Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon
Lucy Christiana, Lady Duff-Gordon was a leading British fashion designer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who worked under the professional name Lucile. The first British-based designer to achieve international acclaim, Lucy Duff-Gordon was a acknowledged innovator in couture styles as well as in fashion industry public relations. In addition to originating the "mannequin parade", a precursor to the modern fashion show, training the first professional models, she launched liberating slit skirts and low necklines, popularized less restrictive corsets, promoted alluring and pared-down lingerie. Opening branches of her London house, Lucile Ltd, in Chicago, New York City, Paris, her business became the first global couture brand, dressing a trend-setting clientele of royalty and stage and film personalities. Duff-Gordon is remembered as a survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912, as the losing party in the precedent-setting 1917 contract law case of Wood v. Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, in which Judge Benjamin N. Cardozo wrote the opinion for New York's highest court, the New York Court of Appeals, upholding a contract between Duff-Gordon and her advertising agent that assigned the agent the sole right to market her name.
It was the first case of its kind, clothes labeled and sold at a lowered cost in a cheaper market under an expensive "brand name". The daughter of civil engineer Douglas Sutherland and his Anglo-French-Canadian wife Elinor Saunders, Lucy Christiana Sutherland was born in London and raised in Guelph, Canada, after her father's death from typhoid fever; when her mother remarried in 1871 to the bachelor David Kennedy, Lucy moved with them and her sister, the future novelist Elinor Glyn, to Saint Helier on the Isle of Jersey. Lucy acquired her love of fashion through dressing her collection of dolls, by studying gowns worn by women in family paintings, by making clothes for herself and Elinor. Returning to Jersey, after a visit to relatives in England in 1875, Lucy and Elinor survived the wreck of their ship when it ran aground in a gale. In 1884, Lucy married to James Stuart Wallace, with whom she had a child, Esme. Wallace was an alcoholic and unfaithful, Lucy sought consolation in love affairs, including a long relationship with the famous surgeon Sir Morell Mackenzie.
The Wallaces separated circa 1890, Lucy started divorce proceedings in 1893. In 1900, Lucy Sutherland Wallace married a Scottish baronet and sportsman Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon. In order to support herself and her daughter after the end of her first marriage, Lucy Duff-Gordon began working as a dressmaker from home. In 1893, she opened Maison Lucile at 24 Old Burlington St. in the heart of the fashionable West End of London, having worked for a year from her mother's flat at 25 Davies Street. In 1897, Lucy Duff-Gordon opened a larger shop at 17 Hanover Square, before a further move to 14 George Street, Oxford. In 1903, the business was incorporated as "Lucile Ltd" and the following year moved to 23 Hanover Square, where it operated for the next 20 years. Duff Gordon was bankrupted after she revealed in the American press that she was not designing much of the clothing, attributed to her name, she spent her years selling imported clothing and smaller collections in a succession of unsuccessful small'boutiques'.
Lucile Ltd served a wealthy clientele including aristocracy and theatre stars. The business expanded, with salons opening in New York City in 1910, Paris in 1911, Chicago in 1915, making it the first leading couture house with full-scale branches in three countries. Lucile was most famous for its lingerie, tea gowns, evening wear, its luxuriously layered and draped garments in soft fabrics of blended pastel colors accentuated with sprays of hand-made silk flowers, became its hallmark. However, Lucile offered simple, smart tailored suits and daywear; the dress illustrated at right typifies the classically draped style found in Lucile designs. Lucy Duff-Gordon designed it in Paris, for Lucile Ltd's spring 1913 collection, specially adapted it for London socialite Heather Firbank and other well-known clients, including actress Kitty Gordon and dancer Lydia Kyasht of the Ballets Russes; the example illustrated is preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Lucy Duff-Gordon is widely credited with training the first professional fashion models as well as staging the first runway or "catwalk" style shows.
