At its peak in the 1930s and 1940s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer could boast of having "more stars than the heavens," including Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Elizabeth Taylor, Norma Shearer, Van Johnson...All owed their careers to mogul Louis B. Mayer, the brilliant, mercurial chief of perhaps the greatest movie studio of all time. Now bestselling biographer Charles Higham fully reveals the character and genius of this complex "merchant of dreams."Higham follows Mayer from his birth in a ghetto in the Ukraine, to his poor if idyllic boyhood in Canada, to his entry into show business via vaudeville. He details Mayer's precarious early years as a pioneer in silent films, his move to Hollywood and his commitment to talking pictures (Garbo Talks!).Among Higham's revelations: how Mayer rescued Jews from Nazi Europe while Loew's, Inc., his parent company, was still trading with Hitler and Mussolini; how he protected Garbo while she operated as a secret agent for the Allies; how he covered separate alleged acts of manslaughter committed by Clark Gable and John Huston; and how he conducted a love/hate relationship with boy genius Irving Thalberg, who betrayed him repeatedly.And there is the personal side: his clashes with two headstrong daughters: Irene (Mrs. David O. Selznick), who became a successful theatrical producer, and Edith (Mrs. William Goetz), one of Hollywood's legendary hostesses, and his own romantic involvements.With the first-time cooperation of Mayer's family and surviving associates, Higham weaves a gripping account of the public successes and private agonies of the man who personified the Hollywood mogul. Read Less