#Fact1In her December 1972 interview to Leonard Maltin in Film Fan Monthly, Madge Evans gives the following testimony about Thalberg's methods: "The only time you really ever had any sense of rehearsal was in a Thalberg film. It wasn't that there were any advance rehearsals, but he would come on the set and watch rehearsals, and then there would be great conferences while the actors sat around. He was a very quiet man; he would confer with the director, then the director would come back and the scene would be redirected. One film I made that Thalberg did was 'What Every Woman Knows' with Helen Hayes. We'd been shooting for about six or seven days and he stopped production because he didn't like the wardrobe that Adrian had designed. Everything was thrown out and we all made clothes tests. Then we went home and when they were ready, they called us.".2Film historian Bob Thomas on Thalberg: He was a creative producer, etc., but he was determined to turn out 52 pictures a year.".3Critic Dwight MacDonald on Thalberg: "... in the country of the blind, Schary and Thalberg were literate compared to others, were mistaken for Goethes... A Thalberg is to an actual movie what a hamburger is to an actual steak.".4Critic Graham Greene n reviewing "Romeo and Juliet": "... not a producer of uncommon talents.".5Writer Budd Schulberg on Thalberg: "He had the accouterments of an artist; he was like a young pope.".6Film writer Heywood Gould on Thalberg: "Perhaps only foreigners could have seen America through the worshipful, distorted prism of an immigrant's sensibility. Only an immigrant could idealize the homely fortitude of Tom Mix, the cherry pie goodness of Mary Pickford; only an outsider could be taken with a popular culture that many Amerians considered beneath contempt... The mixture of opulence , melodrama, intrigue, mass culture for the masses... It was Thalberg's personality, not his oeuvre, that created the legend. He had a retailer's mind and contempt for those who worked for him.".7Cousin of Louis M. Heyward.8Writer Charles MacArthur said about him, "He's too good to last. The lamb doesn't lie down with the lion for long.".9On the evening of his death, during the live performance of Lux Radio Theater, "Quality Street", Cecil B. DeMille announced of the passing of Irving Thalberg and offered 10 seconds of silence in tribute.10He was reportedly the person who created the term "film editor" as opposed to simply "cutter." He first applied the term to Margaret Booth.11Was a notorious hard worker, often putting in 12-hour workdays. He was also notorious for running behind schedule with his appointments. Actors, directors, writers and others would wait days if not weeks on the bench outside of his office before finally meeting face-to-face with Thalberg. Writer George S. Kaufman once quipped about that famous bench that on a clear day you can see Thalberg.12Is portrayed by Robert Evans in Man of a Thousand Faces (1957)13The father of two daughters, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Vice President-Production Louis B. Mayer originally thought of Thalberg, his production chief, as a son, but Thalberg's ambitions and his view of himself as the man behind the success of MGM eventually brought them into conflict. After Thalberg's 1933 heart-attack forced the young executive to take a long vacation, Mayer introduced a producer system he likened to a college of cardinals to replace Thalberg as the central producer. When Thalberg returned to MGM, he became just an ordinary producer, albeit one who had first choice on projects and MGM resources, including its stars, due to his closeness to Nicholas Schenck, the president of MGM corporate parent Loews's Inc. Schenck, who was the true power and ultimate arbiter at the studio, usually backed up Thalberg. Some Hollywood observers believe that Mayer was relieved by Thalberg's untimely death, though he professed a great deal of grief publicly and likely was saddened by his former mentor's demise as Thalberg had been instrumental in building MGM into the greatest studio in Hollywood and the world.14Is portrayed by John Rubinstein in The Silent Lovers (1980)15Contracted rheumatic fever at the age of 17, and the prognosis was negative. His mother, Henrietta, ignored the physicians' opinions and sent Irving back to high school to finish up and get his diploma.16After director King Vidor complained to Thalberg that he was tired of shooting pictures that played in theaters for just one week, he told him about a new kind of realistic war movie he had envisioned. Thalberg was enthusiastic about Vidor's vision, and tried to buy the rights to the hit Broadway play "What Price Glory?" co-written by Maxwell Anderson and World War I Marine veteran Laurence Stallings. Since the rights to the popular anti-war play had already been acquired, he hired Stallings to come to Hollywood and write a screenplay for the new, realistic war picture that Vidor had dreamed about making. Stallings came up with The Big Parade (1925), an anti-war film that dispensed with traditional concepts of heroism, focusing instead on a love story between a Yank soldier and a French girl. After Vidor completed principal photography, Thalberg took the rough cut and previewed it before live audiences in Colorado. Although the audiences responded favorably, Thalberg decided to expand the scope of the picture, as Vidor had created a war picture without many war scenes. He had Vidor restage the famous marching army column sequence with 3,000 extras, 200 trucks and 100 airplanes, adding about $45,000 to the negative cost of the film. After Vidor moved on to another project, Thalberg had other battle scenes shot by director George W. Hill. The result was a classic, a major hit that proved to be MGM's most profitable silent picture. "The Big Parade" was an example of Thalberg's perfectionism as a managing producer.17After a preview of the Marie Dressler-Wallace Beery picture Tugboat Annie (1933), Thalberg asked director Mervyn LeRoy if a scene could be improved by making Beery's shoes squeak. LeRoy agreed, but detailed how it would be economically prohibitive to reshoot the scene as the sets had been dismantled and the cast had dispersed. Thalberg responded, "Mervyn, I didn't ask you how much it would cost, I asked you whether it would help the picture." The scene was reshot, an example of Thalberg's perfectionism.18Took a screen credit only once in his lifetime: He credited himself as "I.R. Irving" for the screenplay he wrote for The Dangerous Little Demon (1922).19On the day of his funeral, MGM closed for the entire day, and every Hollywood studio shut down operations for five minutes of silence at 10:00 AM PST. Such honors were rare, but Marie Dressler and Jean Harlow received similar consideration.20Owing to Thalberg's habit in his lifetime of not seizing the spotlight for himself, Hollywood's memorials to him after his death were relatively sedate, although heartfelt. MGM renamed their administration facility the Thalberg Building, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences created the Thalberg Award to acknowledge "Creative producers, whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production."21Had two children, Irving, Jr. and Katherine. As adults, Irving, Jr. became a professor of philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Katherine owned a bookstore in Colorado.22Before marrying Norma Shearer, he was romantically linked to Rosabelle Laemmle (daughter of film mogul Carl Laemmle), actress Constance Talmadge and socialite Peggy Hopkins Joyce.23Brother-in-law of Douglas Shearer and Athole Shearer, son-in-law of Edith Shearer.24Interred at Forest Lawn, Glendale, California, USA, in the Great Mausoleum, Sanctuary of Benediction, end of the hall, on the left hand side, the very last private room marked "Thalberg."25One of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)26The character of Monroe Stahr, the hero of F. Scott Fitzgerald's final novel ("The Last Tycoon ) was based on him. Fitzgerald also based the story "Crazy Sunday", on a party he attended at his home.