Metro Pictures Corporation

In the spring of 1921, a war film that no major studio had been willing to back opened to astonished audiences: *The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse*, in which an unknown Italian named Rudolph Valentino performed a tango and quickly became the most desired man in America. The company behind the film was Metro Pictures Corporation — a modest, often undercapitalized distributor with a knack for discovering stars it could rarely afford to retain. This paradox defined Metro's history: it repeatedly uncovered the future of the film industry, only to watch others take credit for it.

A distributor's gamble

Metro Pictures Corporation was founded in early 1915 by a group of regional film-exchange operators — exhibitors and distributors seeking a reliable supply of feature-length films — who combined their interests into a single releasing organization. Richard A. Rowland, a Pittsburgh-based distributor, became its president. Among its founding officers was a young New England theater manager named Louis B. Mayer, who served as the company's secretary before leaving in 1918 to establish his own production company. The timing was fortuitous: the one- and two-reel short was being replaced by the multi-reel feature, and a company capable of consistently supplying theaters with full-length dramas had a viable business. Metro capitalized on this shift, releasing one feature after another and building a national reputation for dependable, mid-budget entertainment.

What Metro lacked was capital and a theater chain — the two key assets that allowed rivals like Famous Players–Lasky to dominate. The film industry was capital-intensive, and Metro's independence left it constantly at risk of losing the very stars and directors its films helped elevate.

Loew, Valentino, and a run of prestige

The turning point came in 1920, when Marcus Loew — owner of the vast Loew's theater chain — acquired Metro to ensure a steady supply of films for his screens. With Loew's financial backing, Metro entered its most successful period. Director Rex Ingram became its go-to filmmaker for prestige projects, and it was Ingram who cast Valentino in *The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse* (1921). The film was a major success and briefly elevated Metro to a position of prominence. Valentino followed with *Camille* (1921), starring the studio's top tragic actress Alla Nazimova, and Ingram's *The Conquering Power* (1921).

As expected, Metro could not retain him: Valentino soon moved to Famous Players–Lasky and achieved even greater fame. However, the prestige run continued under Ingram with lavish costume dramas such as *The Prisoner of Zenda* (1922) and *Scaramouche* (1923), both showcasing another rising star, Ramon Novarro. During these years, Metro also served as the distributor for Buster Keaton's independent features, releasing *Three Ages* and *Our Hospitality* (both 1923) as the comedian was reaching his creative peak.

The merger that erased it

Despite its successes, Metro remained a relatively small operation, and Marcus Loew sought more consistent, large-scale production to fill his theaters. In 1924, he orchestrated the deal that ended Metro's independent existence, merging it with the struggling Goldwyn Pictures Corporation — which brought the expansive Culver City studio and the Leo the Lion logo — and with Louis B. Mayer Pictures, whose founder became studio head alongside the young production prodigy Irving Thalberg. The result, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, became the most powerful studio in Hollywood.

Metro Pictures Corporation ceased to exist in 1924, fully absorbed into MGM. Its films were integrated into the Loew's/MGM catalog, and control of that library passed through the long chain of MGM's corporate history — though, as with much silent-era output, a portion of Metro's early nitrate films is now lost.

Yet Metro is the reason we say "MGM" at all. The first word of the most famous name in studio history belongs to it — a lasting tribute to a small distributor that repeatedly discovered the future of the movies and handed it, without compensation, to others, until those others built an empire on its foundation.