The Film Colony ♛

A rare photo of Jerry Mayer's office at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Jerry was one of Louis' and Ida's two younger brothers and worked as MGM's studio manager - in fact, you can see his map of the entire studio footprint, and some contraption that looks like a card system, all at the ready. Everything about this office … Continue reading Jerry Mayer’s office at MGM is a temple of Art Deco perfection from floor to ceiling

So true confessions: over the last few years I've let the digital archive of the family photo collection get into a bit of a happy mess. There were duplicates, massive files, small files, photos with old watermarks, some with my new watermark, and so on. With my LA talks coming up I found the mess … Continue reading Pretty sure the ghost of Marion Davies was my photo research assistant yesterday…

Good morning from Sydney! I hope you're having a wonderful Thursday or a happy Friday. Wherever you are, it's time for another mystery photo... I need your help cracking another photo mystery in the Mayer/Cummings family photo archive.   In this case we all know this is my ever glamorous grandmother Mitzi but I have … Continue reading From the Mystery Files: Do you recognize the costume Mitzi is wearing?

Here's Mitzi photographed by master glamour photographer George Hurrell. The list of stars he photographed during Hollywood's Golden Age is as long as your arm. Some stars, as their power grew, refused to be photographed by anyone else. Unfortunately, other than Hurrell's credit stamp on the back of the photo there isn't any other information … Continue reading Mitzi photographed by master MGM glamour photographer George Hurrell but who’s the designer?

So I'm going through our photos as I prepare to WOW you in Los Angeles on August 5th and 6th (for events info click here) and I found this fantastic pic of my grandmother, Mitzi Cummings, visiting the set of 'The Great Ziegfield' in October of 1935, just a few months before it was released … Continue reading Mitzi on the set of ‘The Great Ziegfield’ in 1935 and you’ll want to fire up the time machine

Earlier this week was the 20th anniversary of Mel Blanc's passing at 81 from emphysema. Dubbed 'the man of a thousand voices,' for my generation Mel Blanc is the sound of Saturday mornings and afternoons as we watched endless Looney Tunes episodes. For older generations, he was the voice of radio characters, animated shorts played … Continue reading Which Looney Tunes character did the doctor mention to bring Mel Blanc out of his two-week coma?

Louis B. Mayer was born on 12 July, 1884 in Dumier, Ukraine. In the late 1880s, nearly 250,000 Jews fled the anti-Semitic pogroms of Ukraine and Russia. Most went to the United States but roughly ten percent landed in Canada. Around 1891, Sarah and Jacob Mayer and their five children settled in Saint John, Canada. … Continue reading Born This Day: Louis B. Mayer’s earliest memories were of hard work, cold and hunger.

Thank you to my dear pal, Debbie Archibald from Montreal, who sent me a link to one of my grandmother Mitzi's Photoplay articles from 1938. This particular story featured the sublime Dolores Del Rio and thanks to a clear case of girl crush, Mitzi started with a portion of a Lord Byron poem, 'She Walks … Continue reading My grandmother’s girl crush on Dolores Del Rio, Lord Byron, Pat O’Brien, and a scowling Lloyd Bacon.

When your family members are the ghosts in someone's home... Nearly four years ago, for whatever crazy reason, I typed my great-grandmother's name, Ida Mayer Cummings, into Twitter's search field. This is a woman who was born in the late 1800s, and died at age 86 in 1968 before fax machines were invented, when computers … Continue reading A Twitter miracle from 2013 comes full circle for me in August!

This photo from our family collection is a huge favorite of mine. My great uncle, Louis B. Mayer, stands comfortably next to a very young Marion Davies, who has an arm casually draped over the theatre impresario himself, Sid Grauman. I don't know what year it is (late 20s?) or where it is but all … Continue reading Mogul, star, impresario: In early Hollywood, there were NO degrees of separation.