Louis B. Mayer — producer with roots in the Russian Empire
Louis Burt Mayer was born Lazar Meir, also recorded as Eliezer, in the Russian Empire, to Jacob and Sarah Meir. Where and when are both disputed. Official documents point to 12 July 1884 and Dymer, a town north of Kiev, now in Ukraine; Mayer himself gave his birthplace as Minsk and later adopted 4 July 1885 as his birthday.
While he was a small child the family emigrated, first to New York and then, after a few years, to Saint John, New Brunswick, in Canada, where he grew up poor. His father worked as a peddler and in ship salvage and scrap metal, and Louis joined the business from about the age of twelve, foraging for scrap and travelling to Boston to sell it.
In 1904, at twenty, he left Saint John for Boston, where he continued in the scrap trade, married, and took odd jobs when the business faltered. In 1907, with fifty dollars, he took over a run-down burlesque house in Haverhill, Massachusetts, renamed it the Orpheum and moved his family into the manager's office. By 1918 he owned the largest chain of cinemas in New England, and in 1915 he made a large profit distributing D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation in the region.
To secure films for his theatres he moved to Los Angeles and formed Louis B. Mayer Productions. In 1924 his company merged with Metro Pictures and with the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation, which Samuel Goldwyn had co-founded and left in 1922, to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with Mayer as head of studio operations at Culver City. He ran production there until 1951, building a stable of contract stars that included Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Lon Chaney and the Barrymores.
He was the guiding figure behind the founding of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1927, and in 1950 received an honorary Academy Award.
He died in Los Angeles on 29 October 1957, aged seventy-three.
"Emigrated as a small child with his family, first to New York and then to Saint John, New Brunswick, where he grew up; moved to Boston in 1904."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Dymer (Kiev Governorate) or Minsk - sources differ
Born Lazar Meir in the Russian Empire, in Dymer north of Kiev according to official documents or in Minsk according to his own account, he emigrated with his family as a small child, first to New York and then to Saint John, New Brunswick.
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Dymer (Kiev Governorate) or Minsk - sources differ. At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.