They don't make them like that anymore

I love reading about Hollywood and the old studio system. And nothing says Hollywood quite like MGM and Louis B. Mayer.

At its zenith, the MGM lot was 167 acres big (nearly the size of Governors Island), with 30 soundstages, phony jungles and a real zoo that housed the studio's other magnificent beast, the lion that roared before every film. There were gardens planted with French heather for Garbo and lilies for Shearer. There was a barbershop, a police force and a 24-hour commissary that served chicken soup (nine kosher hens for every three gallons of liquid). There was a house bookie, an opium den and, every Christmas Eve, remembered one employee, ''an orgy that would have made Caligula feel at home.'' The studio did not employ a staff abortionist, however. For that service, its stars and contract players would travel across town to 20th Century Fox.

That's from Manohla Dargis' review of Lion of Hollywood, Scott Eyman's biography of Louis B. Mayer, which she loves. But what I love reading are the quotes, by Mayer about the movies and by his contemporaries about Mayer. Here's a couple from Dargis:

''Put on a little weight and get more sex,'' Mayer once told Robert Young, in a bid to burnish the actor's appeal. He added, ''We have a whole stable of girls here.''

Of Esther Williams he said, ''Wet, she's a star. Dry, she ain't.''

And here are a few about Mayer that I dug up:

Louis B. Mayer once looked at me and said, 'You will never get the girl at the end'. So I worked on my acting.
--Van Heflin

He had the memory of an elephant and the hide of an elephant. The only difference is that elephants are vegetarians and Mayer's diet was his fellow man.
--Herman J. Mankiewicz

The only reason so many people attended his funeral was they wanted to make sure he was dead.
--Samuel Goldwyn

When Robert Taylor tried to hit him up for a raise, Mayer advised the young man to work hard, respect his elders, and in due time he'd get everything he deserved. He hugged Taylor, cried a little and walked him to the door. Asked if he got his raise, the now tearful Taylor is said to have answered, "No, but I found a father."

And then there's Mayer himself:

Don't make these pictures any better. Just keep them the way they are.
--LBM on the Andy Hardy movies

The number one book of the ages was written by a committee, and it was called The Bible.
--LBM to a complaining writer

A fund raiser tried to persuade Hollywood movie producer Louis B.Mayer to give money to a charity. "You know you can't take it with you."

"If I can't take it with me," said Mayer, "I won't go."

A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.

And finally, here's Jack Lipnick, the studio boss played by Michael Lerner in Barton Fink.

We don't put Wallace Beery in some fruity movie about suffering - I thought we were together on that.

We're only interested in one thing, Bart. Can you tell a story? Can you make us laugh? Can you make us cry? Can you make us want to break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay!