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Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg: The Whole Equation
Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg: The Whole Equation
By Kenneth Turan
Published February 4, 2025
392 pages
“Illuminating” —Kirkus Reviews
Kenneth Turan brings to life the extraordinary partnership of Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg and their role in creating the film industry as we know it
One was a tough junkman’s son, the other a cosseted mama’s boy, but they dreamed the same mighty dream: that the right movies could make a profit and change both the culture and individual lives. Sharing a religion and an evangelical zeal for film, Louis B. Mayer (1884–1957) and Irving Thalberg (1899–1936) were unlikely partners in one of the most significant collaborations in movie history. Over the course of their decade-long relationship, as key players at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and major players in Hollywood, they joined forces in redefining and mastering the template for the film industry.
Mayer, older by more than a dozen years, was the business-minded face of the studio, while Thalberg worked closely with the creative corps, especially writers; together they rarely set a foot wrong. And while Mayer initially viewed Thalberg as the son he never had, the two would go from passionate friends to near enemies before Thalberg’s shocking death at the age of thirty-seven.
In the first joint biography of the two men in fifty years, film critic Kenneth Turan traces their fraught relationship while examining the complicated history of Jewish identity in Hollywood.
About the Author
Kenneth Turan was the film critic of the Los Angeles Times for nearly thirty years and was also a film critic for National Public Radio. He is the author of Not to Be Missed: Fifty-Four Favorites from a Lifetime of Film, among other books. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.
Author photograph © Patricia Williams
Reviews
“Turan casts an engagingly fresh light on two of old Hollywood’s most powerful studio moguls. . . . An illuminating history of the MGM studio system. A thoroughly engrossing, well-documented biography of two Hollywood legends.” —Kirkus Reviews
“From film critic and historian Turan comes this irresistible story of the partnership (and friendship) between Mayer, a producer-turned-studio chief in the early years of the film industry, and Thalberg, a young-but-brilliant producer. . . . Turan is a thoughtful writer, highly knowledgeable about his subject, and his enthusiasm for the history of movies, and the people who made them, is downright contagious. A splendid addition to the literature of film history.” —David Pitt, Booklist
“This feels like the book Kenneth Turan was born to write, for he brings to the task, and conveys to the reader, all the pleasure of deep research into an inexhaustible subject, all the expertise gained over the course of a lifetime spent loving and thinking and writing about Hollywood and the movies, and all the insight into and feeling for his remarkable subjects, with their gifts and their demons, of his own powerfully humane imagination.” —Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
“Dazzling, engaging, and beautifully written, Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg is the latest addition to the outstanding Jewish Lives series from Yale University Press. Turan captures these two titans with exceptional insight and appreciation. It’s a wonderful piece of history, masterfully told.” —Susan Orlean, author of The Library Book
“How do you present a fresh version of a familiar story? Start by conducting meticulous research, then filter it through a twenty-first-century prism, aided by vast personal knowledge and superior writing skill. It’s no small feat, but it’s what Kenneth Turan has managed to achieve in this compelling dual biography.” —Leonard Maltin, film critic and historian
