Vintage 1942 LION'S ROAR Hollywood MGM Oversized MAGAZINE Deluxe SCARCE Superb

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Lion's Roar Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio (Hollywood) Issue #9 (May 1942) a vintage magazine a deluxe , oversized, short-lived studio trade publication lavish design, deluxe papers - exclusive covers, artwork, and photographs 10 x 12 inches Very GoodMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of feature films and television programs.Once the largest, most glamorous, and most revered film studio, MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures , Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Pictures . Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California . It is one of the oldest mini-major film studios and a former major film studio .In 1971, it was announced that MGM would merge with 20th Century Fox , a plan which never came into fruition. Over the next thirty-nine years, the studio was bought and sold at various points in its history until, on November 3, 2010, MGM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy . MGM emerged from bankruptcy on December 20, 2010, at which time the executives of Spyglass Entertainment , Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum , became co-Chairmen and co-CEOs of the holding company of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer .MGM was the last studio to convert to sound pictures, but in spite of this fact, from the end of the silent film era through the late 1950s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the dominant motion picture studio in Hollywood. Always slow to respond to the changing legal, economic, and demographic nature of the motion picture industry during the 1950s and 1960s, and although at times its films did well at the box office, the studio lost significant amounts of money throughout the 1960s. In 1966, MGM was sold to Canadian investor Edgar Bronfman, Sr. , whose son Edgar, Jr. would later buy Universal Studios . Three years later, an increasingly unprofitable MGM was bought by Kirk Kerkorian , who slashed staff and production costs, forced the studio to produce low-budget fare, and then shut down theatrical distribution in 1973. The studio continued to produce five to six films a year that were released through other studios, mostly United Artists . Kerkorian did, however, commit to increased production and an expanded film library when he bought United Artists in 1981.MGM ramped up internal production, as well as keeping production going at UA, which included the lucrative James Bond film franchise. It also incurred significant amounts of debt to increase production. The studio took on additional debt as a series of owners took charge in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1986, Ted Turner bought MGM, but a few months later, sold the company back to Kerkorian to recoup massive debt, while keeping the library assets for himself. The series of deals left MGM even more heavily in debt. MGM was bought by Pathé Communications (led by Italian publishing magnate Giancarlo Parretti ) in 1990, but Parretti lost control of Pathé and defaulted on the loans used to purchase the studio. The French banking conglomerate Crédit Lyonnais , the studio's major creditor, then took control of MGM. Even more deeply in debt, MGM was purchased by a joint venture between Kerkorian, producer Frank Mancuso , and Australia's Seven Network in 1996.The debt load from these and subsequent business deals negatively affected MGM's ability to survive as an independent motion picture studio. After a bidding war which included Time Warner (the current parent of Turner Broadcasting) and General Electric , MGM was acquired on September 23, 2004 by a partnership consisting of Sony Corporation of America , Comcast , Texas Pacific Group (now TPG Capital, L.P.), Providence Equity Partners , and other investors.MGM Resorts International , a Las Vegas -based hotel and casino company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "MGM", is not currently affiliated with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.The studio's official motto , " Ars Gratia Artis ", is a Latin phrase meaning " Art for art's sake " - it was chosen by Howard Dietz , the studio's chief publicist. The studio's logo is a roaring lion surrounded by a ring of film inscribed with the studio's motto. The logo, which features Leo the Lion , was created by Dietz in 1916 for Goldwyn Pictures and updated in 1924 for MGM's use. Dietz based the logo on his alma mater's mascot , the Columbia University lion. Originally silent, the sound of Leo the Lion's roar was added to films for the first time in August 