These affairs were theatrically inspired, invitation-only, tea-time presentations, complete with a stage, mood-setting lighting, music from a string band, souvenir gifts, programmes. Another innovation in the presentation of her collections was what she called her "emotional gowns"; these dresses were given descriptive names, influenced by literature, popular culture and her interest in the psychology and personality of her clients. Some well-known clients, whose clothing influenced many when it appeared in early films, on stage, in the press, included: Irene Castle, Lily Elsie, Gertie Millar, Gaby Deslys, Billie Burke, Mary Pickford. Lucile costumed numerous theatrical productions, including the London première of Franz Lehár's operetta The Merry Widow, the Ziegfeld Follies revues on Broadway, the D. W. Griffith silent movie Way Down East. Lucile creations were frequently featured in Pathé and Gaumont newsreels of the 1910s and 20s, Lucy Duff-Gordon appeared in her own week
Wallace Beery
Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American film actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill opposite Marie Dressler, as Long John Silver in Treasure Island, as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa!, his titular role in The Champ, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Beery appeared in some 250 films during a 36-year career, his contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer stipulated in 1932 that he would be paid $1 more than any other contract player at the studio. This made Beery the highest-paid actor in the world, he was uncle of actor Noah Beery Jr.. For his contributions to the film industry, Beery was posthumously inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion pictures star in 1960, his star is located at 7001 Hollywood Boulevard. Beery was born the youngest of three boys in 1885 in Clay County, near Smithville; the Beery family left the farm in the 1890s and moved to nearby Kansas City, where the father was a police officer. Wallace Beery attended the Chase School in Kansas City and took piano lessons as well, but showed little love for academic matters.
He ran away from home twice, the first time returning after a short time, quitting school and working in the Kansas City train yards as an engine wiper. Beery ran away from home a second time at age 16, joined the Ringling Brothers Circus as an assistant elephant trainer, he left two years after being clawed by a leopard. Wallace Beery joined his older brother Noah in New York City in 1904, finding work in comic opera as a baritone and began to appear on Broadway as well as summer stock theatre, he appeared in The Belle of the West in 1905. His most notable early role came in 1907. In 1913, he moved to Chicago to work for Essanay Studios, his first movie was a comedy short, His Athletic Wife. Beery was cast as Sweedie, a Swedish maid character he played in drag in a series of short comedy films from 1914-16. Sweedie Learns to Swim co-starred Ben Turpin. Sweedie Goes to College starred Gloria Swanson. Other Beery films from this period included In and Out, The Ups and Downs, Cheering a Husband, Madame Double X, Ain't It the Truth, Two Hearts That Beat as Ten, The Fable of the Roistering Blades.
The Slim Princess, with Francis X. Bushman, was a feature. Beery did The Broken A Dash of Courage, both with Swanson. Beery was a German soldier in The Little American with Mary Pickford, directed by Cecil B. De Mille, he did some comedies for Mack Sennett, Maggie's First False Step and Teddy at the Throttle, but he would leave that genre and specialize in portrayals of villains prior to becoming a major leading man during the sound era. In 1917 Beery portrayed Pancho Villa in Patria at a time. Beery was a villainous German in The Unpardonable Sin with Blanche Sweet. For Paramount he did The Love Burglar with Wallace Reid. Beery was the villain in five major releases in 1920: 813. Beery continued his villainy cycle that year with The Last of the Mohicans. Beery had a supporting part in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with Rudolph Valentino, he was a villainous Tong leader in A Tale of Two Worlds and was the bad guy again in Sleeping Acres, Wild Honey, I Am the Law, which featured his brother Noah Beery Sr..
Beery had a large then-rare heroic part as King Richard I in Robin Hood, starring Douglas Fairbanks in the titular role. The movie was a huge success and subsequently spawned a sequel the following year starring Beery in the title role. Beery had an important unbilled cameo as "the Ape-Man" in A Blind Bargain starring Lon Chaney Sr. and a supporting role in The Flame of Life. He played King Philip IV of Spain in The Spanish Dancer with Pola Negri. Beery starred in an action melodrama, Stormswept for FBO Films alongside his elder brother, Noah Beery Sr.. The tagline on the movie's posters was "Wallace and Noah Beery - The Two Greatest Character Actors on the American Screen." Beery played his third royal, the Duc de Tours, in Ashes of Vengeance with Norma Talmadge did Drifting with Priscilla Dean for director Browning. Beery had the titular role in Bavu, about the Russian Revolution, he co-starred with Buster Keaton in the comedy Three Ages, the first feature Keaton wrote, produced and starred in.
