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MGM Studios history
MGM Studios company history timeline
In its first five years, United Artists scored a number of hits, but the studio's schedule was slow, producing an average of only eight films a year until 1924.
Leo the Lion, the studio’s recognizable roaring kitty cat was already in place, but his image for the revamped enterprise was altered by studio publicist Howard Dietz in 1924 for the company’s relaunch.
Also in 1925, MGM, Paramount Pictures and UFA formed a joint German distributor, Parufamet.
In 1925, MGM released the extravagant and successful Ben-Hur, taking a $4.7 million profit that year, its first full year.
In 1927 a Howard Hughes film, Two Arabian Knights, garnered UA its first Academy Award.
Marcus Loew died in 1927, and control of Loew's passed to Nicholas Schenck.
With the arrival of "talkies", MGM moved slowly and reluctantly into the sound era, releasing features like White Shadows in the South Seas (1928) with music and sound effects, and Alias Jimmy Valentine (1928) with limited dialogue sequences.
In 1929 his older brother, Herman J. Mankiewicz, a successful screenwriter, introduced the younger Mankiewicz to Hollywood, where he got his start composing subtitles for silent versions of Paramount talkies, which were distributed to theatres not yet equipped for sound.
In 1929, William Fox of Fox Film Corporation bought the Loew family's holdings with Schenck's assent.
Their first full-fledged talkie, the musical The Broadway Melody (1929), however, was both a box-office success and won the Academy Award as Best Picture of the Year.
In animation, MGM purchased the rights in 1930 to distribute a series of cartoons that starred a character named Flip the Frog, produced by Ub Iwerks.
The studio then produced a number of three-color short subjects including the musical La Fiesta de Santa Barbara (1935); their first complete feature in the process was Sweethearts (1938) with MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, the earlier of the popular singing team's two films in color. Its first all-color, "all-talking" sound feature with dialogue was the musical The Rogue Song in 1930.
Thalberg, always physically frail, was removed as head of production in 1932.
Despite the fact that Twentieth Century Pictures accounted for almost half of UA's films, Fairbanks, Pickford, and Chaplin (Griffith sold his shares in 1933) would not give the production company a slice of their pie.
In 1933, he delivered perhaps his most bravura performance, turning on the waterworks to convince his stable of contract players to accept a 50 percent salary cut, a star turn recently reenacted in David Fincher’s Mank.
Gable's career took off to new heights after he won an Oscar for the Columbia film It Happened One Night (1934).
In 1934, after Iwerks' distribution contract expired, MGM contracted with animation producers/directors Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising to produce a new series of color cartoons.
In 1935 Schenck and Zanuck left and merged Twentieth Century Pictures with the Fox Film Corporation.
In 1937, Mayer hired Mervyn LeRoy, a former Warner Bros. (WB) producer/director as MGM's top producer and Thalberg's replacement.
Despite Harlow's gain, Garbo still was a big star for MGM. Shearer was still a money maker despite screen appearances becoming scarce, and Crawford continued her box-office power until 1937.
The Happy Harmonies regularly ran over budget, and MGM dismissed Harman-Ising in 1937 to start its own animation studio.
LeRoy talked Mayer into purchasing the rights to make a film version of the popular book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which MGM did on June 3, 1938, from Sam Goldwyn for $75,000.
After initial struggles with a poorly received series of The Captain and the Kids cartoons, the studio rehired Harman and Ising in 1939, and Ising created the studio's first successful animated character, Barney Bear.
However, MGM's biggest cartoon stars would come in the form of the cat-and-mouse duo Tom and Jerry, created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera in 1940.
In 1941, Tex Avery, another Schlesinger alumnus, joined the animation department.
Within one year, beginning in 1942, Mayer released his five highest-paid actresses from their studio contracts: Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, Myrna Loy and Jeanette MacDonald.
In 1943 Mankiewicz signed a contract with Twentieth Century-Fox to work as a producer and a screenwriter.
The Gothic mystery, released in 1946, featured Gene Tierney, Vincent Price, and Walter Huston.
Mankiewicz was then assigned to direct Somewhere in the Night (1946), a passable film noir that suffered somewhat from uncharismatic leads John Hodiak and Nancy Guild and from its complicated but formulaic plot.
In fact, Loew's/MGM revenues during the war years were not significantly higher than in the peak Depression years, and in 1946, the height of the war boom, MGM's profits of $18 million were dwarfed by Paramount's $39.2 million.
