By the 1960s, however, MGM was in a bad way. It began at the top with Ben-Hur winning the Oscar for Best Picture of 1959 and bringing in buckets of box office gold. But that epic, a remake of MGM's own 1926 silent version, ultimately did more harm than good. For the rest of the decade, MGM kept trying to recapture Ben-Hur's success with other big budget extravaganzas, often relying on remakes of past glories. 1960 started with the western Cimarron, a remake of 1931's Best Picture winner, with Glenn Ford - a big name at the time - that failed to recoup its costs. Nicholas Ray's reboot of the old Cecil B. DeMille silent, King of Kings, fared better, managing to eke out a small profit. Vincente Minnelli's 1962 version of the Rudolf Valentino classic, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, was almost the biggest loser of the decade for Metro but was bailed out later that same year by the ill-fated remake of the classic Oscar winner from 1935, Mutiny on the Bounty. Starring Marlon Brando, Bounty' s box office take of over $9 million made it the sixth highest grosser of the year, but with an $8.5 million budget that ballooned to $20 million during production, it was far from profitable, contributing to the the studio's loss of $17 million for the year, the worst in its history. While the studio rebounded the next year with a tidy profit of over $7 million and continued to luck out now and then with big hits like Dr. Zhivago and Stanley Kubrick's ground-breaking sci-fi classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey, by 1969 the writing was on the wall. That year, MGM posted a loss of nearly $35 million, by far the worst in its 45-year history.
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| Still taken from the 1926 version of Ben-Hur. Though the movie shoot had begun in Italy, by the time this sequence was shot, the company was back in the Culver City studios. The chariot race was filmed at the intersection of Venice and LaCienega Boulevard. |
With the losses came potential buyers. For MGM, the buyer with the deepest pockets turned out to be Las Vegas tycoon Kirk Kerkorian, and by mid-September 1969, he had acquired control of the beleaguered studio. One of Kerkorian's first orders of business was to find an executive to run production and day-to-day operations. To this role, he appointed Jim Aubrey, aka "the smiling cobra," to run the show. Aubrey had been top man at CBS in the late 50s and early 60s, responsible for making it the number one channel in television with shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Gilligan's Island, Petticoat Junction, and The Dick Van Dyke Show. He was also infamous for pulling the plug on the critically admired The Judy Garland Show after only one season. Aubrey's sudden dismissal by CBS founder William Paley in 1965 was the subject of much speculation. It's possible that Aubrey's reputation as a party animal caught up with him. In addition to "the smiling cobra" sobriquet, he was also known as "Jungle Jim" for his wild, womanizing ways (in her novel, The Love Machine, Jacqueline Susann would base the main character, Robin Stone, on Aubrey). Aubrey was a so-called bottom-line man, more interested in profit than art. This quality made him attractive to Kerkorian, who knew some hard ball would have to be played in order to turn the companies ledgers around.
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| MGM's Lot Two in the foreground with its sound stages looming in the upper portion of the photo. |
Unfortunately Aubrey and company were also tough on the creative community, cancelling several pay-or-play deals for which everyone would get paid even if productions got canceled. Commitments involving respected filmmakers like director Fred Zinneman (High Noon, From Here to Eternity, A Man for All Seasons), producer Martin Ransohoff (The Cincinnati Kid), and director David Lean (The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago). All three men had big budget spectacles in production or pre-production. Two of the three were axed; only Lean's Ryan's Daughter survived. Aubrey's next steps included cutting the studio's workforce by half, closing its New York City headquarters; and closing, selling, or greatly reducing various production departments such as music, camera, and wardrobe. Aubrey reduced payroll by $7.5 million. In addition, the new regime prepared to sell off both Boreham Wood, MGM's studio outside London, for $4.3 million, and overseas theaters for $6.4 million. One loyal studio employee took Aubrey and several executives on a walking tour of the backlots, trying to impress upon them the vast amount of movie history the studio contained. Completely unimpressed, Aubrey interrupted the tour to ask, "Does any of this stuff get used anymore? It's just lying around. I don't want to hear any more bullshit about the old MGM. The old MGM is gone." To prove his point Aubrey removed the bust of Irving Thalberg from the Thalberg Building and gave the structure a much catchier name - The Administration Building.
In 1970, Jim Aubrey made a deal with the David Weisz Company to sell all props and costumes for $1.5 million. In May 1970, Weisz held an 18-day public auction described as "the greatest rummage sale in history" by The Hollywood Reporter. Tom Walsh, then president of the Art Directors Guild, remarked that the auction was "the defining moment when Rome was sacked and burned." At the time there was very little perceived value in the nostalgia of Hollywood's fabled past. Greta Garbo dresses, Clark Gable suits, the Bounty ship, the actual showboat from the 1951 musical, all of it was on the auction block. The ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz were the star of the show, selling for $15,000 (the equivalent of $90,000 today).
Evidently, all that so-called junk that was lying around was worth more than the studio brain trust realized. As the auction netted about $8 million, MGM had clearly made a huge mistake by practically giving away the studio's history to the Weisz Company. Some stars who had worked at MGM like Debbie Reynolds were there. She purchased as many items as possible for a Hollywood museum she was planning. The auction also brought out other stars and studio employees who watched in dismay as pieces of the once great, proud studio were sold off to the highest bidder. What they didn't know was that there were worse times ahead.