Beery was a villain in The Eternal Struggle, a Mountie drama, produced by Louis B. Mayer, who would become crucial to Beery's career, he was reunited with Dean and Browning in White Tiger played the title role in the aforementioned Richard the Lion-Hearted, a sequel to Robin Hood based on Sir Walter Scott's The Talisman. Beery was in The Drums of Jeopardy and had a support role in The Sea Hawk for director Frank Lloyd, The Signal Tower. Beery signed a contract with Paramount Pictures, he had a support role in Adv
Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.
Florenz Edward Ziegfeld Jr. popularly known as Flo Ziegfeld, was an American Broadway impresario, notable for his series of theatrical revues, the Ziegfeld Follies, inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris. He produced the musical Show Boat, he was known as the "glorifier of the American girl". Ziegfeld is a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame. Florenz Edward Ziegfeld Jr. was born on March 1867, in Chicago, Illinois. His mother, born in Belgium, was the grandniece of General Count Étienne Maurice Gérard, his father, Florenz Ziegfeld Sr. was a German immigrant whose father was the mayor of Jever in Friesland. Ziegfeld was baptized in his mother's Roman Catholic church, his father was Lutheran. As a child Ziegfeld witnessed first-hand the Chicago fire of 1871, his father ran the Chicago Musical College and opened a nightclub, the Trocadero, to obtain business from the 1893 World's Fair. To help his father's nightclub succeed, Ziegfeld managed the strongman Eugen Sandow. During a trip to Europe, Ziegfeld came across a young Polish-French singer by the name of Anna Held.
His promotion of Anna Held in America brought about her meteoric rise to national fame. It was Held, her success in a series of his Broadway shows A Parisian Model, was a major reason for his starting a series of lavish revues in 1907. Much of Held's popularity was due to Ziegfeld's creation of publicity stunts and rumors fed to the American press. Ziegfeld's stage spectaculars, known as the Ziegfeld Follies, began with Follies of 1907, which opened on July 7, 1907, were produced annually until 1931; these extravaganzas, with elaborate costumes and sets, featured beauties chosen by Ziegfeld in production numbers choreographed to the works of prominent composers such as Irving Berlin, George Gershwin and Jerome Kern. The Ziegfeld Follies featured the famous Ziegfeld Girls, female chorus dancers who wore elaborate costumes and performed in synchronization; the Follies featured many performers who, though well known from previous work in other theatrical genres, achieved unique financial success and publicity with Ziegfeld.
Included among these are Nora Bayes, Fanny Brice, Ruth Etting, W. C. Fields, Eddie Cantor, Marilyn Miller, Will Rogers, Bert Williams and Ann Pennington. Ziegfeld and Held commenced a common-law marriage in 1897, but she divorced him in 1913, according to her obituary in The New York Times dated August 13, 1918. Held served Ziegfeld with divorce papers on April 14, 1912, their divorce became final on January 9, 1913. Held had submitted testimony about Ziegfeld's relationship with another woman; the unnamed party in this romantic triangle was showgirl Lillian Lorraine, an entertainer of limited talent but charismatic stage presence and beauty whom Ziegfeld discovered in 1907 when she was a 15-year-old performer in a Shubert production. Ziegfeld spent years promoting her career, transforming her into one of the most popular attractions in his Follies and establishing her in an apartment two floors above the residence he shared with Held, he remained in love with Lorraine for the rest of his life.
However and actress Billie Burke were married April 11, 1914, after meeting at a party on New Year's Eve. They had Patricia Ziegfeld Stephenson; the family lived on his estate in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, in Palm Beach, Florida. At a cost of $2.5 million, Ziegfeld built the 1600-seat Ziegfeld Theatre on the west side of Sixth Avenue between 54th and 55th Streets. Designed by Joseph Urban and Thomas W. Lamb, the auditorium was egg-shaped, with the stage at the narrow end. A huge medieval-style mural, The Joy of Life, covered ceiling. To finance the construction, Ziegfeld borrowed from William Randolph Hearst, who took control of the theater after Ziegfeld's death; the Ziegfeld Theatre opened in February 1927 with Ziegfeld's production of Rio Rita, which ran for nearly 500 performances. This was followed by a great hit with a run of 572 performances; this musical, which concerned racial discrimination in the south during the late nineteenth century, was a collaboration between Ziegfeld, composer Jerome Kern and designer Joseph Urban.
