anna Christie, Anna Karenina butwho showed a very sure touch in such dramas as Goosewoman (1925), which isstill considered a picture of immense stature and authority and contains abrilliant performance by Marie Dressier as a retired opera singer whounwittingly implicates her own son in a murder case.Irving Thalberg seemedable to work harmoniously with these versatile creative talents. 127The Last Tycoon: Fitzgerald as ProjectionistBut as well as exercising his diplomacy in dealing with these loftypersons, he could also deal with minute details of finance, committee work,casting, preparing and supervising scripts, conferring with his team of writersand resolving the numerous minor and not so minor industrial disputesbetween personnel during day-to-day production activities.All this was donewith little external sign of anxiety or neurosis
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