Nicknamed the “Boy Wonder,” Irving G. Thalberg was running Universal Pictures at the age of twenty, and he cofounded Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at twenty-four. Between 1924 and 1936, he supervised 400 memorable movies, making stars of Lon Chaney, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, John Gilbert, and Greta Garbo. By the time of his death at thirty-seven, Thalberg had lifted film to the level of fine art. In this groundbreaking book, Mark A. Vieira draws on newly discovered interviews and production records; the unpublished autobiography of Thalberg’s wife, superstar Norma Shearer; and a treasure trove of unseen images to vividly recount the making of Ben-Hur, The Big Parade, Tarzan the Ape Man, Grand Hotel, Mutiny on the Bounty, A Night at the Opera, and scores of other classics. Hollywood Dreams Made Real is a fresh portrait of the prime architect of the studio system and an enchanting tour of the magical world he created.

Photographer-historian Vieira is a particularly good example of the fan as writer. He is more literate (misusing only a handful of words herein), factually scrupulous (though, contra page 164, Faulkner’s “Turn About” isn’t a novel), careful (though “The unexpected success of Stroheim’s films” is broached on page 12 sans explanation of who Stroheim was), and stylistically consistent than most other pictorial historians of Hollywood. Other than on matters photographic, however, he is no critic. In the visually ravishing Greta Garbo (2005), he asserted the artistic distinction of the actress’ films but couldn’t argue the matter, and here he makes similar claims for the 400 films overseen by producer Irving Thalberg (1899–1936) and again makes no case, except to stress his subject’s desire to marry the best of stage and cinematic aesthetics and his remarkable ability to read popular taste, which assured that M-G-M made money every one of his dozen years with it. All that aside, Vieira’s account of Thalberg’s career is authoritative, and his choice of photos to illustrate it gorgeous almost beyond words. --Ray Olson