by Stephen Vagg
The “two Bobs” who ran MGM in the 1960s – Robert Weitman and Robert O’Brien.
Few movie studios had better-known executives than Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) – the tyrannical, sobbing, brutal Canadian mother’s boy Louis B. Mayer; the sensitive, ruthless, heart-trouble-plagued, weak-on-fascism Irving Thalberg; the smug-liberal, blacklist-enabling, undeservedly-egotistical Dore Schary; the female-arm-breaking “smiling cobra”, Jim Aubrey; the George-Reeves-murdering (it is alleged) “fixer” Eddie Mannix; the Greer Garson/Nancy Davis-shagging Benny Thau… they are as legendary, in their way, as any of the stars who were in MGM movies.
Yet two of the studio’s most effective executives are almost entirely unknown, despite running Metro in its last effective decade as a studio i.e. the 1960s; Robert O’Brien (president) and Robert Weitman (head of production) – known colloquially as “the two Bobs”.
First, a bit of background. In the 1920s, MGM became the leading studio in Hollywood under the management of Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg; after Thalberg died in 1936, Mayer kept things going strong with the help of an ace executive team that included people like Thau and Mannix. The studio wobbled after the war, so they brought in a “new Thalberg”, Dore Schary; he and Mayer clashed, resulting in Mayer’s sooky resignation in 1951. Schary had a few good years, in part by remaking a lot of MGM’s back catalogue in widescreen and colour, but a series of flops saw him sacked in 1956 by the studio’s new president, Joe Vogel. Mayer tried to get his old job back via a corporate take-over but was defeated, prior to his death from leukaemia in 1957. Vogel ran the studio with success for a few years thanks to the popularity of an expensive remake (Ben Hur), with his heads of production Ben Thau and Sol Siegel, but several unpopular expensive remakes (Mutiny on the Bounty, Cimarron, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse) saw MGM record a loss of $30 million in 1963, and resulted in the sackings of Siegel and Vogel.
Vogel was replaced as president by Robert O’Brien, who had been an executive in various positions, and the new head of production was Robert Weitman, who came from MGM television, then riding high due to the success of the Dr Kildare medical series (another remake of an old MGM property). Weitman and O’Brien managed to turn MGM around – in 1964, the studio recorded a profit of $17 million, and the next few years were consistently profitable.
The two Bobs were lucky to inherit a big fat hit made under the Vogel/Siegel regime – the all-star How the West Was Won. It also earned some useful coin from Mutiny on the Bounty, which was popular, just not enough to cover its cost. The first blockbuster made by MGM with O’Brien and Weitman in charge was The VIPs, an all-star melodrama that was the first movie that Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton made after Cleopatra.
The VIPs was typical of the main hits of the Weitman-O’Brien regime: big glossy star vehicles with terrific production values – real old MGM-style movies, sexed-up a little for the 1960s, but the sort of pictures you could imagine Lana Turner, Judy Garland and Clark Gable starring in. These included musicals (Debbie Reynolds in The Unsinkable Molly Brown and The Singing Nun, Elvis Presley in Viva Las Vegas and Girl Happy), romantic comedies (Sunday in New York, The Glass Bottom Boat, The Americanisation of Emily – don’t laugh, it’s a romantic comedy), high concept war films (Operation Crossbow, The Dirty Dozen), star-driven melodramas (The Night of the Iguana, The Cincinnati Kid, The Sandpiper, A Patch of Blue), thrillers (The Prize, Point Blank), all-star anthologies (The Yellow Rolls Royce). Most of all was the David Lean/Omar Sharif/Julie Christie epic Dr Zhivago, which became a box office sensation.
Bob O’Brien claimed that when picking a project, for him, story was king, which is possibly true, but the most striking thing about MGM films from this time is that they were excellent star vehicles. The “two Bobs” regime showcased a galaxy of names off to splendid advantage – some of them old MGM contract players (Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, Elvis Presley), others newer names (Rod Taylor, Ann-Margret, Steve McQueen, Julie Andrews, Sidney Poitier, Julie Christie, Jim Brown). Production values were consistently high – the films generally always looked classy. Even the lower budgeted MGM programmers, like The Man from UNCLE movies (where episodes of the TV series were released in cinemas outside the US) had a polished sheen.
It should be noted that most of the aforementioned movies came from independent producers who had deals with MGM rather than within the studio itself – people like Martin Ransohoff, Ray Stark, Sam Katzman and Carlo Ponti. But O’Brien and Weitman could deal with these producers because they were famously supportive of talent. One of the reasons that Stanley Kubrick made 2001: A Space Odyssey at MGM was because he knew O’Brien would have his back even if the budget rose. Ditto David Lean with Doctor Zhivago. The studio were big backers of John Frankenheimer and were the only ones willing to finance John Ford’s last two movies (Young Cassidy, Seven Women).
It also needs to be acknowledged that the two Bobs made plenty of mistakes – they greenlit a number of big budget disappointments like The Outrage, The Loved One, Lady L, and Far from the Madding Crowd, and probably had too much faith in the drawing power of James Garner and Rod Taylor. But they always seemed to come up with something to counterbalance these, like the sexy thriller Blow Up, or the hard-hitting Point Blank.
