Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. (MGM) is an American media company involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was created in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, and also by the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer Pictures. Their centre of operation is based in Beverly Hills, California. The company is an independent, privately-held motion picture, television, home video, and theatrical production and distribution company. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc owns the world's largest library of modern films, comprising approximately 4,000 titles, and over 10,500 episodes of television programming. Its film library has received over 200 Academy Awards, one of the largest award-winning collections in the world, and includes numerous successful film franchises, including James Bond, Pink Panther and Rocky.

The studio's official motto, "Ars Gratia Artis", is a Latin phrase meaning "Art for art's sake", it was chosen by Howard Dietz, the studio's chief publicist. The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has its legendary roaring lion logo was formed in April 1924, by theatre aristocrat  Marcus Lowe, who orchestrated the allies of Metro Pictures Corp., Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Productions. With visionary Louis B. Mayer and production maker Irving Thalberg, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was a powerhouse of prolific artistry and filmmaking expertise that the studio famously said attracted "more stars than are in the heavens." During the years 1924 to 1954, the Culver City-based studio dominated the movie business, creating a Best Picture nominee every year for two straight decades. One of the more memorable years at the Academy Awards was in 1939 when MGM's Gone with the Wind and MGM's The Wizard of Oz were both nominated for Best Picture. Gone with the Wind took home Best Picture that year, along with 8 other Oscars. The Wizard of Oz secured two Oscars. Hattie McDaniel Won for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and became the first African American to be nominated for and win an Oscar.

United Artists was established on July 15, 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith and was best known as "the company built by the stars." The budding company quickly left an indelible mark on Hollywood, changing the motion-picture business by promising creative freedom to actors and filmmakers, while offering the filmmakers a share of the film's profits. United Artists later joined the MGM family in 1981, and thrived as member of the "lion's pride."

 

Today MGM boasts an impressive library comprised of titles from the United Artists, Orion Pictures, Goldwyn Entertainment and PolyGram Filmed Entertainment libraries. With approximately 4,100 films and over 10,400 hours of television programming, the library also includes the Rocky and Pink Panther franchises and the celebrated James Bond franchise, the longest running and most profitable series in film history.

From the end of the silent film era through World War II, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the dominant motion picture studio in Hollywood. It responded slowly to the changing legal, economic, and demographic nature of the motion picture industry during the 1950s and 1960s, and although at times its films did well at the box office the studio lost significant amounts of money throughout the 1960s. Edgar Bronfman, Sr. purchased a controlling interest in MGM in 1966 and in 1967 Time Inc. became the company's second-largest shareholder. In 1969, Kirk Kerkorian purchased 40 percent of MGM from Bronfman and Time, Inc. slashed staff and production costs, forced the studio to produce low-budget fare, and then shut down theatrical distribution in 1973. The studio continued to produce five to six films a year that were released through other studios, mostly United Artists. MGM proceeded to get back into theatrical distribution in 1981 with its purchase of United Artists, as UA's parent company Transamerica Corporation decided to let go of the studio following the failure of Heaven's Gate.

In 1943 MGM ramped up internal production as well as keeping production going at UA which included the lucrative James Bond film franchise. It also incurred significant amounts of debt in order to increase production. The studio took on additional debt as a series of owners took charge in the 1980s and early 1990s. On August 5, 1986, Ted Turner's Turner Broadcasting System purchased MGM in a cash-stock deal for $1.5 billion. Turner immediately sold MGM's United Artists subsidiary back to Kerkorian. But unable to find financing for the rest of the deal, Turner sold MGM's film and distribution business back to Kerkorian just 74 days after the original purchase was made. The MGM lot and lab facilities were sold to Lorimar-Telepictures. Turner kept the pre-1986 library of MGM films, along with pre-1950 Warner Bros. and RKO Pictures films which MGM had previously purchased. The series of deals left MGM even more heavily in debt. In 1989, Australian-based Qintex attempted to buy MGM from Kerkorian, but the deal collapsed.MGM was bought by Pathé Communications led by Italian publishing aristocrat Giancarlo Parretti in 1990, but Parretti lost control of Pathé and failed on the loans used to purchase the studio. The French banking conglomerate Crédit Lyonnais, the studio's major creditor, then took control of MGM. Even more deeply in debt, MGM was purchased by Australia's Seven Networks in 1996.

