Oh, that smile…
My grandmother Mitzi is probably in her early 20s in this photo and appears to be signing in at MGM’s employee entrance.
From the smile, and with a photo to document the occasion, she may very well be doing this for the first time.
There’s naturally a fine line between nepotism and dynasty, but that smile is very simple – just a girl going to work for probably the first time… and it just so happens to be at her uncle’s movie studio.
A number of the family worked at MGM – my grandmother (who also went on to work as a writer), her sister Ruth who wrote scripts and music (and later married a director Roy Rowland), their brother Jack Cummings who went on to become a producer in his own right, two of Louis’ brothers – Gerald and Ruben, and of course David O. Selznick, husband of uncle Louis’ daughter Irene.
Over the next weeks and months I will post more photos of Mitzi, but this is a handy place to start as any with that smile beaming from a young woman with her own dreams and aspirations. And you know, I remember that smile from the old lady that was my grandmother. Mitzi smiled like that often when I was a kid. I wished I had realized then that smile was like oxygen for her.
Copyright Alicia Mayer 2012.
The Film Colony ♛ 
It’s a great smile, I was going to comment on that even before I read the text. 🙂