Mayer was so notorious for absenting himself from the studio to cheer on his horses at the Santa Anita Race Track that a fed-up Nick Schenck eventually gave him an ultimatum: pick a stable. (In 1947, Mayer sold that off for $1.5 million.)
The Late George Apley (1947) was a more typical Mankiewicz project, a comedy of manners that preserves the literary flavour of the J.P. Marquand novel on which it is based; Ronald Colman played a Boston blue blood concerned only with his social standing.
Today, the company's operations represent a spectrum of entertainment product, a common thread being a base of content second to none: the largest modern (post-1948) library, and among the most honored film libraries in the world.
In 1948, sensing the need for fresh blood in a postwar world of television and arthouses, Nicholas Schenck brought in Dore Schary as vice-president in charge of production.
334 US 131 (1948), Loews, Inc. gave up control of MGM. It would take another five years before the interlocking arrangements were completely undone, by which time both Loews and MGM were sinking.
Schary and Mayer fought bitterly over William Wellman’s Battleground (1949), a gritty combat film that was the antithesis of MGM’s tradition of colorful family friendly fare.
Mankiewicz then made House of Strangers (1949), a potent if somewhat heavy-handed drama about a Machiavellian businessman (Edward G. Robinson) who exploits his own sons.
No Way Out (1950), coscripted by Mankiewicz, was an excellent noir and one of the first films to deal directly with racism.
In August 1951, Mayer was fired by MGM's East Coast executives and was replaced by Schary.
For MGM he made Julius Caesar (1953), a stellar adaptation of Shakespeare’s play.
Avery left the studio in 1953, leaving Hanna and Barbera to focus on the popular Tom and Jerry and Droopy series.
Ida Koverman, Mayer’s long-time executive secretary (she practically ran the joint), died in 1954.
In 1955 Mankiewicz directed his first musical, Guys and Dolls, which was based on a popular Broadway play.
Schary's reign at MGM had been marked with few bona-fide hits, but his departure (along with the retirement of Schenck in 1955) left a power vacuum that would prove difficult to fill.
General manager Eddie Mannix, who had taken the operational reins from Thalberg, also retired in 1956.
MGM's first television program, The MGM Parade, was produced by MGM's trailer department as one of the compilation and promotional shows that imitated Disney's series Disneyland which was also on ABC. Parade was canceled by ABC in the 2nd quarter of 1956.
In 1957 (by coincidence, the year Mayer died), the studio lost money for the first time in its 34-year history.
A year later Mary Pickford sold her shares for $3 million, giving full ownership to the Krim and Benjamin group, and the next year, 1957, UA went public with a $17 million stock and debenture offering.
He tried his hand at independent production, without success, and also tried to regain control of a struggling MGM in 1957, but the effort failed and he died a few months later.
Cost overruns and the failure of the big-budget epic Raintree County (1957) prompted the studio to release Schary from his contract.
TV production was expected to start with the 1957–58 season and was to include half-hour remakes of, or series based on, its pictures.
The year 1957 also marked the end of MGM's animation department, as the studio determined it could generate the same amount of revenue by reissuing older cartoons as it could by producing and releasing new ones.
In 1958, MGM released what is generally considered its last great musical, Arthur Freed's Cinemascope color production of Gigi, starring Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, and Louis Jourdan.
By 1960, MGM had released all of its contract players, with many either retiring or moving on to television.
But one other epic that was a success, however, was the MGM-Cinerama co-production How the West Was Won (again 1962), with a huge all-star cast.
In 1963 Eon Productions released Doctor No, the first James Bond movie through UA, beginning what proved to be the longest-running series in cinema history.
In 1963 Mankiewicz took over direction from Rouben Mamoulian of the ill-fated Cleopatra.
However, MGM did release later musical films, including an adaptation of Meredith Willson's The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) with Debbie Reynolds and Harve Presnell.
Mankiewicz’s reputation suffered, and he did not return to the big screen until 1967, with The Honey Pot, a crime comedy that was an intermittently clever reworking of Ben Jonson’s Volpone; it starred Harrison and Susan Hayward.
In 1969, Kirk Kerkorian purchased 40 percent of MGM stock.
On May 3, 1970, on the cavernous Stage 27 on the Culver City lot, a good chunk of the material heritage of MGM went up on the auction block, netting a reported $8 million-$10 million.
In 1971, it was announced that MGM was in talks with 20th Century Fox about a possible merger, a plan which never came into fruition.
Mankiewicz topped off his career with the critically acclaimed feature film Sleuth (1972). Playwright Anthony Shaffer adapted his clever murder mystery, and Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier gave Oscar-nominated performances.
