There are loyalties that are greater than the loyalties of friendship

Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg first met in November 1922. Thalberg, who was working for Universal Pictures, made a deep impression on Mayer and a few months later was appointed vice-president in charge of production at Mayer's production company, Louis B. Mayer Pictures. In 1924, the company merged with Metro Pictures Corporation and Goldwyn Pictures to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and 25-year-old Thalberg was made part owner and also vice-president and head of production of the new company. Thalberg and Mayer worked well together, Thalberg's ability to combine high quality with commercial success and Mayer's shrewd business sense proving a winning combination. In a few years' time, MGM would become the most successful studio in Hollywood, some of the studio's earlier successes being He Who Gets Slapped (1924), The Merry Widow (1925) and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925). 

Although Mayer and Thalberg initially got along, their relationship became increasingly strained. By the fall of 1932, Thalberg had come to resent the fact that Mayer and his New York boss, Nicholas Schenck, were getting rich off what he felt were essentially hís successes. Thalberg wanted to take a year off —suffering from depression following the death of his friend Paul Bern— but when Schenck offered him a generous 100,000-share stock option he could not refuse. Mayer, despite being Thalberg's superior, only got 80,000 shares. The stock deal worsened the relationship between Thalberg and Mayer, leaving the latter's ego deeply hurt. Thalberg's growing power and success made Mayer feel increasingly threatened, even more so after an article was published in Fortune magazine in December 1932, depicting Thalberg as the guiding force behind MGM while barely acknowledging Mayer. 

Irving Thalberg, Lillian Gish and Louis B. Mayer in 1926

Then things suddenly changed on Christmas morning 1932 when Thalberg —born with a heart disease and once told he wouldn't live beyond thirty— suffered a heart attack. In order to keep the studio run smoothly, Mayer hired David O. Selznick (his son-in-law) as producer at MGM, giving him his own independent production unit. Thalberg was furious and felt betrayed, thinking that Mayer took advantage of his illness and intended to replace him with Selznick. Although he wasn't being replaced, Mayer would eliminate Thalberg's position of head of production. When Thalberg returned to work in August 1933 (after an extended trip to Europe), MGM had been reorganised and, like Selznick, Thalberg was given a production unit of his own. Several other producers also got their own production units, men who had previously been Thalberg's subordinates like Walter Wanger and Hunt Stromberg. Demoted from head of production to unit producer, Thalberg went along with the new system as long as he didn't have to answer to Mayer. While Selznick and the others were to report to Mayer, Thalberg would report directly to Schenck.

Despite his considerable loss of power, Thalberg continued to make successful films, among them such classics as Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), A Night at the Opera (1935) and Camille (1936). His relationship with Mayer, however, would never be the same. Thalberg biographer Roland Flamini said that what had once been a "friendly rivalry" had "soured into animosity and then degenerated into enmity".

Thalberg won the Oscar for Best Picture for Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), here photographed with Clark Gable and director Frank Capra at the Oscars of 1936. Click here to see and hear Thalberg accept the award from Capra. Thalberg had won the Best Picture Oscar twice before, for The Broadway Melody (1929) and Grand Hotel (1932).

_______

On 23 February 1933, while Thalberg was recovering from his heart attack and about to depart on an extended journey to Europe, Mayer wrote him the following letter. He wanted to restore his relationship with Thalberg after their last meeting had ended in a heated argument and loss of temper. Producer David Selznick had just been hired by Mayer behind Thalberg's back, leaving Thalberg feeling angry and betrayed. As said, the episode caused a rift between Mayer and Thalberg that would never be repaired.

 

Dear Irving: 

I cannot permit you to go away to Europe without expressing to you my regret that our last conference had to end in a loss of temper, particularly on my part. It has always been my desire to make things as comfortable and pleasant for you as I knew how, and I stayed away from you while you were ill because I knew if I saw you it was inevitable that we would touch on business, and this I did not want to do until you were strong again. In fact I told Norma [Shearer] to discourage my coming to see you until you felt quite well.  

It is unfortunate that the so-called friends of yours and mine should be only too glad to create ill feeling, and attempt to disrupt a friendship and association that has existed for about ten years. Up to this time they have been unsuccessful, but they have always been envious of our close contact and regard for each other.  