1928. In the 1930s and 1940s, the studio billed itself as having "more stars than there are in heaven", a reference to the large number of A-list movie stars under contract to the company. This second motto was also coined by Dietz and was first used in 1932.In 1924, movie theater magnate Marcus Loew had a problem. He had bought Metro Pictures Corporation in 1919 for a steady supply of films for his large Loew's Theatres chain. With Loew's lackluster assortment of Metro films, Loew purchased Goldwyn Pictures in 1924 to improve the quality. However, these purchases created a need for someone to oversee his new Hollywood operations, since longtime assistant Nicholas Schenck was needed in New York headquarters to oversee the 150 theaters. Approached by Louis B. Mayer , Loew addressed the situation by buying Louis B. Mayer Pictures on April 17, 1924. Mayer became head of the renamed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with Irving Thalberg as head of production.MGM produced more than 100 feature films in its first two years. In 1925, MGM released the extravagant and successful Ben-Hur , taking a $4.7 million profit that year, its first full year.Marcus Loew died in 1927, and control of Loew's passed to Nicholas Schenck. In 1929, William Fox of Fox Film Corporation bought the Loew family's holdings with Schenck's assent. Mayer and Thalberg disagreed with the decision. Mayer was active in the California Republican Party and used his political connections to persuade the Justice Department to delay final approval of the deal on antitrust grounds. During this time, in the summer of 1929, Fox was badly hurt in an automobile accident. By the time he recovered, the stock market crash in the fall of 1929 had nearly wiped Fox out and ended any chance of the Loew's merger going through. Schenck and Mayer had never gotten along (Mayer reportedly referred to his boss as "Mr. Skunk"), and the abortive Fox merger increased the animosity between the two men.From the outset, MGM tapped into the audience's need for glamor and sophistication. Having inherited few big names from their predecessor companies, Mayer and Thalberg began at once to create and publicize a host of new stars, among them Greta Garbo , John Gilbert , William Haines , Joan Crawford , and Norma Shearer (who followed Thalberg from Universal) . Established names like Lon Chaney , William Powell , Buster Keaton , and Wallace Beery were hired from other studios. They also hired top directors such as King Vidor , Clarence Brown , Erich von Stroheim , Tod Browning , and Victor Seastrom . The arrival of talking pictures in 1928-29 gave opportunities to other new stars, many of whom would carry MGM through the 1930s: Clark Gable , Jean Harlow , Robert Montgomery , Spencer Tracy , Myrna Loy , Jeanette MacDonald , and Nelson Eddy among them.MGM was one of the first studios to experiment with filming in Technicolor . Using the two-color Technicolor process then available, MGM filmed portions of The Uninvited Guest (1923), The Big Parade (1925), and Ben-Hur (1925), among others, in the process. In 1928, MGM released The Viking , the first complete Technicolor feature with sound (including a synchronized score and sound effects, but no spoken dialogue).With the arrival of talkies , MGM moved slowly and reluctantly into sound, releasing features like White Shadows in the South Seas with music and sound effects, and Alias Jimmy Valentine with limited dialogue sequences. Their first full-fledged talkie, the musical The Broadway Melody in 1929, however, was both a box-office success and won the Academy Award as Best Picture of the Year; and brought MGM into the sound era.MGM, however, was the very last studio to convert to " talkies " with its first all-color, "all-talking" sound feature with dialogue The Rogue Song , a 1930 musical. In 1934, MGM included a sequence made in Technicolor's superior new three-color process, a musical number in the otherwise black-and-white The Cat and the Fiddle , starring Jeanette MacDonald and Ramon Novarro . The studio then produced a number of three-color short subjects including 1935's musical La Fiesta de Santa Barbara , but waited until 1938 to film a complete feature in the process, Sweethearts with MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, the earlier of the popular singing team's two films in color. From then on, MGM regularly produced several films a year in Technicolor with Northwest Passage being one of the most notable.In addition to a large short-subjects program of its own, MGM also released the shorts and features produced by Hal Roach Studios , including comedy shorts starring Laurel and Hardy , Our Gang , and Charley Chase . MGM's