Focus Features

A common sight: Thalberg at his desk.

Irving Thalberg was the “boy wonder” who was the head of production at the newly-formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios. Together with studio head Louis B. Mayer, he perfected the assembly-line system of producing movies that became the model for all the other studios. Thalberg kept a tight rein on auteurs such as Eric Von Stroheim and Buster Keaton and made the producer the main creative force in movie-making.

Thalberg himself never claimed a credit on a film during his lifetime. He had a weak heart and the intensity of his commitment to his work led to his early death at the age of 37.  His life and work is memorialized in the Irving Thalberg Award for achievement in production that is given each year at the Oscar ceremony.

In his book, The Genius of the System, Thomas Schatz describes how Thalberg worked:

“The controlling force of the studio was Irving Thalberg. He decided what properties were worthy of development, when a story was ready to be scripted, and when a script was suitable for production. Thalberg preferred presold properties that had proven themselves in the marketplace as fiction, drama, or even as news feature. But the majority of Metro's scripts were based on more routine fare, and for these Thalberg relied on his story department, which culled the more promising stories from thousands of prospects it examined annually. 

To facilitate story selection, Thalberg came up with "The Ten Commandments for Studio Readers." 
These commandments were:

1. Your most important duty is to find great ideas.  You'll find them buried under tons of mediocre suggestions.
2. Read at least two newspapers daily.  Photoplays sell best which are based on timely topics.
3. Analyse all material on the basis of the players who are working for us.
4. Remember that you are dealing with a pictorial medium.
5. Make a close notation of all books you see the public reading.
6. See at least two full-length motion pictures each week, one from this company, one by a competitor.
7. Everything else is secondary in your work to the finding of a strong dramatic situation...an interesting clash between principal characters.
8. Prove your ability to recognise creative material by writing and submitting stories of your own.
9. Be proficient in one language besides your own. The competition for good stories is so keen that the supply written in English was long ago insufficient.
10. Above all, train yourself to recognize sincerity in a story.  Talking pictures, particularly, have made the public very sensitive to false notes in plots.

Thalberg with his wife,
actress Norma Shearer,
the "Queen of MGM."

Stories that met this criteria were passed to story editor Sam Marx and eventually to Thalberg, who was considered the best judge of a commercial property in the business, with a knack for seeing just how a story might be reworked to suit both the public's taste and the studio's resources.

Thalberg hit his stride in the early 1930s, and his studio machine turned out a steady stream of quality hits. In an endless succession of meetings Thalberg worked with his supervisors and writers, directors, and department heads, editors and composers, shaping each Metro picture.  He shepherded each story property as it went through script development and into final preparation before shooting, then monitored production itself through written reports and the screening of dailies, then oversaw the postproduction process of editing, previews, retakes, and re-editing until the picture was ready to be scored and sent to New York. Thus, without ever stepping onto the set, Thalberg was intimately involved in every MGM production.”

Extract taken from The Genius of The System: Hollywood Film-making in the Studio Era by Thomas Schatz (Faber & Faber, 1996).

Essential Viewing: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (silent version) [Buy], Ben-Hur (silent version) [Buy], The Big Parade [Buy], China Seas [Buy], Mutiny on the Bounty [Buy], Camille [Buy] and two versions of The Merry Widow – one by Erich Von Stroheim and one by Ernst Lubitsch [Buy].

A common sight: Thalberg at his desk.

Irving Thalberg was the “boy wonder” who was the head of production at the newly-formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios. Together with studio head Louis B. Mayer, he perfected the assembly-line system of producing movies that became the model for all the other studios. Thalberg kept a tight rein on auteurs such as Eric Von Stroheim and Buster Keaton and made the producer the main creative force in movie-making.

Thalberg himself never claimed a credit on a film during his lifetime. He had a weak heart and the intensity of his commitment to his work led to his early death at the age of 37.  His life and work is memorialized in the Irving Thalberg Award for achievement in production that is given each year at the Oscar ceremony.

In his book, The Genius of the System, Thomas Schatz describes how Thalberg worked:

“The controlling force of the studio was Irving Thalberg. He decided what properties were worthy of development, when a story was ready to be scripted, and when a script was suitable for production. Thalberg preferred presold properties that had proven themselves in the marketplace as fiction, drama, or even as news feature. But the majority of Metro's scripts were based on more routine fare, and for these Thalberg relied on his story department, which culled the more promising stories from thousands of prospects it examined annually. 

To facilitate story selection, Thalberg came up with "The Ten Commandments for Studio Readers." 
These commandments were:

1. Your most important duty is to find great ideas.  You'll find them buried under tons of mediocre suggestions.
2. Read at least two newspapers daily.  Photoplays sell best which are based on timely topics.
3. Analyse all material on the basis of the players who are working for us.
4. Remember that you are dealing with a pictorial medium.
5. Make a close notation of all books you see the public reading.
6. See at least two full-length motion pictures each week, one from this company, one by a competitor.
7. Everything else is secondary in your work to the finding of a strong dramatic situation...an interesting clash between principal characters.
8. Prove your ability to recognise creative material by writing and submitting stories of your own.
9. Be proficient in one language besides your own. The competition for good stories is so keen that the supply written in English was long ago insufficient.
10. Above all, train yourself to recognize sincerity in a story.  Talking pictures, particularly, have made the public very sensitive to false notes in plots.

Thalberg with his wife,
actress Norma Shearer,
the "Queen of MGM."

Stories that met this criteria were passed to story editor Sam Marx and eventually to Thalberg, who was considered the best judge of a commercial property in the business, with a knack for seeing just how a story might be reworked to suit both the public's taste and the studio's resources.

Thalberg hit his stride in the early 1930s, and his studio machine turned out a steady stream of quality hits. In an endless succession of meetings Thalberg worked with his supervisors and writers, directors, and department heads, editors and composers, shaping each Metro picture.  He shepherded each story property as it went through script development and into final preparation before shooting, then monitored production itself through written reports and the screening of dailies, then oversaw the postproduction process of editing, previews, retakes, and re-editing until the picture was ready to be scored and sent to New York. Thus, without ever stepping onto the set, Thalberg was intimately involved in every MGM production.”

Extract taken from The Genius of The System: Hollywood Film-making in the Studio Era by Thomas Schatz (Faber & Faber, 1996).

Essential Viewing: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (silent version) [Buy], Ben-Hur (silent version) [Buy], The Big Parade [Buy], China Seas [Buy], Mutiny on the Bounty [Buy], Camille [Buy] and two versions of The Merry Widow – one by Erich Von Stroheim and one by Ernst Lubitsch [Buy].