Hunt Stromberg

A former sportswriter and publicist from Louisville, Stromberg broke into pictures in the silent era, briefly producing and directing independently before joining the young MGM in 1925. He climbed quickly into the studio's inner circle of supervising producers — the "Big Four" that included Irving Thalberg — and stayed near the top for fifteen years.

Stromberg had an unusually wide range and a showman's confidence. He produced the sparkling Thin Man series, whose William Powell and Myrna Loy turned murder into champagne comedy and defined screen sophistication for a generation. He mounted the plush Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy operettas — Naughty Marietta, Rose-Marie, Maytime — that were among the era's biggest draws. And he oversaw prestige spectacle: The Great Ziegfeld, which won the Best Picture Oscar for 1936, the sumptuous Marie Antoinette with Norma Shearer, and the all-female ensemble comedy The Women.

He was a hands-on producer who worked scripts hard and spent freely on production value, trusting audiences to reward glamour and wit. In 1942 he left MGM to produce independently, but away from the studio's resources his output faded, and a worsening dependence on painkillers dimmed his final working decade. He retired in the early 1950s.

Stromberg's name has slipped from popular memory in a way his hits have not — the films he made remain touchstones of MGM's most glittering years. He died in 1968.