Posts Tagged ‘Tarzan the Ape Man’

File this under “things to make you feel like an underachiever.” Legendary Hollywood producer Irving Thalberg, whose life and career are being celebrated in a current exhibition at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, was just 20 years old when he became head of production at Universal Studios.  In the grand Hollywood tradition of nepotism and exploiting personal connections, Thalberg’s grandmother’s neighbor was Carl Laemmle, the same man whose name still graces cinemas around the city.  And of course, in 1920, the movie business, as well as much of the landscape of L.A., was pretty wide open, waiting for the right person to come along and develop it into something big and important.

Although his name is little remembered outside industry circles with a sense of history, Irving Thalberg was just the man to help “the pictures” mature.  Thalberg restructured the way movies are produced like Henry Ford organized his auto factories.  Due to a childhood spent bedridden by illness reading the classics, he also appreciated fine literature.  These traits—business acumen and artistic sensibility—combined to produce some of the most profitable and sophisticated films of Hollywood’s early years.  Among his “40 hits a year” were Ben-Hur, ­The Big Parade, Grand Hotel, and one of the seminal escapist adventures (it was the Depression after all) Tarzan the Ape Man.  Thalberg and his system managed to rake in $8 million during the worst year of the Depression (a feat that would make contemporary execs snap their Ray-Bans in envy).  Box office success also allowed him to afford the occasional “experimental” film without stars or glamour.  Thalberg green-lighted such risky projects as King Vidor’s Kafkaesque The Crowd, Tod Browning’s infamous Freaks, and Vidor’s all African-American Hallelujah.

F. Scott Fitzgerald based the pragmatic protagonist of The Last Tycoon on Thalberg because “he led the pictures way up, past the range and power of the theatre.”  And 110 years after his birth, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences continues to celebrate his contribution to cinema with a small but vibrant exhibition in their fourth floor gallery on Wilshire Boulevard.

Clips of Thalberg’s great film achievements light up the walls; gowns worn by glamorous stars grace mannequins; the leather body armor worn by Ramon Novarro in Ben-Hur (smaller than you might expect) lies under a glass case; even Lon Chaney’s versatile make-up kit is disemboweled for inspection.  Continuing on, you’ll find the not to be missed mechanical birdcage tiara worn by his wife Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette. But the stars of this show are the gorgeous black and white publicity and production photographs.  They are shimmering works of art and standouts include the impressionistic portrait of Novarro as a modern day Orpheus by the masterful George Hurrell, and two portraits of Joan Crawford: one in which she is drowning in a luxuriant fur collar and the other, a triptych with impossibly long eyelashes.

Best of all, admission is free, just be sure to bring along a photo ID as all visitors must be signed in, shall we say very deliberately, by security.

- By Michael Hartig

The Irving Thalberg exhibit will be shown at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on the fourth floor until December 13.  For more information, please visit www.oscars.org