In 1997 MGM purchased Metromedia's film subsidiaries such as the Orion Pictures, the Samuel Goldwyn Company, and the Motion Picture Corporation of America for $573 million and Kerkorian bought out Seven Network in 1998. MGM used debt to acquire PolyGram Filmed Entertainment's 1,300-title library from Seagram in 1999 for $250 million, and obtained the broadcast rights to more than 800 of its films previously licensed to Turner Broadcasting. MGM then purchased 20 percent of Cablevision Systems for $825 million in 2001. MGM attempted to take over Universal Studios in 2003 but failed, and was forced to sell several of its cable channel investments taking a $75 million loss on the deal.

The debt load from these business deals negatively affected MGM's ability to survive as an independent motion picture studio. After a three-way bidding war which involved Time Warner successor to Time, Inc. and current parent of Turner Broadcasting and General Electric, MGM was acquired on September 23, 2004, by a partnership led by Sony Corporation of America, Comcast, Texas Pacific Group, Providence Equity Partners, and other investors.

Marcus Loew which was the founder of the MGM who provided a steady supply of films for his large theatre chain, died in 1927, and control of Loew's passed to Nicholas Schenck. In 1929, William Fox of Fox Film Corporation bought the Loew family's holdings with Schenck's assent. However after Fox recovered from his accident in the summer, as Mayer and Thalberg disagreed with the decision, the stock market crash in the fall of 1929 had nearly wiped Fox out and ended any chance of the Loew's merger going through. Schenck and Mayer had never gotten along and the abortive Fox merger increased the hate between the two men.

MGM was one of the first studios to experiment with filming in Technicolor. Using the two-colour Technicolor process then available, MGM filmed portions of The Uninvited Guest in 1923, The Big Parade in 1925, and Ben–Hur in 1925, among others, in the process. In 1928, MGM released The Viking, the first complete Technicolor feature with sound including a synchronized score and sound effects but no spoken dialogue. MGM's first all-colour, "all-talking" sound feature with dialogue was the 1930 musical The Rogue Song. In 1934 MGM included a sequence made in Technicolor's superior new three-color process, a musical number in the otherwise black-and-white The Cat and the Fiddle. The studio then produced a number of three-color short subjects including 1935's musical La Fiesta de Santa Barbara; however MGM waited until 1938 to film a complete feature in the process, Sweethearts with Jeanette MacDonald. 

From then on, MGM regularly produced several films a year in Technicolor, The Wizard of Oz and Northwest Passage being two of the most notable. MGM also released the enormously successful Technicolor film Gone with the Wind, starring Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara and Clark Gable as Rhett Butler. Although Gone with the Wind was produced by Selznick International Pictures, it was released by MGM as part of a deal for producer David O. Selznick to obtain the services of Clark Gable. However, the film, being a Selznick International production, begins with that company's logo, rather than the usual MGM roaring lion.

I have seen Gone with the Wind several times, as it was one of my favourite films when I was younger. The film is beautifully done with the editing techniques so perfect, making the film look professional. Also the way in which the film was filmed affected in a big term the film as the colours were very prominent, making the atmosphere very believable and live. 

In addition to a large short subjects program of its own, MGM also released the shorts and features produced by Hal Roach Studios, including comedy shorts starring Laurel and Hardy, Our Gang, and Charley Chase. MGM's distribution deal with Roach lasted from 1927 to 1938, and MGM benefited in particular from the success of the popular Laurel and Hardy films. In 1938, MGM purchased the rights to Our Gang and moved the production in-house, continuing production of the successful series of children's comedies until 1944. From 1929 to 1931, MGM produced a series of comedy shorts called All Barkie Dogville Comedies, in which trained dogs were dressed up to parody contemporary films and were voiced by actors. One of the shorts, The Dogway Melody in 1930, spoofed MGM's hit 1929 musical The Broadway Melody.

MGM produced fifty pictures a year. Loew's theatres were mostly located in New York and the North-eastern United States although Gone with the Wind had its world premiere at the Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, so MGM made films that were sophisticated and polished to appeal to an urban audience. As the Great Depression deepened, MGM never lost money, although it did have an occasional disaster like Parnell 1937, Clark Gable's biggest flop. It was the only Hollywood studio that continued to pay dividends during the 1930s.

