Samuel Marx on AllMovie

American producer and screenwriter Samuel Marx first worked as a journalist in newspapers and trade magazines in New York before coming to Hollywood in the 1930s to work as a story editor for MGM where he supervised a stellar staff of writers that included William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Dorothy Parker. It was Marx who helped MGM acquire the rights to stories such as Mutiny on the Bounty (made into a film in 1935); he also wrote original screenplays for films such as A Night at the Opera (1935). Following Irving Thalberg's death in 1936, Marx became a producer and was behind a number of popular films, including Lassie Come Home (1943). During the '50s he began working as an executive producer for Desilu television productions where he was behind shows and films such as The General Electric Hour. During the 1970s, he returned to writing and produced several fascinating inside looks of Hollywood and the film industry with books like Mayer and Thalberg: The Make-Believe Saints (1975) and Deadly Illusions: Jean Harlow and the Murder of Paul Bern (1990). Marx also helped Hollywood historians with their research for television shows. One such show, the TNT special series MGM: When the Lion Roars (1992), was telecast in 1992 during the month Marx died.