The musical has been revived four times on Broadway. The score features several classics such as "Ol' Man River" and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man". Ziegfeld lost much of his money in the stock market crash. In May 1932 he staged a revival of Show Boat that ran by Depression standards; that same year, he brought his Follies stars to CBS Radio with The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air. Ziegfeld died in Hollywood, California on July 22, 1932, from pleurisy, related to a previous lung infection, he had been in Los Angeles only a few days after moving from a New Mexico sanitarium. His death left Burke with substantial debts, he and Burke are interred in Kensico Cemetery in New York. Ziegfeld was elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Ziegfeld appears in a sound prologue to the 1929 film, Show Boat—a part-talkie based on Edna Ferber's 1926 novel, not the popular stage adaptation, still playing on Broadway when the film was released. Universal Pictures made Show Boat as a silent, obtained the rights to the popular Broadway score after the film was shot.
The 18-minute prologue is introduced by Ziegfeld and producer Carl Laemmle, features excerpts from the stage production performed by cast members Jules Bledsoe, Tess Gardella, Helen Morgan and the Broadway chorus. Two subsequent adaptations of Show Boat, in 1936 and 1951, were based on the stage musical. Technicolor screen versions of
Gloria's Romance
Gloria's Romance was a 1916 silent film serial starring Billie Burke. Serial films called chapter plays, were shorter films that were run before the main feature film, each of, part of a longer story, ended in a cliffhanger, thus encouraging the audience to return every week; the film was Burke's second outing as a film actress, one of the rare occasions in which a Broadway performer of her magnitude starred in a chapter play. In its original form, this serial comprised 20 chapters and was 40 reels long, several chapters longer than most of the time. Gloria's Romance marked the debut of actor Richard Barthelmess, it was produced by George Kleine. Walter Edwin and Colin Campbell served as principal directors, it is a lost film. Billie Burke as Gloria Stafford Henry Kolker as Dr. Stephen Royce David Powell as Richard Freneau, a Broker William Roselle as David Stafford, Gloria's Brother Frank Belcher as Frank Lulry, Freneau's Partner William T. Carleton as Pierpont Stafford Jule Power as Lois Freeman, Judge Freeman's Daughter Henry Weaver as Judge Freeman Frank McGlynn, Sr. as Gideon Trask Helen Hart as Nell Trask Maxfield Moree as Stass Casimir Maurice Steuart as Rapley Holmes as Chooey McFadden Adelaide Hastings as Gloria's Governess Ralph Bunker Richard Barthelmess - extra An adventurous young girl in Florida gets lost in the Everglades.
There she finds excitement, as well as the rivalry of two men in love with her. Lost in the Everglades Caught by the Seminoles A Perilous Love The Social Vortex The Gathering Storm Hidden Fires The Harvest of Sin The Mesh of Mystery The Shadow of Scandal Tangled Threads The Fugitive Witness Her Fighting Spirit The Midnight Riot The Floating Trap The Murderer at Bay A Modern Pirate The Tell-Tale Envelope The Bitter Truth Her Vow Fulfilled Love's Reward List of lost films Gloria's Romance at IMDB Gloria's Romance at SilentEra Gloria's Romance at AllMovie still of Billie Burke and David Powell poster of chapter "Lost in the Everglades" poster to chapter "The Shadow of Scandal" b/w newspaper Ad
Musical film
Musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs advance the plot or develop the film's characters, but in some cases, they serve as breaks in the storyline as elaborate "production numbers." The musical film was a natural development of the stage musical after the emergence of sound film technology. The biggest difference between film and stage musicals is the use of lavish background scenery and locations that would be impractical in a theater. Musical films characteristically contain elements reminiscent of theater. In a sense, the viewer becomes the diegetic audience, as the performer looks directly into the camera and performs to it; the 1930's through the early 1950's are considered to be the golden age of the musical film, when the genre's popularity was at its highest in the Western world. Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the earliest Disney animated feature film, was a musical which won an honorary Oscar for Walt Disney at the 11th Academy Awards.
