The next last tycoon

John I. Carney
Jul 28, 2017 · 3 min read

I just read a review of Amazon’s new miniseries adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel “The Last Tycoon” (which was previously adapted as a movie). The most bizarre aspect, to me, is that Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer are minor characters in this, separate from the main characters of Monroe Stahr and his boss. That, to me, would be distracting, since it’s universally understood that Monroe Stahr is a fictionalized version of Irving Thalberg.

I had the same problem with “The Simpsons Movie” (which I generally enjoyed). For years, the TV show has featured a pseudo-Schwarzenegger movie star character called McBain. Then, the theatrical movie featured a depiction of Arnold Schwarzenegger by his real name (played with the exact same voice by the exact same actor). It was just jarring to me.

(Wikimedia Commons)

Getting back to Thalberg: He is one of the great, and tragic, figures in classic movie history. He got started working for Louis B. Mayer back in the silent movie days, before Mayer merged his company with two others to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Thalberg was the creative genius, Mayer the businessman. Thalberg’s title was head of production. Thalberg’s M-G-M emphasized sexy and glamorous stars like Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and Clark Gable.

Thalberg had a keen sense of storytelling, what would work in a movie and what wouldn’t. The Marx Brothers had been fired by Paramount after a couple of duds. Thalberg recognized their genius, brought them over to MGM, and made sure that “A Night At The Opera” showcased their anarchic comedy but added more of a plot to draw in Middle America. Sadly, it was the only Marx Brothers movie that he was able to have a hand in, and it was all downhill from there.

Thalberg was a workaholic, and suffered a heart attack right at the end of 1932. Although he and Mayer had been a close and supportive team, by this point Mayer was beginning to grate a little about his protege getting so much of the credit for M-G-M’s success. When Thalberg came back from his heart attack, he was no longer the sole head of production but was one of a troika of executive producers, each with responsibility for a third of M-G-M’s output. Ostensibly, this was for Thalberg’s benefit, but he (and historians) clearly saw it as a demotion by a jealous Mayer. Sadly, I don’t think his health ever fully recovered, and he died just a few years later, in 1936. He was only 37.

Mayer, meanwhile, was starting to take a larger role in content. Mayer was more enthusiastic about family-oriented fun like the Andy Hardy series and the Freed Unit musicals. M-G-M’s output in the 1940s was a lot different from its output in the early 30s. It took a while for Thalberg’s influence to die off completely, if only because some of Thalberg’s stars were still in their 7-year contracts, and what else were you going to use them in?

When I played screenwriter Ben Hecht in “Moonlight & Magnolias” earlier this year, my character brought Thalberg up several times to the exasperated David O. Selznick, who considered himself a moviemaking genius and who (in the play, at least) is tired of constantly having to compete with the ghost of a legend.

You can see what attracted F. Scott Fitzgerald to telling (a fictionalized version of ) Thalberg’s story. The fact that Thalberg appears as a secondary character, alongside Monroe Stahr, makes me question how true this new Amazon project will be to Fitzgerald’s vision.

John I. Carney

Written by

Small-town journalist; United Methodist layspeaker; lover of old movies and new comedy. http://lakeneuron.com

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade