aliciamayer.bsky.social
Mayer family historian. Great-grandniece of Louis B. Mayer. 100 years of MGM! Left social media in 2018. Newly back. Let’s see what happens. (TM attorney in 🇦🇺 so forgive occasional British spelling.) HollywoodEssays.com
218 posts
3,186 followers
95 following
Getting Started
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Haha and funnily enough, neither could great grandma! She either had help at home or had meals delivered from the LA Jewish Home for the Aged.
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Did not know she had a cook book! Here she is with great-grandmother Ida Mayer Cummings and Bob Hope.
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Half way thru Kenneth Turan's book. Am grateful for the more balanced portrayal of LB but in a brief NPR interview, Turan repeats old Judy Garland allegations. Garland said she regretted making those claims, that LB Mayer only ever treated her as a daughter, which her children have echoed.
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The question was asked if the Warner brothers crossed paths w/ Louis B. Mayer & Irving Thalberg. Turan brings up Ben Hecht re Thalberg but Mayer's sister Ida Mayer Cummings & Rabbi Magnin involved them all via LA's Jewish Home for the Aged fundraising. Magnin also thru the Wilshire Boulevard Temple.
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Thank you and same here, Chris!
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You should be proud! It's an excellent book. You brought the Warner brothers to life and of course their studio's history, including its remarkable film legacy. Here's Rabbi Edgar Magnin presenting Harry Warner w/ a special gift, alongside wife Rea Warner and my great-grandmother Ida Mayer Cummings.
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How nice, thank you!
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Peter Freuchen has been on my mind since running into this head shot of his taken by George Hurrell and signed to my grandmother Mitzi Cummings (niece of LB Mayer). He was briefly at MGM when he made Eskimo (1933). Thank you to @machspeed.bsky.social for pointing out that today is his birthday.
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Wow, so it is! Happy birthday to the remarkable Peter Freuchen, shown here with his 3rd wife Dagmar Cohn in 1947. This incredible photo was taken by Irving Penn.
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Oh hey @crosby-fairall.bsky.social ❤️!
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I haven't seen this film, but I have a hunch it probably hasn't aged well...
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All very helpful. Yikes, I don’t do any of that. Many thanks.
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He's an IT guy so hopefully he'll share his secrets!
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Wow! You must say nice things to them?
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Noooo, hang in there! Don't go to the dark side!
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Wow, that tracks with my experience. First Mac lasted yrs & yrs & could now be a museum exhibit. Subsequent Macs lasted 3-4 years max. Current laptop was refurbished during covid & it's still going, thank goodness. Definitely keeping the dusty pink girlie desktop now in case I have to replace it...
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Agree! My laptop died during covid but I needed to be up & running the very next day, so I bought the only computer they had available - a dusty pink desktop! - which I used for a month or so & has been gathering dust ever since. I keep thinking I should sell it but what if my laptop dies again?
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Ugh, so frustrating! Hope this is resolved swiftly 🤞🏼
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Could that be a more perfect Charo pose? How about Mary Mann's white gloves? In 2017 I visited the LA Jewish Home & scanned in hundreds of photos inc this one. They also generously gave me a portrait of great-grandma Ida Mayer Cummings, shown here at the unveiling with her younger brother LB Mayer.
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I'm so excited for @lauriestories.bsky.social's book! Earhart has been my idol since I was a kid & I eventually learned to fly. I often thought of her flying a plane w/ far more primitive controls than the little Piper I flew, which was pretty low tech. Can't wait to read The Aviator & The Showman!
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Of course, Marion Davies had a decades long relationship with publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst and lived just minutes away from Uncle Louis's beachside mansion which featured a gargoyle on a plinth that was a gift from Hearst. I mean what does one mogul give to another but a gargoyle?
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My pleasure! Yes, the patent story was one of those weird finds that can only come from a deep dive.
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Here's something very special: Mitzi receiving orders via telegram from her Photoplay editor Helen Gilmore to write a certain kind of story with a specific angle about the Eleanor Powell/Glenn Ford wedding of October 1943. Here's the story I wrote when I found it. hollywoodessays.com/2016/01/13/t...
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Thank you so much, Chris. So wish I could teleport into your class! Nudge received ;) I'd write about her and great-grandma Ida. They lived in Uncle Louis's shadow (they all did, of course) but they contributed hugely in their own ways.
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Mitzi would be delighted to know she lives on this way. She wrote in many ways: these Hollywood mag columns (of which there were several), at MGM, as her mother Ida Mayer Cummings's speech writer, reports for the LA Jewish Home for the Aged, as a screenwriter, and a huge volume of personal letters.
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Yep, she was a real piece of work. She made money off the very people she reviled. It's a shame she got so far. Ugh.
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Yes antisemite and all around extremely unpleasant person but then I guess that follows.
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What a nice surprise @chrisyogerst.bsky.social! Thanks for including my glamorous grandmother Mitzi Cummings. Her breezy columns in movie mags like Photoplay sound just like her. She was on a first name basis with the stars and filmmakers so had remarkable access. She was one of them but also not.
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Thank you so much! 💓 I guess the relevance is that for this community it’s important material. For me it resonates bc it relates to my own family members so I couldn’t understand why anyone else cared. But what you’re saying is it’s part of the larger story and history so it matters. That’s helpful.
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Glad you liked it. I thought it was crazy when I discovered it and wondered how I'd never heard of that time in George Burns's life.
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Charlie, here's the story that goes with that photo.
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Love that. It is a joyful photo, that's for sure.
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Thank you so much. I note your profile mentions TCM as a "soothing refuge" and maybe that's part of the answer for me :)
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Thank you, Charlie. I'm curious though, what makes it relevant?
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The whole social media enterprise feels very different from when I left. More like a series of pitched street battles and constant stream of consciousness but maybe it was always so...? Definitely feeling "what is the point of all this"...?
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Thanks, Paul :)
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Totally agree
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An important book. It definitely deserves more attention.
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Thank you very much. Hope you’re ok though. Stay safe
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Absolutely. It's beyond understanding. And thank you -- will do.
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Ah interesting. My mother was saying that it looks like all of her childhood neighborhoods have been lost. The scale of loss is just unimaginable.