distribution deal with Roach lasted from 1927 to 1938, and MGM benefited in particular from the success of the popular Laurel and Hardy films. In 1938, MGM purchased the rights to Our Gang and moved the production in-house, continuing production of the successful series of children's comedies until 1944. From 1929 to 1931, MGM produced a series of comedy shorts called All Barkie Dogville Comedies , in which trained dogs were dressed up to parody contemporary films and were voiced by actors. One of the shorts, The Dogway Melody (1930), spoofed MGM's hit 1929 musical The Broadway Melody .MGM produced around 50 pictures a year, though it never met its goal of releasing a new motion picture each and every week (It was only able to release one feature film every nine days). Loew's 153 theatres were mostly located in New York, the Northeast, and Deep South; Gone With the Wind had its world premiere at Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia. A fine reputation was gained for lavish productions that were sophisticated and polished to cater to an urban audience. Still, as the Great Depression deepened, MGM began to economize by "recycling" existing sets, costumes, and furnishings from yesteryear projects. This recycling practice never let up once started. In addition, MGM saved money because it was the only one of the big five studios that did not own an off-site movie ranch . Until the mid-1950s, MGM could make a claim its rivals could not: it never lost money, although it did have an occasional disaster like Parnell (1937), Clark Gable's biggest flop. It was the only Hollywood studio that continued to pay dividends during the 1930s.MGM stars dominated the box office during the 1930s, and the studio was credited for inventing the Hollywood stable of stars system, as well. MGM contracted with the American Musical Academy of Arts Association to handle all of their press and artist development. The AMAAA's main function was to develop the budding stars and to make them appealing to the public. Stars such as Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Myrna Loy and Jeanette MacDonald reigned as the top-paid figures at the studio. Another MGM sex symbol actress, Jean Harlow , who had previously appeared in the Howard Hughes film Hell's Angels , now had a big break and became one of MGM's most admired stars, as well. Despite Miss Harlow's gain, Garbo still was a big star for MGM. Shearer was still a money maker despite screen appearances becoming scarce, and Crawford continued her box-office power until 1937. MGM would also receive a boost through the man who would become "King of Hollywood", Clark Gable. Gable's career took off to new heights after he won an Oscar for the 1934 Columbia film It Happened One Night . Mayer and Irving Thalberg's relationship began warmly, but eventually the two became estranged; Thalberg preferred literary works to the crowd-pleasers Mayer wanted. Thalberg, always physically frail, was removed as head of production in 1932. Mayer encouraged other staff producers, among them his son-in-law David O. Selznick, but no one seemed to have the sure touch of Thalberg. As Thalberg fell increasingly ill in 1936, Louis Mayer could now serve as his temporary replacement. Rumors flew that Thalberg was leaving to set up his own independent company; his early death in 1936, at age 37, cost MGM dearly.After Thalberg's death, Mayer became head of production, as well as studio chief, becoming the first million-dollar executive in American history. The company remained profitable, although a change toward "series" pictures ( Andy Hardy starring Mickey Rooney , Maisie starring Ann Sothern , Thin Man starring William Powell and Myrna Loy , et al. ) is seen by some as evidence of Mayer's restored influence. Also playing a huge role was Ida Koverman, Mayer's "right hand woman".Hits in 1939 included The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind , starring Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara and Clark Gable as Rhett Butler. Although Gone With the Wind was produced by Selznick International Pictures , it was distributed by MGM as part of a deal for producer David O. Selznick , L.B. Mayer's son-in-law, to obtain the services of Clark Gable as well as financial assistance to complete the film. MGM acquired all rights to Gone With the Wind in 1944 after the foundering of Selznick International.Within one year, beginning in 1942, L.B. Mayer released his five highest-paid actresses from their studio contracts; Joan Crawford , Norma Shearer , Greta Garbo , Myrna Loy and Jeanette MacDonald . After a two-year hiatus, Crawford moved to Warner Bros. , where her career took a dramatic upturn. Shearer and Garbo