MGM stars dominated the box office in the '30s, and the studio was credited for inventing the Hollywood star system as well. MGM contracted with The American Musical Academy of Arts Association to handle all of their press and artist development. The AMAAA's main function was to develop the budding stars and to make them appealing to the public. Garbo started losing her American audience after Queen Christina (1933), as a contract dispute kept her out of Hollywood for two years, and other MGM sex symbol actress Jean Harlow now had a big break and became one of MGM's most admired stars as well; despite Jean Harlow's gain, Garbo still was a big star for MGM after she returned from her absence. Shearer was still a top money maker despite screen appearances becoming scarce, and Joan Crawford continued her box office power up until 1937. MGM would also receive a boost through the man who would become the "King of Hollywood", Clark Gable; Gable's career took off to new heights after he won an Oscar for the 1934 Columbia film It Happened One Night. By 1943, all three had left the studio. Joan Crawford moved to Warner Bros. where her career took a dramatic upturn for the better; Shearer and Garbo never made another film after leaving MGM.

After 1940, production was cut from fifty pictures a year to a more manageable twenty-five features per year. It was during this time that MGM released very successful musicals with players such as Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and Frank Sinatra, to name just a few. As audiences drifted away after the war, MGM found it difficult to attract them. While other studios backed away from the popular musicals of the war years, MGM increased its output to as many as five or six each year, roughly one-quarter of its annual output. Such pictures were expensive to produce, requiring a full staff of songwriters, arrangers, musicians, dancers, and technical support, and releasing so many each year affected the company's finances. by the late 40s the finance decreased leaving Mayer to find a saviour.

Schary managed to keep the studio running after Mayer left, much as it had through the early 1950s though his sensibilities for hard-edged, message movies would never bear much fruit. He would be gone by 1956. The only bright spot was the MGM musicals. Under the producer Arthur Freed, MGM produced some well-regarded musicals that would be later acknowledged as classics, among them An American in Paris, Singing in the Rain and The Band Wagon. However, it was a losing fight, as the mass audience preferred to stay home and watch television. An American in Paris and Singing in the Rain, as well as the 1951 Technicolor Show Boat all begun while Mayer was still in power, were large box office successes. In 1954, Loews gave up control of MGM after the government's restraint-of-trade action, United States v. Paramount Pictures. 

In animation, MGM purchased the rights in 1930 to distribute a series of cartoons that starred a character named Flip the Frog, produced by Ub Iwerks. The first cartoon in this series entitled Fiddlesticks was the first sound cartoon to be produced in two-colour Technicolor. In 1933, Ub Iwerks cancelled the unsuccessful Flip the Frog series and MGM began to distribute its second series of cartoons, about a character named Willie Whopper. Several other cartoon contracts followed, as their biggest cartoon stars would come in the form of the cat-and-mouse duo Tom and Jerry, created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera in 1940. The Tom and Jerry cartoons won seven Academy Awards between 1943 and 1953.

 

The year 1957 marked the end of MGM's animation department, as the studio determined it could generate the same amount of revenue by composing older cartoons as it could by producing and releasing new ones. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, by then the heads of the MGM cartoon studio, took most of their unit and made their own company, Hanna-Barbera Productions, a successful producer of television animation.

In 1956, MGM sold the television rights for The Wizard of Oz to CBS and the beginning of 1959, and lasting until 1991, telecasts of The Wizard of Oz became an annual tradition, drawing huge audiences in homes all over the U.S. and earning additional profits for the studio. Today The Wizard of Oz is regularly shown on the Turner-owned channels, no longer just once a year.

In 1959, MGM enjoyed what is quite likely their greatest financial success of later years, with the release of its nearly four-hour Technicolor epic Ben–Hur, a remake of their 1925 silent film hit, based on the novel by General Lew Wallace. The film was critically acclaimed and won 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, a record that held until Titanic matched it in 1997 and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2003.

In 1961, MGM resumed the release of new Tom and Jerry shorts, and production moved to Rembrandt Films in Czechoslovakia, under the supervision of Gene Deitch. Deitch's Tom and Jerry cartoons are very different in style to the original Hanna and Barbera style of animation. In 1963, the production of Tom and Jerry returned to Hollywood under Chuck Jones and his Sib Tower 12 Productions studio. Tom and Jerry folded in 1967, and the animation department continued with television specials and one feature film, The Phantom Tollbooth.

As MGM sank in the 70s along with several other mainline studios, a series of studio heads came and went, along with a succession of combining managers, all hoping to bring back the studio's glory days.

