Thalberg's Shoes

When slim little Irving Thalberg, production chief of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, worked himself into the nervous break-down which sooner or later overtakes most cinema executives, Hollywood wondered how MGM would fill the gap. Thaiberg's hand had been in all the pictures which for the last five years have made MGM Hollywood's most successful company. His partner, MGM's dignified Vice President Louis Burt Mayer has, since hiring Thalberg in 1922, concerned himself more with studio finance than production.

Last week while Thalberg was en route to Europe with Mrs. Thalberg (Norma Shearer) to recuperate, MGM's directors announced that Associate Producers Edward J. Mannix and David Oliver Selznick had been elected vice presidents. Irish Eddie Mannix has been an MGM executive since 1924. David Oliver Selznick, son of the late famed Lewis J. Selznick, son-in-law of Louis B. Mayer, went to MGM for a fat salary two months ago. Before that he had been production chief of RKO, for which his last picture was Sweepings (see below). MGM had already appointed another associate producer to fill the Thalberg gap: Walter Wanger, one-time Eastern production chief for Paramount.

The change left Hollywood with two more things to wonder about: whether Thalberg would ever resume his old post; whether last week's move was an attempt to oust him or merely a step in the current trend to decentralize studio authority. First official act of Vice President Selznick was to announce an all-star cast, even more prodigious than the one which Thalberg last year chose for Grand Hotel, for MGM's forthcoming production of Dinner at Eight: Marie Dressier, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore, Billie Burke, Madge Evans, John Barrymore, Lee Tracy, Jean Hersholt, Louise Closser Hale. Grant Mitchell, May Robson, Karen Morley.

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