They had such a mob mentality back in the Golden days of Hollywood. It was really shocking as to how much control they had with their best-selling stars during the 20s, 30s, and 40s. They really were shrew businessmen, especially Mayer himself. Talk about control back in those days. MGM was like the Mafia at one time.
Reading the old days of MGM....Wow...
- Thread starter elegant20
- Start date
Bbucko
Cherished Member
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2006
- Posts
- 7,232
- Media
- 8
- Likes
- 326
- Points
- 208
- Location
- Sunny SoFla
- Sexuality
- 90% Gay, 10% Straight
- Gender
- Male
HellsKitchenmanNYC
Expert Member
It was a new field in a sorta new century and a newish technology. Labor laws were different. The means didn't justify the end and yet people would have still sold their souls to be that enslaved to a film major. Until folks like Bette Davis wised up and started suing them. Back then if you didn't have the backing of a studio you were probably doing cardboard monster movies for 30 dollars a week. Some of those stars made hundreds a week or more which today would be BIG money.
Principessa
Expert Member
HellsKitchenmanNYC
Expert Member
The whole studio system was an insular world inside itself. A twisted fucked up world that produced some of the greats!
nudeyorker
Admired Member
- Joined
- Nov 6, 2006
- Posts
- 22,742
- Media
- 0
- Likes
- 845
- Points
- 208
- Location
- NYC/Honolulu
- Sexuality
- 100% Gay, 0% Straight
- Gender
- Male
I don't think you or I would have liked living that life really. Perhaps the payoff was worth the pain, especially during the depression. But being outspoken with an opinion was not highly regarded then. If you think about it I would have been in production and you would have been fighting over the maids roles. We really have come a long way baby!
HellsKitchenmanNYC
Expert Member
We sure have. Did you see the Tyler Perry feature on 60 Minutes? That NEVER would have been poss. in the MGM days.
William Haines was another MGM star that was fired, too. He was also openly gay, entertained Cukor as well as Cliffton Webb, and had a boyfriend. Mayer ordered him to leave his boyfriend to save his career and marry a woman. Haines refused and stuck with his boyfriend, Sheilds, for 50 years, I believe. Even though he was fired from the studio, he turned his career to interior designing.
Bbucko
Cherished Member
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2006
- Posts
- 7,232
- Media
- 8
- Likes
- 326
- Points
- 208
- Location
- Sunny SoFla
- Sexuality
- 90% Gay, 10% Straight
- Gender
- Male
I was gonna say: don't cry for Billy Hayes. He bowed out of a sagging and essentially dead-end career where every move had to be guarded for a life that was successful (creatively, financially, etc) in every sense of the word.
His "type" --the wise-cracking, hyperactive best friend of the hero-- faded away with the advent of sound in pictures. Even without his issues with Mayer, his career would most probably have not survived very far into the 1930s. By that time newer and much more cynical roles were in demand, and there's no guarantee he'd have been able to make the transition.
All indications are that his design firm was riotously successful. Joan Crawford and Carole Lombard were among his biggest clients right from the very beginning.
As the saying goes the hardest thing to find in HOLLYWOOD is a straight actor. The machine is still there and it keeps the talent IN THE CLOSET . The heads of studios and others behind the scenes in power are very right wing . If an actor tries to come out the closet they are threatened by management to be blackballed with representation and told the proverbial......."YOU'LL NEVER WORK IN THIS TOWN AGAIN" !!!! They are so concerned about losing a fukin penny that the stars' happiness means nothing to them.
I have several friends some you would definitely know some you would not know at all but both have been victims of this bullying!
Trust me they STILL have control over most of their talent and will have until the actors and actresses understand they have the power and most people who support them NOW will do so when they come out !!!
HH
I didn't know that one of the first major homes he designed was for Jack Warner. Talk about payback!
Haines was as successful as it gets. He had a remarkable talent for taking modern furniture and making it look comfortable and lived-in. He was one of the first designers to freely mix antiques with modern. If you look at his influences, you'll see that he was designing homes with the 50s look long before the 50s ever happened. Haines was definitely cutting-edge and a major influence on the transition of the Hollywood private home look from Spanish-American to distinctly Californian.
I wouldn't surprise of Hollywood of both the old and today's were all either bisexual, gay, or just bi-curious.....I mean, the proof did lay in one of the greats like Brando, James Dean, Tellulah Bankhead, Marjorie Main, etc.
Even back then and right now, studios would keep the star's reputation to make them look immortal when in reality there were not. So everything must be hush hush and no one must find about one's sexuality. I think that is why the studios want to control the stars. To keep them under their grasp and do as they are told.
I mean, it took some time for other stars to speak out they are gay. Neil Patrick Harris, Rock Hudson, etc..
Even back then and right now, studios would keep the star's reputation to make them look immortal when in reality there were not. So everything must be hush hush and no one must find about one's sexuality. I think that is why the studios want to control the stars. To keep them under their grasp and do as they are told.
I mean, it took some time for other stars to speak out they are gay. Neil Patrick Harris, Rock Hudson, etc..
