Irving Thalberg: Prince of Hollywood

Irving Thalberg: Prince of Hollywood (2005)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Entertaining documentary about the life and career of Irving Thalberg, the legendary producer who accomplished so much in such a short period of time. Thalberg got his start at Universal but when he switched over to MGM this is when his career really took off as he was involved in some of the biggest pictures that the studio had and turned many stars into legends. The film covers the majority of his career as well as stuff in his personal life including his ill health and his marriage to Norma Shearer. Michael Blake, Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. and Bob Thomas are just some of the historians who are interviewed and we also get some archival interviews with the likes of King Vidor and Helen Hayes. If you're unfamiliar with who Thalberg is then this documentary will probably answer all of your questions. It covers how he helped turn MGM into a powerhouse and how he used a style that was pretty much used like a factory to make sure the product got out each week. The documentary also goes into detail about how he would preview a film and then go back for reshoots just to make sure it was as good as it could possibly get. In between all the interviews we get countless film clips from the movies he helped make and we also get a taste of how many actors he pretty much found and turned into stars. The documentary does a very good job at giving you an idea of what Hollywood was like before and after Thalberg.

Irving Thalberg was once described as ""a flimsy bag of bones held together by his creative zeal to making the greatest motion pictures in the history of the world", and this documentary tells his complete story both personal and professional from his infancy and the blue baby syndrome and later rheumatic fever that greatly shortened his life expectancy. Starting out as an office boy for Carl Laemmle at Universal, he was head of production there before he was old enough to sign employee checks. He helped Universal get out of the rut of being mainly just a factory for B westerns and pointed Universal in the direction of making prestige horror films. He then went to work for Louis Mayer's independent film company and then the prefabricated MGM studio as head of production, where he had a free hand there the first eight years of MGM's existence, 1924 - 1932.

Watching this you realize Thalberg caught almost every trend, had a great talent for storytelling, and knew what audiences wanted while at the same time delivering quality. The silents and the talkies he produced are still watched today by classic film buffs, and they really haven't aged that much. The one trend Thalberg didn't catch was the advent of sound or color. He thought the Jazz Singer was just a fad and thus MGM was the last major studio to convert to sound, making prestige silent pictures through 1929. However, once MGM went to sound they produced the first talking picture to win the Best Picture Oscar -"Broadway Melody".

Thalberg's story really is MGM's story, and although MGM reigned supreme at the box office until 1946 before it began its decline, many trace the beginning of MGM's demise to 1936, when Thalberg died at the age of only 37. It makes you wonder if Thalberg - had he been healthy - would have driven himself this hard and would he have seen the coming post-war trends of noir and competition from television that ultimately did in MGM.

One thing that the documentary omitted that I would consider almost as important as the stars Thalberg discovered was his choice of a head sound engineer in 1928 that on the surface looked like nepotism - Douglas Shearer, his brother-in-law. Shearer had quite the mechanical bent and his career at MGM spanned forty years and a multitude of Oscar wins and nominations for achievement in sound.

This TCM production is very well done with lots of film clips from the Universal and MGM films that Thalberg produced as well as many clips of interviews with people who knew Thalberg well including a particularly fascinating excerpt from the Dick Cavett show with Groucho Marx talking about his relationship with Thalberg. Highly recommended for anyone interested in film history.

"Irving Thalberg: Prince of Hollywood" is a 75 minute biography about the life of Irving Thalberg, the genius producer who had an amazing knack with perfecting films. While I have no major complaints about the documentary and am glad I saw it, there is one problem with it...75 minutes is just too short for a man as important to the film industry as Thalberg. As a result, you get most of the important facts but a few of his achievements and personal life are omitted. I really think the minimum you could devote to this subject is to make the movie twice as long...then you can talk about more of his film successes, a few more important actors to him (a couple omissions are mentioned in the IMDB trivia) as well as his being Jewish and the impact it had on his films. Overall, a must for old movie buffs...I just wish it had been longer.