Musical short films were made by Lee de Forest in 1923–24. Beginning in 1926, thousands of Vitaphone shorts were made, many featuring bands and dancers; the earliest feature-length films with synchronized sound had only a soundtrack of music and occasional sound effects that played while the actors portrayed their characters just as they did in silent films: without audible dialogue. The Jazz Singer, released in 1927 by Warner Brothers, was the first to include an audio track including non-dietetic music and diegetic music, but it had only a short sequence of spoken dialogue; this feature-length film was a musical, featuring Al Jolson singing "Dirty Hands, Dirty Face", "Toot, Tootsie", "Blue Skies", "My Mammy". Historian Scott Eyman wrote, "As the film ended and applause grew with the houselights, Sam Goldwyn's wife Frances looked around at the celebrities in the crowd, she saw'terror in all their faces', she said, as if they knew that'the game they had been playing for years was over'." Still, only isolated sequences featured "live" sound.
In 1928, Warner Brothers followed this up with another Jolson part-talkie, The Singing Fool, a blockbuster hit. Theaters scrambled to install the new sound equipment and to hire Broadway composers to write musicals for the screen; the first all-talking feature, Lights of New York, included a musical sequence in a night club. The enthusiasm of audiences was so great that in less than a year all the major studios were making sound pictures exclusively; the Broadway Melody had a show-biz plot about two sisters competing for a charming song-and-dance man. Advertised by MGM as the first "All-Talking, All-Singing, All-Dancing" feature film, it was a hit and won the Academy Award for Best Picture for 1929. There was a rush by the studios to hire talent from the stage to star in lavishly filmed versions of Broadway hits; the Love Parade starred Maurice Chevalier and newcomer Jeanette MacDonald, written by Broadway veteran Guy Bolton. Warner Brothers produced the first screen operetta, The Desert Song in 1929.
They photographed a large percentage of the film in Technicolor. This was followed by the first all-color, all-talking musical feature, entitled On with the Show; the most popular film of 1929 was the second all-color, all-talking feature, entitled Gold Diggers of Broadway. This film broke all box office records and remained the highest-grossing film produced until 1939; the market became flooded with musicals and operettas. The following all-color musicals were produced in 1929 and 1930 alone: The Show of Shows, The Vagabond King, Follow Thru, Bright Lights, Golden Dawn, Hold Everything, The Rogue Song, Song of the Flame, Song of the West, Sweet Kitty Bellairs, Under a Texas Moon, Bride of the Regiment, Whoopee!, King of Jazz, Viennese Nights, Kiss Me Again. In addition, there were scores of musical features released with color sequences. Hollywood released more than 100 musical films in 1930, but only 14 in 1931. By late 1930, audiences had been oversaturated with musicals and studios were forced to cut the music from films that were being released.
For example, Life of the Party was produced as an all-color, all-talking musical comedy. Before it was released, the songs were cut out; the same thing happened to Fifty Million Frenchmen and Manhattan Parade both of, filmed in Technicolor. Marlene Dietrich sang songs in her films, Rodgers and Hart wrote a few well-received films, but their popularity waned by 1932; the public had come to associate color with musicals and thus the decline in their popularity resulted in a decline in color productions. The taste in musicals revived again in 1933 when director Busby Berkeley began to enhance the traditional dance number with ideas drawn from the drill precision he had experienced as a soldier during World War I. In films such as 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933, Berkeley choreographed a number of films in his unique style. Berkeley's numbers begin on a stage but transcend the limitations of theatrical space: his ingenious routines, involving human bodies forming patterns like a kaleidoscope, could never fit onto a real stage and the intended perspective is viewing from straight above.
Musical stars such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were among the most popular and highly
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. is an American media company, involved in the production and distribution of feature films and television programs. One of the world's oldest film studios, MGM's headquarters are located at 245 North Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, California. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, Louis B. Mayer Pictures. In 1971, it was announced that MGM was to merge with 20th Century Fox, but the plan never came to fruition. Over the next 39 years, the studio was bought and sold at various points in its history until, on November 3, 2010, MGM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. MGM emerged from bankruptcy on December 20, 2010, at which time the executives of Spyglass Entertainment, Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum, became co-chairmen and co-CEOs of the holding company of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; as of 2017, MGM co-produces, co-finances, co-distributes a majority of its films with Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros.