If you will stop and think, you cannot mention a single motive or reason why I should cease to love you or entertain anything but a feeling of real sincerity and friendship for you. During your absence from the Studio, I was confronted with what seems to me to be a Herculean task, but the old saying still goes —“The show must go on.” Certainly we could not permit the Company to go out of existence just because the active head of production was taken ill and likely to be away from the business for a considerable length of time. I, being your partner, it fell to my lot, and I considered it my duty and legal obligation under our contract, to take up the burden anew where you left off, and to carry on to the best of my ability . . . . 

I regret very much that when I last went to see you to talk things over I did not find you in a receptive mood to treat me as your loyal partner and friend. I felt an air of suspicion on your part towards me, and want you to know if I was correct in my interpretation of your feeling, that it was entirely undeserved. When I went to see you I was wearied down with the problems I have been carrying, which problems have been multiplied because of the fact that the partner who has borne the major portion of them on his shoulders, was not here. Instead of appreciating the fact that I have cheerfully taken on your work, as well as my own, and have carried on to the best of my ability, you chose to bitingly and sarcastically accuse me of many things, by innuendo, which I am supposed to have done to you and your friends. Being a man of temperament, I could not restrain myself any longer, and lost my temper. Even when I did so I regretted it, because I thought it might hurt you physically.  

Regardless of how I felt, or what my nervous condition was, I am big enough to apologize to you, for you were ill and I should have controlled my feelings.  

I am doing everything possible for the best interests of yourself, Bob [MGM attorney Robert Rubin], myself, and the Company, and I want you to know just how I feel towards you; and, if possible, I want you to divest yourself of all suspicion, and believe me to be your real friend, and to know that when I tell you I have the greatest possible affection and sincere friendship for you, I am telling the truth.  

I hope this trip you are about to make will restore you to even greater vigor than you have ever before enjoyed, and will bring you back so that we may work together as we have done for the past ten years. 

And now let me philosophize for a moment. Anyone who has said that I have a feeling of wrong towards you will eventually have cause to regret their treachery, because that is exactly what it would be, and what it would be on my part if I had any feeling other than what I have expressed in this letter towards you. I assure you I will go on loving you to the end.  

I am going to take the liberty of quoting a bit of philosophy from Lincoln. This is a quotation I have on my desk, and one which I value highly: “I do the very best I know how, and the very best I can, and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right, will make no difference.”  

I assure you, Irving, you will never have the opportunity of looking me in the eye and justly accusing me of disloyalty or of doing anything but what a good friend and an earnest associate would do for your interest, and for your comfort.  

If this letter makes the impression on you that I hope it does, I should be awfully glad to see you before you go and to bid you Bon Voyage. If it does not, I shall be sorry, and will pray for your speedy recovery to strength and good health.  

With love and regards, believe me, 

Faithfully yours, 

Louis

Thalberg responded two days later.

 

Dear Louis:  

I was deeply and sincerely appreciative of the fact that you wrote me a letter, as I should have been very unhappy to have left the city without seeing you. I was indeed sorry that the words between us should have caused on your part a desire not to see me, as I assure you frankly and honestly they did not have that effect on me. We have debated and disagreed many times before, and I hope we shall many times again. For any words that I may have used that aroused bitterness in you, I am truly sorry and I apologize.  

I’m very sorry that I have been unable to make clear that it has not been the actions or the words of any—as you so properly call them—so-called friends, whose libelous statements were bound to occur, that have in any way influenced me. If our friendship and association could be severed by so weak a force, I am sure it would long ago have been ruptured by that source. There are, however, loyalties that are greater than the loyalties of friendship. There are the loyalties to ideals, the loyalties to principles without which friendship loses character and real meaning, for a friend who deliberately permits the other to go wrong without sacrificing all—even friendship—has not reached the truest sense of that ideal. Furthermore, the ideals and principles were ones that we had all agreed upon again and again in our association, and every partner shared equally in the success that attended the carrying out of those principles.  

I had hoped that the defense of those principles would be made by my three closest friends [presumably Mayer, Schenck and Rubin]. I say this not in criticism, but in explanation of the depths of the emotions aroused in me, and in the hopes that you will understand. I realize with deep appreciation the effort you have been making for the company and in my behalf, and no one more than myself understands the strain to which you are subjected.  

