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It’s been 101 years since MGM officially went into business Apr. 26, 1924, but some of the biggest problems that confronted the new film studio are still plaguing Hollywood.

NY theatre magnate Marcus Loew formed MGM to provide the volume of movies he needed for his growing theatre circuit. Metro Pictures, which he bought for $3M in 1920, wasn’t delivering good enough product. Buying financially troubled Goldwyn Pictures for $4.7M — plus $600,000 for stock owned by Sam Goldwyn, who’d previously left GP — got him a 46 acre studio in Culver City, a growling lion logo and contracts with top acting & directing talent.

But Loew felt Goldwyn’s management team wasn’t up to running his new studio, so at the advice of his attorney, J. Robert Rubin, he hired indie producer Louis B. Mayer. Loew acquired Mayer, his tiny East L.A. studio and his boy wonder production assistant, Irving Thalberg, for just $76,500.

Mayer & Thalberg soon found they’d inherited two major production problems from Goldwyn. The drama GREED was being finished by the notoriously difficult director Eric von Stroheim. His final cut ran 40 reels — or about six hours of sitting time! After weeks of pressure, he reluctantly trimmed it to 24 reels, running only about 3 1/2 hours. Mayer & Thalberg quickly put an editor to work, chopping off two more reels to prepare their  final cut!

They faced worse problems with the action epic BEN-HUR, based on General Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel, which director Charles Brabin had been shooting in Italy since October 1923. Realizing it was a disaster, Loew had Mayer secretly assemble a new team to take over in Italy — director Fred Niblo, screenwriter Bess Meredyth and Ramon Navarro to replace George Walsh in the title role.

Loew sailed to Italy in July 1926, broke the bad news and supervised the changeover before returning to NY in August. But the new team didn’t do any better, as Mayer found out months later while visiting Rome. He and Thalberg decided the only way out was to shut down production in Italy, build massive new sets at the studio and complete production there. That’s where the legendary chariot race was shot by second unit director B. Reeves Eason and 62 assistant directors using 42 cameras and 200,000 feet of film. The chariot scene was filmed at what’s today the intersection of La Cienega & Venice Boulevards in L.A.

Production finally wrapped in August 1925. BEN-HUR wound up costing $3.95M — over $60M today — making it Hollywood’s most expensive silent movie. Its worldwide release brought MGM $9M, but thanks to Goldwyn Pictures’ very expensive original deal to get the film rights, it didn’t return a profit until it was re-released in 1931.

Demanding directors, bulging budgets, overlong running times and not enough good pictures for theatres — nothing’s changed a century later!