MGM Resorts International, a Las Vegas-based hotel and casino company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "MGM", was created in 1973 as a division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The company was spun out in 1979, with the studio's owner Kirk Kerkorian maintaining a large share, but it ended all affiliation with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1986. MGM was the last studio to convert to sound pictures, but in spite of this fact, from the end of the silent film era through the late 1950s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the dominant motion picture studio in Hollywood. Always slow to respond to the changing legal and demographic nature of the motion picture industry during the 1950s and 1960s, although at times its films did well at the box office, the studio lost significant amounts of money throughout the 1960s. In 1966, MGM was sold to Canadian investor Edgar Bronfman Sr. whose son Edgar Jr. would buy Universal Studios. Three years an unprofitable MGM was bought by Kirk Kerkorian, who slashed staff and production costs, forced the studio to produce low-budget fare, shut down theatrical distribution in 1973.
The studio continued to produce five to six films a year that were released through other studios United Artists. Kerkorian did, commit to increased production and an expanded film library when he bought United Artists in 1981. MGM ramped up internal production, as well as keeping production going at UA, which included the lucrative James Bond film franchise, it incurred significant amounts of debt to increase production. The studio took on additional debt as a series of owners took charge in early 1990s. In 1986, Ted Turner bought MGM, but a few months sold the company back to Kerkorian to recoup massive debt, while keeping the library assets for himself; the series of deals left MGM more in debt. MGM was bought by Pathé Communications in 1990, but Parretti lost control of Pathé and defaulted on the loans used to purchase the studio; the French banking conglomerate Crédit Lyonnais, the studio's major creditor took control of MGM. More in debt, MGM was purchased by a joint venture between Kerkorian, producer Frank Mancuso, Australia's Seven Network in 1996.
The debt load from these and subsequent business deals negatively affected MGM's ability to survive as a separate motion picture studio. After a bidding war which included Time Warner and General Electric, MGM was acquired on September 23, 2004, by a partnership consisting of Sony Corporation of America, Texas Pacific Group, Providence Equity Partners, other investors. In 1924, movie theater magnate Marcus Loew had a problem, he had bought Metro Pictures Corporation in 1919 for a steady supply of films for his large Loew's Theatres chain. With Loew's lackluster assortment of Metro films, Loew purchased Goldwyn Pictures in 1924 to improve the quality. However, these purchases created a need for someone to oversee his new Hollywood operations, since longtime assistant Nicholas Schenck was needed in New York headquarters to oversee the 150 theaters. Approached by Louis B. Mayer, Loew addressed the situation by buying Louis B. Mayer Pictures on April 17, 1924. Mayer became head of the renamed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with Irving Thalberg as head of production.
MGM produced more than 100 feature films in its first two years. In 1925, MGM released the extravagant and successful Ben-Hur, taking a $4.7 million profit that year, its first full year. In 1925, MGM, Paramount Pictures and UFA formed a joint German distributor, Parufamet; when Samuel Goldwyn left he sued over the use of his name. Marcus Loew died in 1927, 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. Mayer and Thalberg disagreed with the decision. Mayer was active in the California Republican Party and used his political connections to persuade the Justice Department to delay final approval of the deal on antitrust grounds. During this time, in the summer of 1929, Fox was badly hurt in an automobile accident. By the time he recovered, 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, the abortive Fox merger increased the animosity between the two men.
From the outset, MGM tapped into the audience's need for sophistication. Having inherited few big names from their predecessor companies and Thalberg began at once
Glinda the Good Witch
Glinda known as the Good Witch of the South, is a fictional character created by L. Frank Baum in his Oz novels, she first appears in Baum's classic children's novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, is the most powerful sorceress in the Land of Oz, ruler of the Quadling Country south of the Emerald City, protector of Princess Ozma. Baum's 1900 children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz refers to Glinda as the Good Witch of the South. After the Wizard flies away in his balloon, the Cowardly Lion, Tin Woodman and Toto travel south to the land of the Quadlings to ask Glinda for her advice. In the well-known 1939 film version, Glinda is a composite character with the Witch of the North. Books call her a "Sorceress" rather than a "witch", though Baum's writings make clear that he did not view witches as inherently wicked or in league with the devil. In the books, Glinda is depicted as a beautiful young woman with long, rich red hair and blue eyes, wearing a pure white dress, she is much older than her appearance would suggest, but "knows how to keep young in spite of the many years she has lived" - a fact, established in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by the Soldier With Green Whiskers.
