Reborn on the Fourth of July

Every Independence Day, L.B. Mayer (1884 – 1957) would shut down production at MGM and celebrate twin holidays: America’s birth, and the birthday of L.B. Mayer.

Flags and bunting graced every building and sound stage. There was band music and rows of picnic tables groaning under the weight of food.

L.B. Mayer, a man without a birth date

Every MGM star was expected to attend and pay homage to America-and to L.B. Mayer. For in Mayer’s mind, the two were inseparable. All complied, except Greta Garbo, a woman far too narcissistic to lavish attention on any country or person other than her own mirrored island.

Though Yiddish was his first language, L.B. Mayer delivered a rousing Fourth of July speech. Mayer could be a forceful English speaker, mixing deeply personal anecdotes–usually about his beloved mother–and soaring rhetoric about his adopted home, America.

To date, every Mayer biographer and film writer with whom I’m familiar repeats the familiar anecdote in which Mayer “claimed to have lost his birth certificate” when crossing from Europe to America. The quotation marks tell us–with a condescending wink and nudge–that Mayer fibbed in order to adopt July Fourth as his birthday, thereby conflating his identity with America’s.

However, the truth of Mayer’s birth date can best be appreciated and understood within the context of the Eastern European Jewish culture from which the junk man turned film pioneer emerged.

L.B. Mayer, real name Lazar Meir, was born in Minsk, today the capital of Belarus, but at the time part of the Russian Empire known as The Pale of Settlement where Jews were forced to reside by the viciously anti-Semitic Tzar.

For the most part, Jews of the Pale lived in grinding poverty and the constant threat of pogroms–state sanctioned murder, pillage and rape by the Cossacks. But in spite of their oppression and status as second class citizens, these Jews were overwhelmingly pious and ritually observant, preserving Judaism thorough faith in the G-d of Israel, adherence to the Torah and the study of Talmud.

This was a culture steeped in preserving Jewish traditions, traditions where Biblical and Rabbinic literature is marked by an absence of birth dates.

In the Bible we are informed that men and women lived for a specific number of years–and there is considerable Rabbinic debate at to what constitutes a year in the Biblical age. In addition, the great Rabbinic sages are, at best, recorded as living during the reign of whichever King was, at the time, ruling.

Crucial to understanding life in The Pale, is an awareness that birth certificates were avoided by Jewish families because the Tzar used this information to draft Jewish children–as young as 12-years old–into the Russian army for a period of twenty-five years. The goal being to rid the child of his religious identity and convert him to Christianity.

Studying Jewish tombstones that were documented before the onslaught of the Communist bulldozers in Eastern Europe, there is a marked absence of birth dates. Most often the name of the deceased–for instance, Jacob son of Aaron, no family names–is inscribed, accompanied with a biblical inscription, usually from King David’s Psalms, and finally, the yahrtzeit, the date of death. It is rare to see a birth date chiseled into the stone.

Most Jews confined to The Pale marked their birthday through an association with a specific Jewish holiday.

As an example, my paternal grandfather, Rabbi Samuel Avrech, also from The Pale, told me that he was born “… sometime around Chanukah.”

In contrast, I tell people that I was born in the year of All About Eve.

L.B. Mayer, like every pioneering Jewish mogul, was anxious to shed his Jewish identity. These rags to riches studio chiefs were unable to reconcile Judaism with their aspirations to be real Americans.

And so, it seems more than likely that rather than admit to a vague birth date–associated with an ancient Jewish festival–Mayer crafted the lost birth certificate story, thereby avoiding what he viewed as his embarrassing Jewish heritage.

In any case, L.B. Mayer, the man who invented the star system and who headed the most powerful studio in Hollywood, was intensely patriotic–he emigrated to America from Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada–and insisted that MGM films reflect his deeply held values.

Every Hollywood studio produced thousands upon thousands of still photos as a means of promoting their stars. There were basic, canned poses used over and over again: Starlets in swimsuits, swashbuckling actors with swords, a male and female star locked in a passionate embrace. There were also photo sets celebrating Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.

And there were Independence Day stills.

To jaded eyes, these photos appear artless and heavy-handed. To be sure, the great glamor photographers George Hurrell and C.S. Bull did not snap the shutter for these novelty poses.

But to me, studio produced July Fourth pictures represent a genuine love of America and the values of democracy, liberty and freedom. These are refreshing images, free of tedious, post-modern irony, images that speak deeply of Hollywood’s Golden Age and it’s place in the American grain.