In October 1973 and in decline in output, MGM closed MGM's distribution offices then outsourced distribution for its library for a ten-year period along with selling its music publishing arm, Robbins, Feist & Miller plus half of Quality Records of Canada, to United Artists.
Another portion of the backlot was sold in 1974.
In 1975 UA released One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
The MGM Recording Studios were sold in 1975.
A year later UA's Rocky won the Oscar for Best Picture, and in 1977 Woody Allen's Annie Hall captured the same honor for UA for the third year in a row.
In 1978 Krim split from UA after a dispute with Transamerica chief John Beckett and Krim, Benjamin, Eric Pleskow (then UA's president), and a number of other key executives formed Orion Pictures.
In 1979 Rocky II, Manhattan, Moonraker, and The Black Stallion gave UA its most successful season ever.
In 1979, Kerkorian declared that MGM was now primarily a hotel company.
In 1980, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. split its production and casino units into separate companies: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Film Co. and MGM Grand Hotels, Inc.
Before and After the Merger: 1980-88
The company hit a symbolic low point in 1980 when David Begelman, earlier let go by Columbia following the discovery of his acts of forgery and embezzlement, was installed as MGM's president and CEO.
MGM proceeded to return to theatrical distribution in 1981 with its purchase of United Artists, as UA's parent company Transamerica Corporation decided to sever its link with the studio following the failure of Heaven's Gate.
MGM/UA formed a trio of subsidiaries, the MGM/UA Home Entertainment Group, MGM/UA Classics, and the MGM/UA Television Group in 1982.
After 1982, the studio relied more on distribution, picking up independent productions, rather than financing its own projects.
Out of the 11 films he put into production, by the time of his release from the studio, only one film, Poltergeist (1982), proved to be a clear hit.
Because of this, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Film Co. was renamed "MGM/UA Entertainment Company." MGM/UA sold its music publishing division to CBS Songs in 1983 with a five-year co-publishing agreement.
Also in 1983, majority stockholder Kirk Kerkorian bid $665 million for the MGM/UA shares he did not hold already.
In 1983 the company launched a number of subsidiaries: the MGM/UA Home Entertainment Group, MGM/UA Classics, and the MGM/UA Television Group.
Awaiting release is the Guillermo del Toro-produced 3-D shocker The Cabin in the Woods and a reworking of the gung-ho 1984 actioner Red Dawn.
In 1984, the company had signed an eight-picture agreement with Dino De Laurentiis, with a production value of $150 million, and MGM/UA had domestic distribution for eight of the future Dino De Laurentiis film productions.
In August 1985 cable television magnate Ted Turner began negotiations with Kerkorian to buy MGM/UA Entertainment for $1.5 billion.
In 1985 the MGM and UA production units of MGM/UA Entertainment were separated under a general corporate restructuring.
After Kerkorian reclaimed MGM in August 1986, the MGM/UA name continued to be used, but the company changed its name, this time to MGM/UA Communications Co., which was renamed from United Artists Corporation, now using MGM and UA as separate brands.
The change became official on September 10, 1986, and at that time, the New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol was changed from UA, yet again to MGM.
The MGM/UA Communications Company was incorporated in 1986, but the complicated story of its formation began a year earlier.
Mankiewicz was the recipient of countless industry awards, including the Directors Guild of America’s D.W. Griffith Award in 1986.
In 1987 Spaceballs, The Living Daylights, and Moonstruck were big hits for the studio; yet despite these successes MGM/UA recorded an $88 million loss for 1987.
In July 1988, Kerkorian announced plans to split MGM and UA into separate studios.
At the zenith of this corporate crisis during the summer of 1988, production on many of the company's film projects was canceled.
The success of Rain Man (winning the 1988 Oscar for best picture as well as three others) promised improvement, but MGM/UA was debt-ridden and had only a handful of films in production.
In 1989 the media company Qintex Australia Limited agreed to acquire MGM/UA, but the questionable deal collapsed in October of that year and Quintex's owner, Christopher Skase, later disappeared amid a flurry of charges concerning financial misdeeds.
In 1989, Australian-based Qintex attempted to buy MGM from Kerkorian, but the deal collapsed.
While Kerkorian continued to look for a buyer, many wondered how MGM/UA would continue to fund the production of movies and TV shows--and the answer was "not easily." Kerkorian found another buyer for MGM/UA in 1990 with financier Giancarlo Parretti's Pathe Communications Corp. for $1.3 billion.
The PolyGram libraries were purchased by its Orion Pictures subsidiary so as to avoid its 1990 video distribution agreement with Warner.
