Golden Age Titans

Michele Willens talks with film critic Kenneth Turan about Hollywood Golden Age moguls Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg.

By Michele WillensJuly 22, 2025

• Film

• History

KENNETH TURAN was the film critic at the Los Angeles Times for more than 20 years. Now retired from that post, he is casting his gaze back to when Hollywood really made its mark. His latest book, Louis B. Mayer & Irving Thalberg: The Whole Equation, is a long, thorough, and highly entertaining tale of two men who were pivotal in the movie business.

Mayer and Thalberg’s lives and careers are well known and have been covered at length. But Turan’s book dives deeper than previous examinations, into their differences in style and impact. And in ethnic backgrounds: Thalberg’s family was German, Mayer’s Eastern European. In the end, both were memorialized at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, which they had been helpful in founding.

Turan beautifully captures each man’s values. “Thalberg was always the studio’s go-to individual with tough cases because of his singular ability to artfully split hairs,” he writes. “William Goldman said […] that moviemaking was a business where ‘nobody knows anything[.]’ Thalberg stood out as someone who actually knew something.” Mayer, Turan explains, was more of the scolder. “You’re Andy Hardy,” he told Mickey Rooney, “You’re the United States. You’re the Stars and Stripes. Behave yourself. You’re a symbol.”

I can never get enough stories about the stars that were made by those two moguls. Gable and Garbo and Gilbert and Groucho—and so many more. So, I went to the source for Turan’s own answers.

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MICHELE WILLENS: Why this book about these two men now?

KENNETH TURAN: These guys individually fascinated me. Mayer was the chief Golden Age CEO. Thalberg had always been on my mind since The Last Tycoon, being the model for the character Monroe Stahr. And let’s face it, people who die young have a certain fascination [Thalberg died at 37 from heart disease]. It just seemed the time for me to take them on.

What were the challenges you faced as you researched and wrote the book?

One I did not expect was having to do a lot of my research during COVID-19 lockdown. A lot of archives were closed. But the archivists would send me stuff. A man named Ned Comstock, legendary archivist at USC, was incredibly helpful. It turned out I called him three days before he retired. He gave me key pieces of material. It also turned out that everyone wrote memoirs all those decades ago, some I’d never heard of. Those were helpful. Edward G. Robinson wrote a wonderful one. He talked about meeting with Thalberg, who told him he wanted him under contract but that he couldn’t do Broadway. Robinson went around the corner and threw up.

What surprised you about these two men’s biographies?

The thing I’d hoped to find, which was surprising, was that they were not one-dimensional. Thalberg, even though many people loved him, could be cool and unemotional and distant. One quote I found was that “Irving […] could piss ice water.” Mayer, of course, was full of bluster. He was always performing and was called the best actor on the lot. I tried to see them both as whole persons.

What famous Hollywood figures did you find most interesting as you looked into these two men’s histories?

So many made their careers at MGM. Even the Marx Brothers—especially Groucho till the end of his days—credited Thalberg for saving their career. Paramount had not renewed their option, and no one wanted them. He and Chico were playing bridge together when Thalberg said, “I think I know how to revive your careers.”

Can you describe your writing process?

I worked on the book for three years. I worked with two editors, one being the overall editor of the Jewish Lives series at Yale University Press. And I had a superb line editor. Every suggestion he made I liked. When’s the last time you said that?

What were some key discoveries you made in the process of writing the book?

These guys have been written about a lot, but there was only one book about both together, and it came out 50 years ago. Nine or 10 books have been written about each, but there were aspects I noticed that others didn’t. Because of all the years I’ve worked as a journalist, I have an ear for quotes, a real sense of what a potent one is. There were ways Mayer used Yiddish that others hadn’t found, and there were other small things. My past writing about films and the movie business really informed the biography. And I majored in history in college, so I’ve always loved looking back. And during COVID, it was great to be somewhere else with a different set of problems.

If you could have lunch with one of these two men, which one would it be?

I’d maybe choose Mayer because you never knew what he’d say. Thalberg, by contrast, was so self-contained. But he had this gift no one could explain, even in his late teens. Because he had always been sickly, he spent a lot of time reading novels. So, he knew about storytelling. He ran Universal before he was old enough to sign the checks. Even those who didn’t like him realized he knew how to do this. It was an instinct. And he had a gift for understanding what audiences wanted. He was a big believer in audience testing. Previously, only comedians during the silent era had used that. He’d move around the audience when the film was on, so he could sense what they were reacting to and what they didn’t like. If he wanted to redo a scene, he’d pull the writer off another project, and the actors off another set.

Have you always been an L.A. guy?

Oh, yes, even though we just lost our home in the alphabet section of the Palisades. Galloway Street now looks like Warsaw at the end of World War II. We found a house to rent for a year in Santa Monica Canyon. We’re not sure if we’ll build again. We were a community. I don’t want to be the only house and I’m not getting any younger. And it’s exhausting to build or even think about it.

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Kenneth Turan is a retired American film critic, author, and lecturer in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California. He was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 1991 until 2020.