50 MGM Films That Transformed Hollywood: Triumphs, Blockbusters, and Fiascos

by Steven Bingen

Movies don’t exist in a vacuum. Each MGM movie is a tiny piece of a large, colorful (although often black-and-white) quilt, with threads tying it into all of the rest of that studio’s product, going forward, yes, but also backward, and horizontally, and three-dimensionally across its entire landscape. Not necessarily a “best of” compilation, this book discusses the films that for one reason or another (and not all of them good ones) changed the trajectory of MGM and the film industry in general, from the revolutionary use of “Cinerama” in 1962’s How the West Was Won to Director Alfred Hitchcock’s near-extortion of the profits from the 1959 hit thriller North by Northwest.And there are the studio’s on-screen self-shoutouts to its own past or stars, in films like Party Girl (1958), the That’s Entertainment series, Garbo Talks (1984), Rain Man (1955), and De-Lovely (2004), or the studio’s acquisition of other successful franchises such as James Bond. But fear not—what we consider MGM’s classic films all get their due here, often with a touch of irony or fascinating anecdote. Singin' in the Rain (1952), for example, was in its day neither a financial blockbuster nor critically acclaimed but rather an excuse for the studio to reuse some old songs it already owned. The Wizard of Oz (1939) cost almost as much to make as Gone With the Wind (also 1939) and took ten years to recoup its costs. But still, the MGM mystique endures. Like the popular Netflix series The Movies that Made Us, this is a fascinating look behind the scenes of the greatest—and at times notorious—films ever made.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction

344 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 1, 2022

About the author

Steven Bingen is an author, archivist, lecturer and Hollywood insider who has contributed to dozens of books, articles, and documentaries regarding film history and in particular Hollywood's physical past, including recent successes MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot, Warner Bros.: Hollywood's Ultimate Backlot, and Paramount: City of Dreams.

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Movies don't exist in a vacuum. Each MGM movie is a tiny piece of a large, colorful (although often black-and-white) quilt, with threads tying it into all the rest of that studio's product - going forward, yes; but also backward, horizontally, and three-dimensionally across its entire landscape." -- from the intro

Bingen's The 50 MGM Films that Transformed Hollywood defies easy categorization, and its title sort of promises a type of 'greatest hits' package that is not entirely and/or especially accurate for the book's scope. It's not a quite a detailed history of the legendary movie studio's soundstages, sets, and backlots. It doesn't really go into an excessive amount of attributes about the chosen films. (And, to be fair, not everything included is actually a silver-screen product. The popular 60's TV spy series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the perennial yuletide TV special How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, and the largely forgotten 70's TV-movie The Phantom of Hollywood are among the select 50). There's also the reasonable argument that a handful of the listed movies only belatedly came under the MGM banner - such as the durable James Bond series - after the big corporate merger with United Artists. Hell, some may even be left scratching their heads with the inclusions of less-remembered 70's and 80's flicks like Hero at Large, The Formula, and Running Scared. But does that make it a bad book? Not at all. It was a relatively speedy and succinct romp through just over 70 years worth of many box office hits and occasional misfires from the studio, and if you are a particularly devoted or open-minded film fanatic it is very likely one of your favorites - whether it's a musical from the 30's or 40's (Wizard of Oz and Meet Me in St. Louis), edgier fare from the 50's (The Blackboard Jungle and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), the color epics from the 60's (Doctor Zhivago, The Dirty Dozen, 2001: A Space Odyssey), to the gritty street-level action-dramas of the 70's (Shaft and Rocky) - is discussed somewhere in the mix.

[Sherri · Rating 2 out of 5]

Coffee table style book. How business politics, contracts, and technology impacted MGM films. Most I've not heard of before.

[Riq Hoelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little too idiosyncratic.

A lot of the films chosen don't make sense. If someone paints a painting and then hands it to you to deliver to the gallery, do you get to claim credit for that painting? I think most would say no. But here someone made a famous film and all MGM did was distribute it, but the book claims that MGM rather that Selznick International was responsible for Gone With the Wind. Similar for the James Bond series.

There were a lot of other major films not chosen for the featured 50.

The author seems obsessed with backlots. A lot of that content probably should have been reserved for a different book.

There's a lot of interesting film history also, and good observations. Sometimes it's puzzling because one passage will be so insightful, but the next completely misses the obvious. Why didn't Ann Miller dance with Gene Kelly in On the Town? Because Miller was the tallest of the three women so of course she was paired with the tallest of the guys. That was the kind of thinking they had back then. This is just one of several examples.

[Anna]

Fascinating

This book chronicles the rise and fall of MGM...A sad story indeed! One can't help but pine for the old Studio.System. I would have given the book 5 stars because it was so interesting, but it is so poorly written with a lot of redundancies and misused words.

[Nancy Noffke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not what I was expecting. More about producers, directors, other behind the scenes folks, financials, etc. Stars are mentioned. Some very interesting facts. A picture of the real Asta. Interesting, but not the best I've ever read.