never made another film after leaving the lot. Of the five stars, Loy and MacDonald were the only two whom Mayer rehired, in 1947 and 1948 respectively.Increasingly, before and during World War II, Mayer came to rely on his "College of Cardinals" -- senior producers who controlled the studio's output. This management-by-committee may explain why MGM seemed to lose its momentum, developing few new stars and relying on the safety of sequels and bland material. ( Dorothy Parker memorably referred to it as "Metro-Goldwyn-Merde.") Production values remained high, and even "B" pictures carried a polish and gloss that made them expensive to mount. After 1940, production was cut from 50 pictures a year to a more manageable 25 features per year. During this time, MGM released very successful musicals with players such as Judy Garland , Fred Astaire , Gene Kelly , and Frank Sinatra , to name just a few.Audiences began drifting to television in the late forties. MGM found it difficult to attract them to theaters. With its high overhead expenses, MGM's profit margins continued to decrease. Word came from Nicholas Schenck in New York: find "a new Thalberg" who could improve quality while paring costs. Mayer thought he had found this savior in Dore Schary , a writer and producer who had found success at running RKO . Top notch musicals were Schary's focus, with hits like Easter Parade , Annie Get Your Gun , Show Boat , Singin' in the Rain , An American in Paris , and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers , keeping MGM afloat.In August 1951, Mayer was fired by MGM's East Coast executives and was replaced by Schary.Gradually cutting loose expensive contract players (perhaps most famously, $6,000-a-week Judy Garland in 1950), saving money by recycling existing movie sets instead of building costly new scenery, and reworking pricey old costumes, Schary managed to keep the studio running much as it had through the early 1940s though his sensibilities for hard-edged, message movies would never bear much fruit. One bright spot was MGM musical pictures, under the aegis of producer Arthur Freed, who was operating what amounted to an independent unit within the studio. MGM produced some well-regarded and profitable musicals that would be later acknowledged as classics, among them An American in Paris (1951), Singin' in the Rain (1952), and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). However, Brigadoon (1954), Deep in My Heart (1954), It's Always Fair Weather (1955), and Invitation to the Dance (1956), were extravagant song and dance flops, and even the now-classic The Band Wagon (1953) lost money in its initial release. Movie audiences more and more were staying home and watching television.In 1952, as a settlement of the government's restraint-of-trade action, United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. 334 US 131 (1948), Loews, Inc. gave up control of MGM. [41] It would take another five years before the interlocking arrangements were completely undone, by which time both Loews and MGM were sinking. Schary bowed out of MGM in 1956 in another power struggle against the New York-based executives.As the studio system faded in the late 1950s and 1960s, MGM's prestige faded with it. In 1957 (by coincidence, the year L.B. Mayer died), the studio lost money for the first time in its 34-year history. Cost overruns and the failure of the 1957 big-budget epic Raintree County prompted the studio to release Schary from his contract. Schary's reign at MGM had been marked with few bona-fide hits, but his departure (along with the retirement of Schenck in 1955) left a power vacuum that would prove difficult to fill. Initially Joseph Vogel became president and Sol Siegel head of production. By 1960, MGM had released all of its contract players, with many either retiring or moving on to television.At the urging of Leonard Goldenson , longtime head of Paramount's theater chain who now ran ABC , MGM began to enter television production. MGM's first attempts at programming were cross-promotion of feature films ( The MGM Parade ), and based on successful film properties like The Thin Man . Several years later, MGM produced highly successful TV series, like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and the sitcom version of The Courtship of Eddie's Father .The year 1957 also marked the end of MGM's animation department, as the studio determined it could generate the same amount of revenue by reissuing older cartoons as it could by producing and releasing new ones. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, by then the heads of the MGM cartoon studio, took most of their unit and made their own company, Hanna-Barbera Productions , a successful producer of television animation.In 1956, MGM sold the television rights for The Wizard of Oz to CBS , which scheduled it to be shown in November of that year. In a landmark event, the film became the first American theatrical fiction film to be shown complete in one evening on prime time television over a major American commercial network. ( Olivier's version of Hamlet was shown on prime time network TV a month later, but split in half over two weeks, and the 1950 film, The Titan: Story of Michelangelo was telecast by ABC in 1952, but that was a documentary.) Beginning in 1959, and lasting until 1991, telecasts of The Wizard of Oz became an annual tradition, drawing huge audiences in homes all over the U.S. and earning additional profits for MGM. The studio was all too happy to see Oz become, through television, one of the two or three most famous films MGM has ever made, and one of the few films that nearly everybody in the U.S. has seen at least once. Today The Wizard of Oz is regularly shown on the Turner -owned channels, no longer just once a year.In 1958, MGM released what is generally considered its last great musical, Arthur Freed 's Cinemascope color production of Gigi , starring Leslie Caron , Maurice Chevalier , and Louis Jourdan . It was adapted from the novel by Colette , and written by the team of Lerner and Loewe , who also wrote My Fair Lady and Camelot . Gigi was a box-office and critical success which won nine Academy Awards , including Best Picture . From it came several hit songs, including Thank Heaven For Little Girls , I Remember It Well , the Waltz at Maxim's , and the Oscar-winning title song. The film was the last MGM musical to win a Best Picture Oscar, an honor that had previously gone to The Broadway Melody (1929), The Great Ziegfeld (1936), and An American in Paris (1951). The very last musical film produced by the " Freed Unit " was an adaptation of the Broadway musical Bells Are Ringing (1960) with Judy Holliday and Dean Martin . However, MGM did release later musical films, including an adaptation of Meredith Willson 's The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) with Debbie Reynolds and Harve Presnell .In animation, MGM purchased the rights in 1930 to distribute a series of cartoons that starred a character named Flip the Frog , produced by Ub Iwerks . The first cartoon in this series (entitled Fiddlesticks ) was the first sound cartoon to be produced in two-color Technicolor. In 1933, Ub Iwerks cancelled the unsuccessful Flip the Frog series and MGM began to distribute its second series of cartoons, starring a character named Willie Whopper , that was also produced by Ub Iwerks.In 1934, after Iwerks' distribution contract expired, MGM contracted with animation producers/directors Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising to produce a new series of color cartoons. Harman and Ising came to MGM after breaking ties with Leon Schlesinger and Warner Bros., and brought with them their popular Looney Tunes character, Bosko . These were known as Happy Harmonies , and in many ways resembled the Looney Tunes' sister series, Merrie Melodies . The Happy Harmonies regularly ran over budget, and MGM dismissed Harman-Ising in 1937 to start its own animation studio .After initial struggles with a poorly received series of The Captain and the Kids cartoons, the studio rehired Harman and Ising in 1939, and Ising created the studio's first successful animated character, Barney Bear . However, MGM's biggest cartoon stars would come in the form of the cat-and-mouse duo Tom and Jerry , created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera in 1940. The Tom and Jerry cartoons won seven Academy Awards between 1943 and 1953. In 1941, Tex Avery , another Schlesinger alumnus, joined the animation department. Avery gave the unit its image, with successes like " Red Hot Riding Hood ", " Swing Shift Cinderella ", and the Droopy series.Avery left the studio in 1953, leaving Hanna and Barbera to focus on the popular Tom and Jerry and Droopy series. After 1955, all cartoons were filmed in CinemaScope until MGM closed its cartoon division in 1957.In 1959, MGM enjoyed what is quite probably its greatest financial success of later years, with the release of its nearly four-hour Technicolor epic Ben-Hur , a remake of its 1925 silent film hit, based on the true story and from the novel by General Lew Wallace . Starring Charlton Heston in the title role, the film was critically acclaimed, and won 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, a record that held until Titanic matched it in 1997 and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2003.In 1961, MGM resumed the