Believe me, you have my sympathy, understanding and good wishes in the task you are undertaking; and no one more than myself would enjoy your success, for your own sake even more than for the sake of the company.  

Please come to see me as soon as it is convenient for you to do so, as nothing would make me happier than to feel we had parted at least as good personal friends, if not better, than ever before.  

Irving

 

Source: Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince (2009), by Mark A. Vieira

Despite their broken friendship, Thalberg and Mayer remained civil and polite to each other, at least in their letters. Not only the letters above show the courtesies between them, but also the following letter written by Mayer to Thalberg on 31 December 1933. Mayer expresses his wish to "get closer and closer in [his] association" with Thalberg in the new year, and also says he will do anything to make Thalberg's work "light and pleasant". However, it was Mayer who stonewalled Thalberg in preparing his first films as a unit producer. Thalberg found that writers and actors he wanted to work with were suddenly unavailable, assigned elsewhere by Mayer. Also, Mayer had blocked Thalberg's access to MGM's best directors, so for Riptide (1934) Thalberg had to look outside the studio and eventually hired freelancer Edmund Goulding. 

Source: Bonhams

Sunday

Dear Irving

First many thanks for your beautiful gift, when away from home I will think of you. Tomorrow starts the New Year and hope you shall not know of illness. We have much to be thankful for, as for instance your health, that financially we pulled through, but my prayer and fervent hope is that commencing with 1934 we shall get closer and closer in our association. Depend on me to do all in my power to make your task as light and pleasant as lies within my [power].

[signed 

"Faithfully and sincerely Louis B."]

_______

On 14 September 1936, Thalberg suddenly died of pneumonia, only 37 years old. Mayer was very saddened by Thalberg's death and said that he had lost "the finest friend a man could ever have". It must be noted, however, that according to IMDB "some Hollywood observers believe that Mayer was relieved by Thalberg's untimely death, though he professed a great deal of grief publicly...." Whether false or true, after Thalberg's passing Mayer appointed himself head of production in addition to being studio head. Without Thalberg MGM continued to thrive, and it was under Mayer's leadership that a few years later MGM released Gone with the Wind (1939), the story once rejected by Thalberg who famously said: "No Civil War picture ever made a nickel".

Thalberg with wife Norma Shearer and Mayer in 1932

Dear Mr. Mayer

Lionel Barrymore had a good relationship with his boss Louis B. Mayer, having first worked for Mayer at Metro Pictures and then at MGM from 1926 onwards. In his 1951 memoir We Barrymores Barrymore claimed that, in spite of what people generally believed, Mayer was nót "a cold and shrewd executive who dangles careers on strings, plays with actors like puppets, and discards them when they begin to unravel around the edges". In his book the actor also said that Mayer often got him out of financial trouble. Barrymore owed a sizable amount to the IRS in income taxes and spent years paying off his debt. Whenever he asked Mayer for financial aid, his boss was there for him: "And so, when it often happened that I had exhausted the patience of the paymasters, I would hurry up to Mr. Mayer's office. "Lionel's on his way," they would telephone upstairs. "Tell the boss to get ready." He was always ready. He counseled me without scolding, got me out of this predicament and that, succored me from the Federal dicks when my income taxes threatened to mount to jailworthy heights, and reached for a checkbook and salvation when necessary. "

Mayer also helped Barrymore with a different problem. After a broken hip injury in 1936 combined with his arthritis, Barrymore was always in pain and by 1938 he was confined to a wheelchair. In order to cope with the pain Mayer provided Barrymore with cocaine ("L.B. gets me $400 worth of cocaine a day to ease my pain. I don’t know where he gets it. And I don't care. But I bless him every time it puts me to sleep.").

Barrymore remained a MGM contract player during his entire film career and was only occasionally loaned out to other studios.

1939 - Lionel Barrymore celebrates his 61st birthday at MGM in the company of his boss Louis B. Mayer (with glasses) and fellow actors (l-r) Mickey Rooney, Norma Shearer, Robert Montgomery, Clark Gable, William Powell, Rosalind Russell and Robert Taylor.