Through the 1970s studio output slowed considerably—Aubrey preferred four or five medium-budget pictures each year, along with a smattering of low-budget fare. With the decline in output, Kerkorian closed MGM's sales and distribution offices in 1973 and outsourced those functions to United Artists. Kerkorian now distanced himself from the operations of the studio, focusing on his casino properties. Another portion of the back lot was sold in 1974. The MGM Recording Studios were sold in 1975.

In 1979, Kerkorian declared that MGM was now primarily a hotel company. The company hit a symbolic low point in 1980 when David Begelman, earlier let go by Columbia following the discovery of his acts of forgery was installed as MGM's President and CEO. Kerkorian did, however, commit to increased production and an expanded film library when he bought United Artists in 1981.

In 1986, Ted Turner bought MGM/UA; changing the name to "MGM Entertainment Co.".But due to concerns in the financial community over the debt-load of his companies, on October 17, 1986 he was forced to sell MGM back to Kerkorian for approximately $780 million USD, $480 million for United Artists and $300 million for the MGM logo after only 74 days of ownership. Turner fought for this company, getting the MGM back and in July 1988, Kerkorian announced plans to split MGM and UA into separate studios. Under this deal, Kerkorian, which owned 82% of MGM/UA Communications, would have sold 25% of MGM to Barris Industries.

In 1990, the Italian financier, Giancarlo Parretti, announced that he was about to buy MGM/UA. Although the French government had scuttled Parretti's bid to buy Pathé due to concerns about his character, background and past dealings, Parretti got backing from Crédit Lyonnais and bought MGM/UA from Kirk Kerkorian. He then merged it with his Pathé Communications Group to form MGM–Pathé Communications Co. However the same year Parretti's ownership dissolved and Crédit Lyonnais took control of MGM, and converted its name back to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The bank fired Ladd and replaced him with former Paramount executive Frank Mancuso, Sr. and former Warner Bros. executive John Calley. Because of the way they had acquired control of the company, Crédit Lyonnais soon put the studio up for sale, with the highest bidder being Kirk Kerkorian. Now the owner of MGM for the third time, and also got United Artists back. He convince Wall Street that a revived MGM was worthy of a place on the stock market.

On April 11, 1997, MGM bought Metromedia's film subsidiaries Orion Pictures, The Samuel Goldwyn Company, and the Motion Picture Corporation of America for US$573 million, substantially enlarging its library of films and television series and acquiring additional production capacity. The deal closed in July of that year. This catalogue, along with the James Bond franchise, was considered to be MGM's primary asset. In the same year, MGM's long-running cable television series, Stargate SG-1, first aired.

In 2000, MGM changed the way it distributed its products internationally. MGM had until that time to distribute its films internationally through United International Pictures (UIP): a joint venture of MGM, Universal Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures and Paramount Pictures. UIP was accused by the European Union of being an illegal cartel, and effective November 2000 MGM severed its ties with UIP and distributed films internationally through 20th Century Fox.

Many of MGM's competitors started to make bids to purchase the studio, beginning with Time Warner. After a short period of negotiation with MGM, Time Warner was unsuccessful. The leading bidder proved to be Sony Corporation of America. Sony's primary goal was to ensure Blu-ray Disc support at MGM; cost synergies with Sony Pictures Entertainment were secondary. Time Warner made a counter-bid, but on September 13, 2004, Sony increased its bid of US$11.25/share roughly $4.7 billion to $12/share $5 billion, and Time Warner subsequently withdrew its bid of $11/share $4.5 billion. MGM and Sony agreed on a purchase price of nearly $5 billion, of which about $2 billion was to pay off MGM debt. From 2005–2006, the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group has domestically distributed films by MGM and UA.

On May 31, 2006 MGM announced that it would transfer its home video output from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment to 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. MGM also announced plans to restructure its worldwide television distribution operation. In addition MGM signed a deal with New Line Television in which MGM would handle New Line's U.S. film and series television syndication packages. On November 2, 2006, producer/actor Tom Cruise and his production partner, Paula Wagner, signed an agreement with MGM to run United Artists. Wagner will serve as United Artists' chief executive. Cruise will produce and star in films for UA and MGM will distribute the movies.

