Focus Features

Although he was born on the fourth of July, studio mogul Louis B. Mayer (née Lazar Meir) began his life in Minsk, Russia. By 1889, his family moved to New York, then Canada, then back to America. While his mom sold chickens door-to-door, his father and brother pedaled scrap metal. Always the independent one, Mayer struck out on his own at the age of 19 by starting up his own junk business (as well as marrying the butcher’s daughter). His business brought him into contact with the growing nickelodeon enterprise. Soon he moved from owning arcades to running to theaters to acquiring and distributing films. (His first big coup was buying D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation.) By 1917, Mayer moved to Los Angeles where he eventually merged with several other companies to form MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). By the 1930s, the little junk man from Boston had grown into perhaps the most powerful man in Hollywood.

Although he was born on the fourth of July, studio mogul Louis B. Mayer (née Lazar Meir) began his life in Minsk, Russia. By 1889, his family moved to New York, then Canada, then back to America. While his mom sold chickens door-to-door, his father and brother pedaled scrap metal. Always the independent one, Mayer struck out on his own at the age of 19 by starting up his own junk business (as well as marrying the butcher’s daughter). His business brought him into contact with the growing nickelodeon enterprise. Soon he moved from owning arcades to running to theaters to acquiring and distributing films. (His first big coup was buying D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation.) By 1917, Mayer moved to Los Angeles where he eventually merged with several other companies to form MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). By the 1930s, the little junk man from Boston had grown into perhaps the most powerful man in Hollywood.