The well-respected executive, Alan Ladd Jr., a former president of MGM/UA, was brought on board as CEO of MGM in 1991.
On the verge of bankruptcy and failure, Crédit Lyonnais took full control of MGM–Pathé via loan default in mid-1992 and converted its name back to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
On December 21, 1992, MGM's 15% investment ($30 million in cash) in Carolco Pictures plus a $30 million convertible note was approved by Carolco's board.
France's Credit Lyonnais assumed control of MGM/UA in 1992 and initiated two lawsuits against Kirk Kerkorian for stripping the company of its cash before selling it to Parretti and Pathe Communications Corp.
MGM Holdings, Inc. was formed to take on about $1 billion in MGM's liabilities off MGM's balance sheet in the third quarter of 1993.
Credit Lyonnais extended a $400 million line of credit allowing a Chemical Bank lead bank group to extend a $350 million line of credit in 1994.
In 1994, MGM had a hit in Stargate.
Kerkorian, ever the mover-and-shaker, settled the lawsuits in 1995 for an undisclosed sum and turned his attention to a hostile takeover attempt of Chrysler Corp.
In the first quarter of 1996 MGM was again on the selling block, this time put up for sale by CDR to the company's top management with the backing of Australia's Seven Network Limited and Kerkorian's Tracinda Corporation.
By 1998, MGM had started a specialty film unit using The Samuel Goldwyn Company under the Goldwyn Films name.
MGM and Metromedia settled on January 10, 1999, with MGM's Goldwyn Films changing its name to G2 Films.
In 2000, MGM changed its overseas distribution arrangement.
MGM purchased 20 percent of Rainbow Media Group from Cablevision Systems for $825 million in 2001.
In 2002, Kerkorian put MGM up for sale again, with a suggested sale price of $7 billion.
To finance the purchase, Parretti licensed the MGM/UA library to Time Warner for home video and Turner for domestic television rights until 2003.
MGM attempted to take over Universal Studios in 2003, but failed, and was forced to sell several of its cable channel investments (taking a $75-million loss on the deal).
In 2004, many of MGM's competitors started to make bids to purchase the studio, beginning with Time Warner.
Also in 2006, MGM licensed its home video distribution rights for countries outside of the United States to 20th Century Fox.
MGM also hoped to increase the amount to over 20 by 2007.
On November 10, 2008, MGM announced that it will release full-length films on YouTube.
As of mid-2009, MGM had US$3.7 billion in debt, and interest payments alone totaled $250 million a year.
On December 20, 2010, MGM executives announced that the studio had emerged from bankruptcy.
20th Century Fox's deal with MGM handling its library distribution worldwide was set to expire in September 2011.
He will remain with the studio to produce films on "an exclusive basis". In December 2012, Denkert retired as co-president of MGM on Stage after producing five Broadway and West End plays.
In May 2014, MGM introduced The Works, a channel available in 31 percent of the country, including stations owned by Titan Broadcast Management.
The Orion Pictures name was extended in fourth quarter 2014 for smaller domestic and international video on demand and limited theatrical releases.
Later on October 31, 2017, the two companies formed a US distribution joint venture called Mirror Releasing.
Following the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations in October 2017, MGM was listed as one of 22 potential buyers interested in acquiring The Weinstein Company.
In February 2018, Chris Brearton, the former media M&A attorney of Latham and Watkins, was appointed as chief operating officer.
On March 19, 2018, MGM Holdings announced that Barber had been fired by the studio's board of directors.
In April 2019, MGM signed a two-year, first-look deal for films with Smokehouse Pictures, owned by George Clooney and Grant Heslov.
Glickman left in January 2020 and replaced by Michael De Luca as chairman of the motion picture group.
MGM's films on DVD and Blu-ray would continue to be released by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment until June 2020.
In December 2020, MGM began to explore a potential sale of the studio, with the COVID-19 pandemic and the domination of streaming platforms due to the closure of movie theaters as contributing factors.
Firing Up the RS-25 Engine Test for Future Artemis Moon Missions May 21, 2021NASA conducted its fourth RS-25 single-engine hot fire test of the year on May 20, 2021, a continuation of its seven-part test series.
On May 17, 2021, online retail and technology company Amazon entered negotiations to acquire the studio.
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"MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) ." Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film. . Retrieved June 21, 2022 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/mgm-metro-goldwyn-mayer
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MGM Studios may also be known as or be related to MGM Studios, Metro Goldwyn Mayer, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. and Mgm.