Academy Founders 20

N.B. The member numbers follow The Internet Movie Database's list order announcing the Academy in January 1927. 

20. Joseph M. Schenck (1876-1961) of the Producers Branch, shown here (at right) with Dr. and Mrs. Harry W. Martin. Mrs. Martin is better known as Louella Parsons (Louella Rose Oettinger, 1881-1972), the scenarist and gossip columnist.

Joseph M. Schenck came to New York in 1893 and to Hollywood in 1917, the year after he married Norma Talmadge (1894-1957). He had previously been in partnership with his brother Nick; he now worked with Marcus Loew to combine Metro Pictures with Goldwyn Pictures, the precursor to the merger that produced MGM. In the same period, Schenck became the chairman and then president of United Artists. By the late 1920s, he was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood.

Academy Founders 19a

19. Harry Rapf (1882-1949) of the Producers Branch, second from left next to Buster Keaton (and with Louis B. Mayer third from right), at a house party at William Randolph Hearst’s “El Cuesta Encantada” in San Simeon, California, ca. 1927. 

Harry Rapf has 81 producer credits at IMDb, among them BROWN OF HARVARD (1926), THE BROADWAY MELODY (1929), MIN AND BILL (1930), and Robert Benchley’s short HOW TO SLEEP (1935). His last film was SCENE OF THE CRIME (1949).

In the photo, left to right: Buster Keaton (Joseph Frank Keaton Jr., 1895-1966); Harry Rapf; Irving Thalberg (# 21); and Nicholas M. Schenck (1881-1969). There are so many names in this post that I will have to continue in a second part.

Academy Founders 18b

Louis B. Mayer came up with the idea for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in conversation with Fred Beetson, of the Association of Motion Picture Producers (A.M.P.A.S. founder # 33); actor Conrad Nagel (# 5); and director Fred Niblo (# 11). 

A native of the Kiev region of Ukraine, Mayer grew up in New Brunswick. With money from his successful scrap-metal operation, he bought a burlesque house in Boston; from there his rise was swift, and with the mega-merger of Metro and Goldwyn Pictures with his own Louis B. Mayer Productions he created the model Hollywood studio, with “more stars than there are in the heavens.” 

His tenure at MGM lasted a quarter century, and if he left in comparative ignominy – forced out by Nicholas M. Schenck, also in this photo – Mayer had overseen an extraordinary run of films and shaped the careers of hundreds of film stars. In 1951 he won an honorary Academy Award for “distinguished service to the motion picture industry.”

I will identify the others in the photo in Harry Rapf’s post.