- Samuel Goldwyn
Samuel Goldwyn (July 1882 - 31 January 1974) was an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award-winning producer, also a well-known Hollywood motion picture producer and founding contributor of several motion picture studios. - Louis B. Mayer
Louis Burt Mayer (born Eliezer Meir 1882 - October 29, 1957) was an early film producer, most famous for his stewardship and co-founding of the Hollywood film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He is generally cited as the creator of the "star system" within Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in its golden years. - Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo (September 18, 1905 - April 15, 1990) was a Swedish-born actress during Hollywood's silent film period and part of its Golden Age. Regarded as one of the greatest and most inscrutable movie stars ever produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the Hollywood studio system, Garbo received a 1955 Honorary Oscar "for her unforgettable screen performances" and was ranked as the fifth greatest female star of all time by the American Film Institute. - Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford (March 23 1905 - May 10 1977), was an acclaimed, iconic, Academy Award-winning American actress, arguably one of the greatest from the Golden Age of Hollywood from the 1920s through 1940s. The American Film Institute named Crawford among the Greatest Female Stars of All Time, ranking her at number ten. Starting as a dancer, she was signed to a motion picture contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios in 1925 and played in small parts. - Irving Thalberg
Irving Grant Thalberg was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and his extraordinary ability to select the right scripts, choose the right actors, gather the best production staff, and make very profitable films. Thalberg was born in Brooklyn, New York to German Jewish immigrant parents. He had a bad heart and was plagued with other ailments all his life. - Paula Wagner
Paula Wagner (born Paula Kauffman 12 December 1946 in Youngstown, Ohio) is an American film producer and film executive. Wagner earned her BA at Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She began her career as an actress, appearing in several Broadway and off-Broadway stage productions. Wagner also performed at the Yale Repertory Theatre. In addition to being an actress, she is also a published playwright, … - Arthur Freed
Arthur Freed (September 9, 1894 - April 12, 1973) was born Arthur Grossman in Charleston, South Carolina. He was an American lyricist and a Hollywood film producer of Jewish descent. Freed began his career in vaudeville, and he appeared with the Marx Brothers. He soon began to write songs, and was eventually hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. For years, he wrote lyrics for numerous films, many set to music by Nacio Herb Brown. - Tex Avery
Frederick Bean "Fred/Tex" Avery (February 26, 1908 - August 26, 1980) was an American animator, cartoonist, and director, famous for producing animated cartoons during the Golden Age of Hollywood. He did his most significant work for the Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, creating the characters of Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, Droopy, Screwball Squirrel, and developing Porky Pig and Chilly Willy into regular cartoon characters. - George Sidney
George Sidney (October 4 1916 - May 5 2002) was a prolific American film director, who directed many notable films, mostly for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio. He was born in Long Island City, New York. Sidney got his start as an assistant at MGM until being assigned to direct the "Our Gang" comedies, which MGM had just acquired from Hal Roach, in 1938. Sidney, then age 21, was the youngest "Our Gang" senior director ever, … - Jack Haley
Jack Haley --born John Joseph Haley, Jr.--was an American film actor best known for his portrayal of the Tin Man and farmworker Hickory in "The Wizard of Oz". Haley starred in vaudeville as a song-and-dance comedian. One of his closest friends was fellow vaudeville alumnus Fred Allen, who would frequently mention "Mr. Jacob Haley of Newton Highlands, Massachusetts" on the air. In the early 1930s Haley starred in comedy shorts for Vitaphone in Brooklyn, New York. - Scott Bradley
Scott Bradley (November 26, 1891 in Russellville, Arkansas - April 27, 1977 in Chatsworth, California) was an American composer, pianist and conductor. He is most famous for scoring the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) theatrical cartoons, including those starring Tom and Jerry, Droopy Dog, Barney Bear, and the many one-shot works of Tex Avery. Bradley was a conservatory-trained composer and English horn player who had studied under Arnold Schoenberg. - Marcus Loew
Marcus Loew (May 7, 1870-September 5, 1927) was an American business magnate and a pioneer of the motion picture industry who formed Loews Theatres and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Born into a poor Jewish family in New York City, he was forced by circumstances to work at a very young age and thus had little formal education. Nevertheless, beginning with a small investment from money saved from menial jobs, he bought into the penny arcade business. - Dore Schary
Isidore 'Dore' Schary (August 31, 1905, Newark, New Jersey - July 7, 1980, New York City) was an American motion picture director, writer, and producer, and playwright. Schary worked in Hollywood, California and in 1938 won the Academy Award for Best Story as co-writer of the screenplay for the film, "Boys Town". He was with RKO Pictures when in 1948 he became chief of production at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios and, … - William Tuttle