_____

Strapped for cash, Lionel Barrymore wrote the following letter to Louis B. Mayer around 1935, asking his boss to give him his full salary that month. MGM normally deducted a large portion from Barrymore's paycheck to pay his bills and debts.

Source: Buddenbrooks

Transcript:

Dear Mr. Mayer

I don't want to take up your time seeing you with so many others waiting. 

Also it's difficult if not impossible for me to get the time off the set - so I write to save time.

It would be of immeasurable help to me if the company would forgo my payments for a month, so I could get my full salary for a month - as my payment of five hundred to the pauper status and odd bits to government etc. leaves me very little to maneuver with- but in a month several items would have been paid.

Will you please leave word with Miss Koverman [Mayer's personal secretary] and I will stop in after we finish tonight - with many thanks

Lionel Barrymore

Fields would probably make better Micawber

Published in 1850, Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is an autobiographical novel which was also the author's personal favourite. The story follows the life of David from childhood into young adulthood, during which he encounters hardship, abuse, poverty but also love and happiness as he meets an array of vivid characters. It was a big wish of producer David O. Selznick to adapt David Copperfield for the screen, a novel he had cherished since childhood. Selnick's Russian father had learned English by reading the novel and had next read it to his sons. Initially, MGM boss Louis B. Mayer saw nothing in Selznick's idea to turn the book into a film but Selznick —at the time under contract to MGM— eventually convinced Mayer to okay the project. Subsequently, Selznick hired Hugh Walpole to adapt the story from Dickens' novel and Howard Estabrook and Lenore J. Coffee to write the screenplay. George Cukor was hired to direct.

It took a bit of effort to cast some of the film's pivotal roles. Selznick and Cukor extensively searched in the USA, Canada and the UK for a child actor to play young David. While Mayer had wanted MGM child actor Jackie Cooper, Selznick was adamant about casting a British youngster in order to stay true to the novel. In 1934 on a scouting trip to London, Selznick and Cukor eventually found young Freddie Bartholomew and gave him the part.

The casting of Mr. Micawber was a different story. While W.C. Fields, who eventually played Micawber, had been under consideration from the start, it was Charles Laughton who was Selznick and Cukor's first choice. Laughton had just won the Best Actor Oscar for The Private Lives of Henry VIII (1933) and would be the most important and bankable name in the large cast. Amid much publicity, Laughton was given the role but after just two days of shooting he wanted to be released from it. Having lost his confidence and convinced he was all wrong for the part, Laughton was eventually dismissed. Cukor said Laughton just didn't know how to play Micawber, lacking the geniality that was required. (According to cameraman Hal Kern, in the rushes Laughton "looked as if he was going to molest the child".) 

Selznick now set out to hire Fields and borrowed him from Paramount. Although Fields wasn't right physically —with his head shaven Laughton had "looked Micawber to the life", said Cukor— he was quite eager to play the role, despite his dislike of working with children. Fields was a Dickens fan and David Copperfield is the only film where he followed the script and refrained from ad-libbing. Although his contract stipulated he should speak with a British accent, the actor wouldn't drop his American accent and in his defense later said: "My father was an Englishman and I inherited this accent from him! Are you trying to go against nature?!"

_______

Laughton in 1933

Regarding the casting of the Micawber role David Selznick wrote several memos, two of which are seen below. The first one was sent to Louis B. Mayer in May 1934 and the second one several months later (in September) to MGM executive Robert Rubin. As stated above, it is generally believed that Laughton himself wanted to be released from the film, a viewpoint that was also shared by Laughton biographer Simon Callow. Selznick's memo to Rubin, however, suggests that other factors led to Laughton's dismissal, having to do with costs as well as "certain difficulties" the actor experienced with MGM. (What those "difficulties" with MGM were, I don't know. As for the costs, Selznick was afraid that they would be "impossible" if he had to wait for Laughton to finish the Paramount film Ruggles of Red Gap (1935); during rehearsals Laughton had fallen ill with a rectal abscess and spent a number of weeks hospitalised, causing the picture to be delayed.)

