Continuing with the identifications in this photo, Mrs. Nicholas M. Schenck (Pansy Wilcox) is in the center. Louis B. Mayer is to her left, followed by Edgar Joseph “Eddie” Mannix (1891-1963) and finally Hunt Stromberg (1894-1968), with Harry Rapf, Irving Thalberg, and Mayer one of the “Big Four” at MGM and a nominee for the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1939.
Astoria, New York and Ft Lee, New Jersey were the original Hollywood’s in the USA before all the studios fled west to California for the great, sunny weather and to evade the Edison Company, and its demand of royalties on film equipment patents. The weather in Hollywood permitted year round filming, and a California court system not too well knowledgeable about film and patent law. As the New York courts were quite knowledgable, and would find in the Edison Company’s favor against the studios, unlike the California courts that would find in the studios favor. -Rj
ReplyDeleteI love these old group photos, everyone dressed up and lined up in a row. Soon photographers would urge their subjects to jump, so these static portraits offer an almost sculptural stillness — wasted, perhaps, on studio executives and their wives!
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