Hollywood East: Louis B. Mayer and the Origins of the Studio System

Before there was a Hollywood, Metro was a struggling film distribution company; Goldwyn was a glove salesman named Sam Goldfish; Mayer was a guy named Louis, who owned two small-town movie theaters: one known as the Garlic Box and one (a little nicer) with a big oil painting of a lion in the lobby; and none of them were anywhere near California. Hollywood East tells the story of how the movies evolved as a business - a business controlled from the Eastern seaboard. As Diana Altman notes, "Hollywood was a pretty face but New York was the heart and lungs". How did the business of movies grow? Who were the men who made it grow? Where did all the innovations - technical and business - come from? What innovative twists did mobsters Al Capone and Willie Bioff add? Most film historians concentrate on the Hollywood studios and treat the New York side as an unimportant annoyance to the creative geniuses of Hollywood. In fact, New York ran the whole show, and the geniuses were merely employees a