Thalberg was born in
Brooklyn, New York to
German Jewish immigrant parents. He had a bad heart and was plagued with other ailments all his life. Upon completing high school, he was employed by Universal Pictures' New York office, where he worked as personal secretary to legendary studio founder
Carl Laemmle, the boss of
Universal Studios. Irving Thalberg was bright and persistent, and by age 21 was executive in charge of production at Universal City, the studio's
California production site.
He quickly established his tenacity as he battled with
Erich von Stroheim over the length of
Foolish Wives (1922), and controlled every aspect of the production of
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923). In 1924, he left Universal for
Louis B. Mayer Productions, which shortly thereafter linked up with
Metro Pictures Corporation to become
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Thalberg is also famous for creating the "unit production management scheme", by which Hollywood productions are split more definitively into "units", thus spreading out the creative control of a film among producers, directors, etc.
The Big Parade (1925), directed by
King Vidor, was Thalberg's first major triumph at MGM. Until 1932, when he suffered a major
heart attack, he supervised every important studio production, and combined careful preproduction groundwork with prerelease sneak previews which measured audience response.
At the time he joined Metro Pictures, Thalberg was dating actress
Norma Shearer whom he married in 1927. He wanted her to be a stay-at-home mother but she insisted she be given better roles and went on to be MGM's biggest star of the 1930s. They had two children,
Irving Jr. (1930–1988) and Katherine (1935-2006).
Upon Thalberg's illness,
Louis B. Mayer, who had come to resent Thalberg's power and success, replaced him with
David O. Selznick and
Walter Wanger. When he returned to work in 1933, it was as one of the studio's unit producers.
Nonetheless, he helped develop some of MGM's most prestigious ventures, including
Grand Hotel (1932),
Mutiny on the Bounty (1935),
China Seas (1935),
A Night at the Opera (1935) with the
Marx Brothers, San Francisco (1936), and
Romeo and Juliet (1936).
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