On October 1, 1970, Variety broke the news that Jim Aubrey had brokered a deal to sell MGM's Lot Three for $7.25 million to a company that wanted the space to construct an apartment complex. Consequently, MGM's St. Louis Street, Western Street, Jungle Lake, Salem Waterfront, Process Tank, and Brooklyn Street - among others - were bulldozed in 1972. Lot Five and Lot Six were sold shortly after for a total of $1.5 million. Lot Seven became a shopping center.
Ultimately, Kirk Kerkorian proved that first and foremost, he was a Vegas guy. Making movies was never his real goal. Delighted by the $7.8 million profit MGM showed - mostly due to the sale of assets - in 1971, Kerkorian announced his plan to build the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, with a Rhett Butler Suite, among several other themed rooms. This was the real motive for Kerkorian's purchase of the studio - not to save it, but to strip it, using the left overs for his dream hotel. (According to Peter Bart's book about the last days of MGM, Fade Out, a studio official was appointed to "unleash a band of foragers to roam the back lot in search of what he called 'souvenirs'." The plan was to load up items for an MGM Grand gift shop. A year later, studio exec Jack Haley, Jr., found William Wyler's shooting script for Mrs. Miniver on sale in the gift shop for $12. Haley, along with production head Daniel Melnick and executive Roger Mayer, tried to persuade Jim Aubrey to donate the remaining scripts, production sketches and notes, and cartoon cels to a museum or to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences library for a tax write-off. No, said Aubrey, the studio's main function was to furnish and fund the hotel.)
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| The abandoned New York Street on Lot Two awaits its fate. |
In 1973, with the studio's fiftieth anniversary coming up, MGM stumbled onto its best project idea in years. One of Jack Haley, Jr.'s pet projects was helping to restore the films in the studio library that suffered from neglect and decay. With Daniel Melnick's help, Haley went to Jim Aubrey with a plan to save the studio's film history. Their plea fell on deaf ears. Haley secretly spent his free time going though films, splicing scenes together, and showing them to Melnick. Slowly, Haley added scenes of narration with old-timers like Frank Sinatra, Mickey Rooney, and Fred Astaire. Melnick made one last attempt to persuade Aubrey to allow him to continue the project legitimately. Unsurprisingly, he was met with a typical reply, "You've really gone Hollywood, haven't you, Danny?"and was dismissed. Not to be discouraged, Haley kept working and eventually a kind of sketch of a film was presented to Aubrey and some studio employees from the good old days. The audience was awestruck, remembering what the studio had accomplished in its prime. Sensing the enthusiasm of the viewers, Aubrey gave Melnick the OK to make That's Entertainment in time for Leo the Lion's fiftieth birthday in 1974.
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| One of the few bright spots from the studio in the early 1970s. |
Unfortunately, 1973 also brought the startling announcements that, going forward, MGM would produce only four or five films per year and that the company was cutting off its marketing and distribution arm as part of the continual effort to reduce studio overhead. This announcement was big news in the industry. Production of about 20 films per year had held steady from 1970 to 1972, but 1973 would bring the number to an all-time low of only 11 features. In 1974, MGM produced only five films. . . .
Debbie Reynolds had dreams of turning the MGM backlot into a "kind of Disneyland," she related in When the Lion Roars, the comprehensive documentary about the studio's history. She pictured studio alumni greeting crowds at the its gate. In the early 70s, Reynolds and Al Hart, the President of Culver City Bank tried to get an assortment of investors to buy Lot Two for about $5 million. This lot, across the street from the main studio, was the home of the Andy Hardy/New England Street, Three Musketeers Court, Small Town Railroad Depot, Waterloo Bridge, Copperfield Street, Verona Square, the Camille Cottage, the Esther Williams Pool, the Southern Mansion, the Lord Home, Wimpole Street, various New York Streets, and the Cartoon Department. But Jim Aubrey had an asking price of close to $7 million and rejected Reynolds' bid. Aubrey did take a $5 million bid from Levitt & Sons, the same company who had demolished Lot Three, however. No one knows why he rejected Reynolds' bid.
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| Toppling the Southern Mansion on the back lot. |
The actual sale to Levitt never happened. In January 1974, Levitt & Sons secretly backed out of the deal due to the bankruptcy of Urbanetics, the builder Levitt had been using to develop Lot Three. Consequently, the actual sale of Lot Two didn't occur until April 1978 when it was sold to scrap dealers, Mr. and Mrs. Ching Lin, for $4.1 million. It's sad that Aubrey didn't go to Reynolds and relay this bit of info. If he had, Lot Two might still be around. Instead all that's left is the physical plant of offices and sound stages. I suppose we should be grateful that much is left. But sound sound stages all look pretty much the same, and MGM's remaining lot actually belongs to Columbia Pictures. The studio has a tour, which I haven't taken, but reviews claim that it's pretty disappointing. The tour guides pay homage to Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune and, reasonably, focus their commentary on Columbia Pictures' movies, not MGM's. I guess the smiling cobra was right - "The old MGM is gone."
Sources:
* Fade Out - The Calamitous Final Days of MGM by Peter Bart
* MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot by Steven Bingen, Stephen X. Sylvester, and Michael Troyan
* The MGM Story: The Complete History of Fifty Roaring Years by John Douglas Eames
* IMDB
* Wikipedia
* All photos from the internet