 

MAY 17 1934 

LONDON

TO: L.B. MAYER

...MUST KNOW WHAT CHANCE CHARLES LAUGHTON FOR ROLE OF MICAWBER. FEEL MORE THAN EVER VITAL IMPORTANCE OF BENDING EVERY EFFORT TO SECURE HIM, BUT MUST KNOW WITHIN FEW DAYS SO CAN DECIDE WHETHER TO SIGN ANOTHER MICAWBER. IF LAUGHTON UNAVAILABLE FOR MICAWBER, MIGHT LIKE W.C. FIELDS. CAN WE GET HIM? TO AVOID NECESSITY OF TRYING PARAMOUNT, THINK WE SHOULD GET WORD TO FIELDS DIRECT, WHO WOULD PROBABLY GIVE EYE TOOTH TO PLAY MICAWBER ... CORDIALLY

DAVID

SEPTEMBER 27, 1934

J. ROBERT RUBIN

1540 BROADWAY

NEW YORK, N.Y.

CONFIDENTIALLY, ENTIRELY POSSIBLE WE WILL NOT, IN SPITE OF EVERYTHING WE WENT THROUGH, BE ABLE USE CHARLES LAUGHTON IN "COPPERFIELD" BECAUSE HIS ILLNESS HAS DELAYED HIS PARAMOUNT PICTURE AND IF WE WAITED UNTIL HE FINISHED THAT, COST WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE. ALSO WE ARE HAVING CERTAIN DIFFICULTIES WITH HIM. WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW IMMEDIATELY IS WHETHER IF IT COMES TO ISSUE, HOW MUCH DIFFERENCE COMMERCIALLY WOULD THERE BE HAVING W.C. FIELDS INSTEAD OF LAUGHTON? IT OF COURSE NOT CERTAIN WHETHER WE CAN OBTAIN FIELDS, BUT AM RAISING QUESTION IN HOPE WE COULD. FIELDS WOULD PROBABLY MAKE BETTER MICAWBER, BUT WE'VE ALWAYS FELT WE REQUIERED THE ONE IMPORTANT NAME IN CAST IN LAUGHTON. WOULD YOU CHECK THIS IMMEDIATELY WITH FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC SALES DEPARTMENTS AND ADVISE ME. REGARDS

DAVID SELZNICK 

 

Source:  Memo from David O. Selznick (1972); selected and edited by Rudy Behlmer. 

1934 - Selznick & Co on their return from England after a "David Copperfield" work visit. Left to right: Peter Trent (who was considered for the role of the adult David but eventually lost the part to Frank Lawton), screenwriter Howard Estabrook, Irene Mayer Selznick and David O. Selznick, Hugh Walpole (who adapted the story from Dicken's novel and also played the vicar in the film), George Cukor and Fritz Lang (who had just been signed by Selznick to a MGM contract).  

Freddie Bartholomew as young David and WC Fields as Mr. Micawber in a publicity still for David Copperfield. Upon its release in January 1935, the film was a big success with both critics and audiences. It was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Academy Award for Best Picture (losing to Mutiny on the Bounty).

They will have little time to worry about getting their salaries cut

In 1927, MGM's big boss Louis B. Mayer decided to found an organisation that would settle labour disputes without unions. To discourage writers, directors and actors to get organised and start demanding pensions, health benefits etc., Mayer got together with a group of industry people and created the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). While initially focusing on labour issues, the Academy soon decided to also give out annual awards for achievements in filmmaking (again at the suggestion of Mayer). Of the several committees AMPAS formed in those early days, one of them was the committee for Awards of Merits. This committee would be instrumental in shaping the awards and the awards ceremony, with its efforts ultimately leading to the first ceremony being held on 16 May 1929. The "award of merit for distinctive achievement", then presented in 12 categories, is now of course known as the Academy Award or by its nickname Oscar. 