Despite (or because of) this success, MGM was still the subject of corporate raids during the 1960s, particularly by real estate developer Phil Levin. Furthermore, Robert Weitman was poached by Columbia in 1967 to become head of production over there, and O’Brien (possibly unwisely) replaced him with an assistant, Clark Ramsay. Levin’s big attempt to knock off O’Brien in 1967 failed but he was still circling, threatening to make another run. (Interesting trivia – part of Levin’s takeover team was producer William Goetz, who had been Louis B. Mayer’s son in law – Mayer hated him because Goetz was a Democrat and a friend of Dore Schary, leading to Mayer being estranged from his daughter for the last few years of Mayer’s life; it’s ironic that Goetz died in 1969, shortly after being part of an unsuccessful attempt to take over MGM, just like Mayer.)
After Weitman’s departure, O’Brien’s luck started to turn. In the late 1960s, the downside of his talent-friendly approach became apparent when teams who delivered big successes for MGM started going way over budget on their far-less-profitable follow ups: thus Antonioni’s Blow Up was followed by Zabriskie Point, Lean’s Dr Zhivago by Ryan’s Daughter, Bob Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen by The Legend of Lylah Clare, Burton and Taylor’s The Sandpiper by The Comedians, David Hemmings’ Blow Up by The Best House in London and Alfred the Great, John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix by The Extraordinary Seaman, The Fixer and The Gypsy Moths, Omar Sharif’s Dr Zhivago by Mayerling and The Appointment.
Other movies that O’Brien must have thought would be slam dunks lost money (or, at least, weren’t the hits he needed): guys on a mission action flicks (Ice Station Zebra, Dark of the Sun), Elvis Presley musicals (Spinout, Stay Away Joe), Sam Katzman programmers (The Young Lovers), adaptations of best-selling novels (Shoes of the Fisherman), remakes of MGM classics (Goodbye Mr Chips). The television division stopped producing hits. The gamble of 2001 paid off but that was Kubrick, coming off three big hits in a row; far too much money was spent on projects that MGM must have known were risky, like The Extraordinary Seaman, and The Appointment. There was, for whatever reason, a sharp decline in women-orientated movies, a genre that had been the bedrock of the studio’s mid ‘60s output – several intended blockbusters had hardly any female characters at all (this didn’t hurt 2001 but it did for Ice Station Zebra and The Shoes of the Fisherman). MGM also seemed to become artier when Weitman left, making films like The Subject was Roses and developing adaptations of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming and Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. The studio still had the occasional blockbuster like Where Eagles Dare, The Impossible Years and 2001 but they were becoming too few.
We’re not saying that these films weren’t great – there were just too many expensive money losers. We also acknowledge that Weitman’s presence would not necessarily have saved the day (he wasn’t a tremendous success at Columbia and left in 1969 to go independent producer). However, we think that it’s significant that the big hits under the two Bobs were recognisably commercial genres… musicals, war films, thrillers, comedies, women’s pictures… almost always with big stars well cast. And this changed when Weitman left.
MGM wound up losing $19 million in 1969. Levin gave up his corporate raids but sold his shares to Canada’s Edgar Bronfman, who succeeded in taking ownership of MGM, firing O’Brien and Ramsay, and installing the management team of “Bo” Polk and Herbert Solow, whose regime became famous for “right on” movies that were “with it” like The Strawberry Statement. Then, another mogul, Kirk Kerkorian, took over the studio and installed James Aubrey to run it; Aubrey sold off the backlot, brought in a cost cutting, cheapie regime that did restore the studio’s financial position but basically killed MGM’s soul. It’s never recovered since then.
So, basically, the regime of the two Bobs was the final Golden Age of MGM. Yes, that’s an overused term, but look at what was turned out: 2001, Dirty Dozen, Where Eagles Dare, The Americanisation of Emily, Point Blank, The Hill, Dr Zhivago, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Viva Las Vegas, The Glass Bottom Boat, The Cincinnati Kid, A Patch of Blue… These are fantastic movies. We really wish the studio had made some projects it announced – The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, Caravans, Carnival (the musical), Tai Pan, Man’s Fate – but what it made was pretty terrific. MGM even developed a version of the Oskar Schindler story to be made by Delbert Mann (we don’t think that it was a loss that it didn’t come to fruition, Steven Spielberg did it just fine).
Incidentally, the two Bobs had a fondness for Australian talent – they gave Rod Taylor some of his best chances (Young Cassidy, Dark of the Sun, Glass Bottom Boat, 36 Hours, The VIPS), and adapted Morris West’s Shoes of the Fisherman. This was possibly in part due to the influence of Maurice ‘Red’ Silverstein, head of MGM International at the time, who was married to Australian Betty Bryant (star of Forty Thousand Horsemen).
The real villains of this story (in our opinion) were Levin, Bronfman and Kerkorian, who destabilised MGM with their takeover attempts – Kerkorian killed the soul of the studio under his ownership. MGM has managed to limp along since then, and still exists in a form today as Amazon-MGM, but real MGM, the glamorous studio full of stars, and friendly to talent, ended when Bob O’Brien left. He – and Bob Weitman – should be better known.