William Tuttle (born April 13, 1911 in Jacksonville, Florida) is an American make-up artist. At a young age, he was forced to leave school to support his mother and younger brother. After a series of odd-jobs and a brief stint in his own band, Tuttle moved to Hollywood, California to work under makeup artist Jack Dawn at Twentieth Century Pictures. In 1934, Tuttle and Dawn moved to MGM to continue his apprenticeship, … - Hugh Harman
Hugh Harman (August 31, 1903 - November 25, 1982) was an American animator, film producer, and film director best-known for founding the Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation studios with his partner Rudolf Ising. Harman was a self-taught animator who began his career in Walt Disney's studio in 1922. Harman won an Oscar for the cartoon "The Milky Way" in 1940, and in 1939 was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for the antiwar cartoon "Peace on Earth." - Pete Smith
Pete Smith (born Peter Schmidt September 4, 1892, New York City - January 12, 1979, Santa Monica, California) was a film producer and narrator of "short subject" films from 1931 to 1955. Smith was a publicist at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer who was recruited to overdub the actions of trained dogs in the studio's "Dogville" comedies. Smith's speaking voice was distinctively nasal, and he would go on to narrate the studio's sports reels. - Roger Edens
Roger Edens (9 November 1905, Hillsboro, Texas - 13 July 1970, Hollywood) was a Hollywood composer, arranger and associate producer, and is considered one of the major creative figures in Arthur Freed's musical film production unit at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during the "golden era of Hollywood". - John Boorman
John Boorman (born January 18, 1933 in Shepperton, Surrey), is an English filmmaker, currently based in Ireland, best known for his feature films such as "Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur", "The General" and "In My Country". - Ray Patterson
Ray Patterson (November 23, 1911 - December 30, 2001) was an American animator. Patterson was born in Hollywood, California. He began working in animation in 1929 for Charles B. Mintz, where he remained for ten years. In 1940 he moved to Walt Disney Studio, where he provided artwork for "Dumbo" and "Fantasia", as well as several Pluto shorts ("Bone Trouble" and "Pluto's Playmate"). Patterson left Disney in 1941 to work at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, … - Rudolf Ising
Rudolf "Rudy" Ising (August 7, 1903 - July 18, 1992) is an American animator, film producer, and film director best-known for founding the Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation studios with his partner Hugh Harman. - Giancarlo Parretti
Giancarlo Parretti is an Italian financier. He formerly owned the movie studio Pathé and in 1989 took over Cannon Film Group Inc. from Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. In 1990, Parretti also bought Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, using money borrowed from a Dutch subsidiary of Crédit Lyonnais and contingent on future profits financing the purchase from mogul Kirk Kerkorian. With the financier, MGM released almost no movies (one victim being the James Bond franchise), … - John Hodiak
John Hodiak (April 16, 1914 - October 19, 1955) was an American actor. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Walter Hodiak (October 25, 1888-August 21, 1962) and Anna Pogorzelec (February 28, 1888-October 17, 1971). He was of Ukrainian and Polish descent. He grew up in Hamtramck, Michigan, a part of Detroit. Hodiak had his first smell of greasepaint at age eleven, acting in Ukrainian and Russian plays at the Ukrainian Catholic Church. - Karl Dane
Karl Dane (October 12, 1886 in Copenhagen - died April 15, 1934 in Los Angeles) was a comedian and actor of the silent film era, and a sad example of the fate that befell many silent movie stars who were unable to make the transition to talkies. Born Rasmus Karl Therkelsen Gottlieb in Copenhagen, Denmark to a theatrical family, Dane first appeared on stage at the age of 14. In January 1916, … - Barry Nelson
Barry Nelson (April 16 1917 - April 7 2007) was an American actor noted as the first actor to portray Ian Fleming's secret agent James Bond. - Conrad Salinger
Conrad Salinger was an American arranger, orchestrator and composer. Salinger was considered one of MGM's best orchestrators of musicals made between 1942 and 1962. He was noted for using a somewhat smaller orchestra than usual, but nevertheless achieving a rich, layered sound in his arrangements. The fact that the orchestra that Salinger used was smaller in size than the normal huge studio orchestra was practically unnoticeable, … - William Goetz
William Goetz was an American Hollywood film producer and studio executive. Born to a Jewish working class family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Goetz was the youngest of eight children. His mother died when he was ten years old and shortly thereafter his father abandoned the family. Raised by older brothers, at the age of twenty-one he followed some of his brothers to Hollywood where he found work as a crew hand at one of the large studios. - Michael Lah
Michael Richard Lah (September 1 1912 - October 13 1995) was an American animator. He is best known for his work at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, primarily as a member of Tex Avery's animation unit. Lah was bon in Illinois. He worked briefly at Walt Disney Studios before joining MGM in the early 1940s. His first work at MGM was for Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising. After Harman and Ising left, Lah worked briefly with Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera's Tom and Jerry series. - Virginia Weidler