In the 1920s, Darryl F. Zanuck, mostly known as producer and executive for Twentieth Century Fox, was under contract to Warner Brothers. He wrote stories for the successful Rin-Tin-Tin series, and also wrote more than 40 scripts under pseudonyms before becoming a producer. On 7 November 1927, Zanuck wrote a letter to Frank Woods (secretary of AMPAS), discussing the Awards of Merit committee, apparently after Woods had talked about it in his letter to Zanuck. Zanuck calls the committee "a marvelous thing for the Industry", as the awards would surely keep the minds of writers and directors busy and keep them from worrying about their salaries. Zanuck also makes flippant nomination suggestions, putting forward Rin-Tin-Tin as "most popular player". The implication in Zanuck's letter that there was an ulterior motive for creating the Oscars has at one time been corroborated by Louis B. Mayer himself: "I found that the best way to handle [filmmakers] was to hang medals all over them [...] If I got them cups and awards they'd kill themselves to produce what I wanted. That's why the Academy Award was created." [source]

Via: twitter

Transcript:

November 7th, 1927

Mr. Frank Woods, Secretary,
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,
6912 Hollywood Boulevard
Hollywood, Calif.

Dear Frank:

Your letter received and digested. I think this Awards of Merits committee is a marvelous thing for the Industry, as it will cause so many arguments and discussions among the various directors and writers who did or did not get the award that they will have little time to worry about getting their salaries cut.

Now that the salary cut is all over with, we need some topic like this to start discussing, and I want to congratulate you and your Board of Directors for thinking of such a wonderful subject to keep the minds of the writers and directors busy for the next six months.

My nominations for the award of merit are as follows:

Producer -- Jack L. Warner.
Asssociate Producer -- Darryl Francis Zanuck
Director -- Any Warner Brothers Director (Same to be selected by drawing straws.)
Writer -- Any writer under contract to Warner Brothers.
Most popular player -- Rin-Tin-Tin

Will you kindly submit this list to the balance of the committee, so that we may get together on same.

All kidding aside, I think the magazine committee functioned quite well in their first issue, and I would certainly appreciate the invitation to donate an article to one of the forthcoming issues. Once upon a time, I too was a magazine subscribe, and it looks like this magazine is going to give me an opportunity to prove it.

Sincerely yours,

Darryl Zanuck (signed)


Note: 
The Academy's magazine for which Zanuck hoped to write an article was very short lived. The November 1927 issue was the first and only issue of the magazine.

Darryl F. Zanuck, studio boss Jack Warner, Rin Tin Tin and Lee Duncan (the dog's owner).

Dear L.B.

After working for Columbia Pictures for twelve years, director Frank Capra's contract with the studio ended in 1939 following the release of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. Out of a job, Capra decided to start his own production company, Frank Capra Productions, with screenwriter Robert Riskin, with whom he had worked on a number of films including the multiple Oscar-winner It Happened One Night (1934). The first film Capra and Riskin produced was Meet John Doe (1941), starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. It would also be their last film together, as Frank Capra Productions was dissolved in December 1941 due to tax problems. 

For Meet John Doe Frank Capra and Robert Riskin were in need of a studio willing to release their picture. In early 1940, they approached MGM and met with Louis B. Mayer, MGM's big boss, to discuss the matter. Below you'll find a letter from Capra to Mayer, shortly written after their meeting. Capra couldn't make a deal with MGM, and Meet John Doe was eventually released through Warner Brothers. The only time Capra did work with MGM was in 1948. MGM released State of the Union, a production of Capra's second production company Liberty Films, which produced only two films (It's a Wonderful Life (1946) being the other one).

Source: schulson autographs

Transcript:

January 24, 1940

Mr. L.B. Mayer

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios

Culver City, California

Dear L.B.:

As you have advised, we have signed a one-picture deal with Warner Brothers, under extremely favorable terms.

I understand the situation at MGM quite well, and I know why you couldn't push our deal through without causing some concern for the welfare of your company. As a going organization, with one picture under our belt, we will be definitely a producing unit, and perhaps in a better position to talk to you later on. I sincerely hope you will feel the same way about it.

Meantime, I want to thank you for the time and effort you gave to us, and I want you to know that both Bob and I appreciate it deeply. We came away from your conference with a very friendly feeling for you and for MGM, and we know that we are going to stay that way.

I also want to thank you for your advice and help, which has been invaluable to us because, although we have certain ability, we are still neophytes in producing and organization matters, and we are deeply grateful to you for your kindness.

Sincerely,

(signed Frank Capra) 

Louis B. Mayer and Frank Capra with Luise Rainer and Spencer Tracy's wife Louise at the Academy Awards of 1937 (above), and Frank Capra and Robert Riskin (below).