"Irving Thalberg: Prince of Hollywood" is a look at the short life and career of one of Hollywood's great geniuses. Beating the odds from the time of his birth as a blue baby, he proved early on, first with Universal and then with MGM, that he had the midas touch.

The documentary gives insight into Thalberg's great gifts. He is responsible for the film preview and for the all-star cast; he made the first all-talking musical, "Broadway Melody"; he saved the careers of Marie Dressler and the Marx Brothers, helped make Clark Gable and Jean Harlow stars, and of course, nurtured the career of his wife, Norma Shearer. His uneasy relationship with Louis B. Mayer is discussed, as is his demotion at MGM from head of production to independent producer, his marriage to Shearer, and his frail constitution.

Most important of all, Thalberg's contribution to film is explored, his commitment to make the medium better than it had been and his commitment to character-driven stories. He disliked people with no imagination, because his was so great. Undoubtedly, this was because as a sickly, often bedridden child, he read a great deal. The point was made over and over that he understood power and its uses, and he wasn't afraid to make actors and directors toe the line. Perhaps the most interesting thing about him, and what made him most gifted, was his ability to spot the flaw in a film and change it, sometimes with the most minor adjustment, turning negative preview cards into positive ones. Examples of this were given in the films "The Champ," "Camille," "Red-Headed Woman," and "The Big House" - for this viewer, the most fascinating thing in this documentary.

Thalberg was a amazing and important man, and it would be difficult to make a bad documentary about him. But film lovers will be left with a great depression after it's over. Thalberg, it seems, was irreplaceable, because in 70 years, there hasn't been another. The Selznicks, the Thalbergs - the producers with a strong vision, a feeling for entertainment, a commitment to quality, with a strong imagination seem gone in the big studios today. Fortunately we have independent filmmakers who seem possessed by something of what Thalberg had and some brilliant directors. But it's always good to go back and see what made Hollywood great.

Thalberg's children are shown when they're small, and nothing else is said about them. Shearer and Thalberg's son, Irving Jr., died at the age of 58 in 1988 of cancer. He was a distinguished author and teacher of philosophy at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Their daughter, Katherine, was married to a former Mayor of Aspen, Colorado, and owned and ran the Explore Bookstore there until she died in 2006. She was known for her activism in various causes, including the anti-fur fight.

Vapid bio of Irving Thalberg and Norma Shearer as a power couple at MGM in the 1920s and 30s.

Thalberg is certainly an interesting topic for a documentary, but if the filmmakers were going to spend so much time on the the stars he helped create: Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, John Gilbert, Clark Gable, Robert Montgomery, Marie Dressler, Greta Garbo, Wallace Beery, Lon Chaney, Ramon Novarro, plus Shearer and the Marx Brothers, why on earth would they skip Marion Davies and William Haines, two of MGM's top stars of the era?

The documentary continues the "cancel culture" (even before it was named) of trying to wipe out the significant careers of these two stars. They are consistently omitted from books and documentaries about this time in Hollywood.

While much time is spent on Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer and the rise of MGM, it's idiotic to omit Marion Davies. Davies was a major star of the silent era and a major catch when she signed with MGM in 1925. Davies, along with William Randolph Hearst, were instrumental in making MGM a major studio. Davies was a star long before Shearer or Crawford and brought a lot of name recognition to MGM's new stable of stars. Hearst brought money and his massive media empire to hawk MGM movies and stars.

Haines was an MGM star from 1926 on and was a bigger box office draw than John Gilbert or Ramon Novarro. His BROWN OF HARVARD and TELL IT TO THE MARINES were among the biggest hits of the decade. Haines was actually the #1 male box office star in the early 1930s. Haines is neither mentioned nor shown in the clips.

Marion Davies is shown several times in this documentary but she's never mentioned. Even the bit on San Simeon, which shows Thalberg clowning in home movies, mentions Hearst but does not mention Davies ... even when discussing the lavish, legendary parties she gave.

These two power couples, Shearer and Thalberg, Davies and Hearst, were the very core of MGM's power in the 1920a and early 1930s.

Thalberg is a worthy figure for a documentary, but he also deserves better than this pale Turner Entertainment entry.