She has ruled the Quadling Country since she overthrew the Wicked Witch of the South during the period when Ozma's grandfather was king of Oz. Glinda plays the most active role in finding and restoring Princess Ozma, the rightful heir, to the throne of Oz, the search for whom takes place in the second book, The Marvelous Land of Oz, although Glinda had been searching for Ozma since the princess disappeared as a baby, it may well be that she did not overthrow the Wicked Witches of the East and West, despite being more powerful than they were, because she wanted all of Oz to be unified under its rightful ruler, first. After Ozma's ascent to the throne, Glinda continues to help the Princess of Oz shape the future of the Land of Oz as a whole, no longer confining her powers to guarding her Quadling Kingdom in the South alone. In addition to her vast knowledge of magic, Glinda employs various tools and instruments in her workshop; the Emerald City of Oz reveals that she owns a Great Book of Records that allows her to track everything that goes on in the world from the instant it happens.
Starting with The Road to Oz she trains the humbug Wizard in magic. Glinda lives in a palace near the southern border of the Quadling Country, attended by fifty beautiful maidens from each country of Oz, she employs a large army of female soldiers, with which she takes on General Jinjur's Army of Revolt, who had conquered the Emerald City in The Marvelous Land of Oz. Men are not prominent in Glinda's court. Glinda is protective of her subjects in the South, she creates walled, gated communities for the rabbits of Bunnybury and the paper dolls of Miss Cuttenclip, showing a personal interest in the concerns of not only the humanoid Quadlings, but the other inhabitants of her jurisdiction. In The Emerald City of Oz, when Ozma goes to consult Glinda about the security of her Ozian citizens, the Sorceress seals off all of Oz from the Great Outside World, making Oz invisible to the eyes of mortals flying overhead in airplanes and such. However, unlike Ozma, Glinda is willing to ignore strife and oppression in remote corners of Oz like Jinxland and the Skeezer territory as long as it does not threaten the Emerald City or innocent outsiders.
The readers are left with the sense that Glinda is experienced and seasoned to the point of knowing that there is not a magic cure for everything, that certain things cannot be changed or should not be changed for better or for worse. One of the more obscure facts about Glinda is that she created the Forbidden Fountain with the Waters of Oblivion, at the center of Oz, whose waters redeemed a former King of Oz, exceptionally cruel; this happened "many centuries ago" according to Ozma, it is this fountain that saves Oz from the invading Nome King and his allies in The Emerald City of Oz, by making them forget their nefarious intentions. Glinda made the Fountain at a point in Oz's history when the Land was unified under one of the members of the Royal Family of Oz, albeit a tyrannical king in this isolated incident, so she was able to intervene in a way that she could not when the country was divided between the Wizard and the Wicked Witches of the East and West et al. prior to Dorothy's arrival.
Most intriguingly, in The Emerald City of Oz, when the Nome King considers invading Oz, he is told by a minion, General Guph, that Glinda the Good's castle is located "at the north of the Emerald City," when it has been established that Glinda rules the South. Guph may have gotten his facts muddled, as none of the Nomes had been to Oz at that time, but it portends the depiction of Glinda as the Good Witch of the North rather than the South in the 1939 MGM film. General Guph tells the Nome King that Glinda "commands the spirits of the air,"; as mentioned above, he is not an expert on Oz, but this statement made by Guph once again foreshadows a much cinematic rendition of Glinda, in the film version of the Broadway musical The Wiz in which Glinda is responsible for the twister that brings Dorothy's house to Oz and sets all subsequent events into motion. Of all the characters in L. Frank Baum's Oz, Glinda is the most enigmatic. Despite being titled "Glinda the Good," she is not a one-dimensi
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