release of new Tom and Jerry shorts, and production moved to Rembrandt Films in Prague , Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) under the supervision of Gene Deitch . Deitch's Tom and Jerry cartoons are very different in style from the original Hanna and Barbera style of animation. In 1963, the production of Tom and Jerry returned to Hollywood under Chuck Jones and his Sib Tower 12 Productions studio (later absorbed by MGM and renamed MGM Animation/Visual Arts ). Jones' group also produced its own works, winning an Oscar for The Dot and the Line , as well as producing the classic television version of Dr. Seuss 's How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (with the voice of Boris Karloff ) in 1966. Tom and Jerry folded in 1967, and the animation department continued with television specials and one feature film, The Phantom Tollbooth .During this period, MGM fell into a habit that would eventually sink the studio: an entire year's production schedule relied on the success of one big-budget epic each year. This policy began in 1959, when Ben-Hur was profitable enough to carry the studio through 1960. However, four succeeding big-budget epics--like Ben-Hur, each a remake--failed: Cimarron (1960), King of Kings (1961), Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1961), and, most notoriously, the 1962 Mutiny on the Bounty . The 1962 Cinerama film The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm , the first film in Cinerama to actually tell a story, was also a flop. But one other epic that was a success, however, was the MGM-Cinerama co-production How the West Was Won , with a huge all-star cast. King of Kings , while a commercial and critical flop at the time, has since come to be regarded as a film classic. The losses caused by these films led to the resignations of Sol Siegel and Joseph Vogel who were replaced by Robert M. Weitman (head of production) and Robert O'Brien (president).The combination of O'Brien and Weitman seemed to temporarily revive the studio. In 1965 MGM released David Lean 's immensely popular Doctor Zhivago , later followed by such hits as The Dirty Dozen (1967) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). However the company's time was taken up fighting off proxy attacks by corporate raiders , and then MGM backed a series of flops, including Ryan's Daughter (1970). Weitman moved over to Columbia in 1967 and O'Brien was forced to resign a few years later.In the Mid-1960s, MGM began to diversify by investing in real estate.Edgar Bronfman, Sr. purchased a controlling interest in MGM in 1966 (and was briefly chairman of the board in 1969), and in 1967 Time Inc. became the company's second-largest shareholder.In 1969, Kirk Kerkorian purchased 40 percent of MGM from Bronfman and Time, Inc., What appealed to Kerkorian was MGM's Culver City real estate, and the value of 45 years' worth of glamor associated with the name, which he attached to a Las Vegas hotel and casino . As for film-making, that part of the company was quickly and severely downsized under the supervision of James T. Aubrey, Jr. With changes in its business model including fewer pictures per year, more location shooting and more distribution of independent productions, MGM's operations were reduced. Aubrey sold off MGM's accumulation of props, furnishings and historical memorabilia, including a pair of Dorothy's ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz . Lot 3, 40 acres of back-lot property, was sold off for real-estate development. In 1971, it was announced that MGM was in talks with 20th Century Fox about a possible merger, a plan which never came into fruition. Under Aubrey, MGM also sold off MGM Records and its overseas theater holdings.Through the 1970s, studio output slowed considerably as Aubrey preferred four or five medium-budget pictures each year along with a smattering of low-budget fare. With the decline in output, Kerkorian closed MGM's distribution offices in 1973 and outsourced those functions to United Artists . Kerkorian now distanced himself from the operations of the studio, focusing on MGM Grand Hotel by investing $120 million. Another portion of the backlot was sold in 1974. The last shooting done on the backlot was the introductory material for That's Entertainment! , a retrospective documentary that became a surprise hit for the studio.That's Entertainment! was authorized by Dan Melnick , who was appointed head of production in 1972. Under Melnick's regime, MGM made a number of successful films, including Westworld , Soylent Green , and The Sunshine Boys . However, MGM never reclaimed its former status.~ Wikipedia read more

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