In April 2007, it was announced that MGM movies would be able to be downloaded through Apple's iTunes service, with MGM bringing an estimated 100 of its existing movies to iTunes service, the California-based computer company revealed. In October, the company launched MGM HD on DirecTV, offering a library of movies formatted in Hi Def. Also in 2007, MGM sold its distribution rights for countries outside of the United States to 20th Century Fox. MGM teamed up with Weigel Broadcasting to launch a new channel titled This TV on November 1, 2008. On August 12, 2008, MGM teamed up with Comcast to launch a new video-on-demand network titled Impact. On November 10, 2008, MGM announced that it will release full length films on YouTube.

As of mid-2009, MGM had US$3.7 billion in debt, and interest payments alone totalled $250 million a year. MGM earns approximately $500 million a year on income from its extensive film and television library, but the economic recession is reported to have reduced this income substantially. MGM had to repay a US$250 million line of credit in April 2010, a US$1 billion loan in June 2011, and its remaining US$2.7 billion in loans in 2012. In May 2009, MGM's auditor gave the company a clean bill of health, concluding it was still on track to meet its debt obligations. MGM also announced that its creditors agreed to forbearance on the company's debt payments originally until January 31, 2010, but the forbearance was extended to March 31, 2010.

As of early December 2009, 16 companies had expressed interest in purchasing all or parts of MGM, although only two had actually negotiated a confidentiality agreement that would allow them to examine MGM's financial statements.

MGM set the Friday of January 15, 2010 as the deadline to receive bids from the companies interested in acquiring the studio. However, fewer bids than expected were made. By January 23, bids from Relativity Media about $1.6 billion and Reliance Entertainment about $1.8 billion were received as well as Time Warner and DreamWorks. Six days later, MGM extended its deadline to March 31, and by the next day, News Corporation suggested that the company should offer MGM some cash to keep the company running. Later, other bidders began bidding on Miramax and Liberty Media's Overture Films as well, which their respective owners have put up for bidding. MGM set March 19 as a deadline to receive bids from companies interested in buying the studio, including Time Warner and Lionsgate, although Time Warner was considered the most likely to buy the studio since its Warner Bros. catalogue already included all the pre-1986 MGM titles originally bought by Ted Turner.

On December 2, 2010, the Federal Bankruptcy Court approved MGM's Chapter 11 reorganization plan. On December 17, 2010, the company laid off about 50 staff members. MGM emerged from bankruptcy on December 20, 2010, at which time the executives of Spyglass Entertainment, Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum, became co-Chairs of the holding company of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The MGM studios have moved to Beverly Drive, a 13,400 m2 facility. The street leading to the building's garage was renamed MGM Drive and a large MGM logo, illuminated at night, crowned the top of the building. As of December 2010, MGM rented 200,000-square-foot (19,000 m2) of space in the MGM Tower at a cost of almost $5 per square foot per month.

On February 2, 2011, MGM named Jonathan Glickman to be the film president of MGM. Six days later, MGM was finalizing a distribution deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment to handle distribution of its 4,000 films and DVDs worldwide and on digital platforms, including the two upcoming Bond films: Skyfall and Bond 24. There were four studios who were bidding on the Bond distribution rights: Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and Columbia Pictures. Paramount was the first studio who dropped out of the Bond bidding. 

MGM is finally moving forward with several upcoming projects, including remakes of RoboCop and Poltergeist, and released their first post-bankruptcy film Zookeeper that was co-distributed by Columbia Pictures on July 8, 2011. MGM will handle international television distribution rights for the new films as well as its library of existing titles.

Currently, the Turner Entertainment Co. unit of Time Warner owns the rights to nearly all of the pre-May 1986 MGM film and television library, with Warner Bros. handling distribution. Turner brought the MGM library during the brief ownership of the company in 1986. Through its purchases of many different companies and film and television libraries, MGM has greatly enhanced its film and TV holdings. The Material owned by MGM nearly its own entire film and television library from May 23, 1986 onward starting with the film Poltergeist II: The Other Side.

From all this research I can conclude that MGM was the busiest from all the other labels, as it was in and out of bankrupts. It has a busy part with people buying and selling this studio label which gives a bad reputation as not being trustworthy however through this brakeage they have made history through the animations such as the all known Tom and Jerry and also through films such as the respectful and the perfect enemy and friend James Bond. I really like this record label as it has a wide range of films from the year 1919 when it was created and now its reputation is back because of the successful films they have created.