Virginia Weidler (March 21, 1926 - July 1, 1968) was an American child actor, popular in Hollywood films during the 1930s and 1940s. Born as Virginia Inna Indelheid Weidler in Eagle Rock, California, Weidler made her first film appearance in 1933. Over the next few years she played minor roles in films for RKO and Paramount Studios. Neither studio made full use of her abilities, and when Paramount did not extend her contract, she was signed by MGM. - Ben Washam
Ben Washam (1915-1984) was an American animator who worked at Warner Bros. Cartoons from 1941 until 1962, mainly under the direction of Chuck Jones. He also worked on made-for-TV cartoons in the early 1960s. Later, he worked on various Chuck Jones projects at M-G-M; he also directed a few Tom and Jerry cartoons for release in 1967. He did his last work animating commercials for Jay Ward and drawing layouts at Jones' own production company, and retired in 1979. - Margaret Booth
Margaret Booth (January 16, 1898 - October 28, 2002) was an American film editor. Born in Los Angeles, California, she started her Hollywood career as a 'patcher', editing films by D. W. Griffith, around 1915. Later she worked for Louis B. Mayer when he was an independent film producer. When Mayer merged with others to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1924, she worked as a director's assistant with that company. She edited several films starring Greta Garbo. - Lucille Bremer
Lucille Bremer (February 21 1917 - April 16 1996) was an American film actress and dancer. Bremer was born in Amsterdam, New York and began her career as a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, aged 16. Spotted by a talent scout, she was taken to Hollywood where her screen test impressed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer mogul Louis B. Mayer. An accomplished dancer, she was also considered to display potential as a dramatic actress. - Virginia O'Brien
Virginia O'Brien (born April 18, 1919 in Los Angeles, died January 16, 2001), was an American singer and actress best known for playing supporting roles in MGM musicals in the 1940s, and for her unusual singing style. O'Brien's dark good looks belied the fact that she primarily performed comedy roles during the height of her career. This was in part due to her intentionally humorous singing style, … - Arthur Hornblow Jr.
Arthur Hornblow, Jr. (15 March 1893-17 July 1976) was an American film producer. His father, Arthur Hornblow (1865-1942), was a noted playwright. Hornblow graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School, New York, in 1911, before studying law at Dartmouth College and New York Law School, and was a member of the fraternity Theta Delta Chi. He served in counter-intelligence during World War I, then tried his hand at playwriting, … - Helen Deutsch
Helen Deutsch (21 March 1906-15 March 1992) was an American screenwriter, journalist and songwriter. Deutsch was born in New York City and graduated from Barnard College. She began her career by managing the Provincetown Players. She then wrote theatre reviews for the "New York Herald-Tribune" and the "New York Times" as well as working in the press department of the Theatre Guild. Her first screenplay was for "The Seventh Cross" (1944). - David Bradley
David Shedd Bradley (6 April 1920 - 19 December 1997) was an American motion picture director, actor, film collector, and university instructor. Bradley was born to a wealthy Chicago family that founded the Shedd Aquarium. He attended the Todd School for Boys (from which Orson Welles had graduated in 1931) from 1935 to 1937, and Lake Forest Academy during 1937-1940. He then spent a year at the Goodman Memorial Theatre Drama Department of the Art Institute of Chicago. - Burton Lane
Burton Lane (February 2, 1912, New York City - January 5, 1997, New York City) was an American composer and lyricist. Lane (real name Burton Levy) was best known for his Broadway musicals, "Finian's Rainbow" (1947) and "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever" (1965). He also wrote the music for the less successful Broadway shows, "Hold On to Your Hats" (1940), "Laffing Room Only" (1944), "Junior Miss" (1957), … - Abe Levitow
Abe Levitow (July 2, 1922 - 8 May 1975) was an American animator who worked mainly at Warner Bros. Cartoons, UPA and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). He first received animation credit in 1953 while working under the direction of Chuck Jones. He worked steadily for Jones over the remainder of the 1950s, and directed several cartoons for release in 1959. While working under Jones, he made characters' joints more angular than most other animators. - Cecilia Parker
Cecilia Parker (April 26, 1914 - July 25, 1993) was a film actress. She was brought to southern California as a child by her mother, Mrs. Naudy Anna Parker. Her father was an English soldier. Parker graduated from the Convent of the Immaculate Heart in Hollywood in June 1931. At the time she resided with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas J. Parker, at 546 North Fuller Street in Los Angeles, California. - Samuel Bronston
Samuel Bronston (26 March, 1908 - 12 January 1994) was a Romanian-born American film producer. He was also the petitioner in a U.S. Supreme Court case that set a major precedent for perjury prosecutions when it overturned his conviction. Bronston was born in Bessarabia, Romania (present day Moldova) and educated at the Sorbonne. He worked for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's French unit in Paris before setting up as an independent film producer by the 1940s. - Adrian
Adrian Adolph Greenberg, (March 3, 1903 - September 13, 1959), known mostly as Adrian, was a Hollywood costume designer whose most famous costumes were for "The Wizard of Oz" and other Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films of the 1930s and 1940s. During his career, he designed costumes for over 250 films and his screen credits usually read as "Gowns by Adrian". On occasion, he was credited as Gilbert Adrian, …
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