Irving Thalberg - Personal Life

Personal Life

During his few years with Universal while living in New York, Thalberg had become romantically involved with Carl Laemmle’s daughter, Rosabelle. Still in his early twenties and later spending most of his time in Los Angeles, his feelings toward her were no longer as strong. Flamini suspects that this may have affected his position at Universal and partly caused his decision to leave the company. " The Laemmles prayed that Irving would marry Rosabelle," notes Flamini. "They wanted their sons to be educated and their daughters to marry nice Jewish boys."

Less than a year after he and Mayer took charge of the newly-created MGM studios, and still only twenty-five years old, Thalberg suffered a serious heart attack due to overwork. Mayer also became aware of Thalberg’s congenital heart problems and now worried about the prospect of running MGM without him. Mayer also became concerned that one of his daughters might become romantically involved, and told them so:

He’s attractive. I don’t want you girls getting any ideas in your heads, ever. . . . I don’t want to have a young widow on my hands.

Thalberg, aware of Mayer’s feelings, made it a point of never giving too much attention to his daughters at social events.

One of Thalberg’s traits was his ability to work long hours into the night with little sign of fatigue. According to Vieira, Thalberg believed that as long as his mind was active in his work and he was not bored, he would not feel tired. Thalberg, who often got by with only five hours of sleep, felt that most people could get by with less than they realized:

Most people sleep too much. They think they must have eight or nine or ten hours' sleep, and if they don’t get it, they think they ought to be tired.

To keep his mental faculties at peak, he would read philosophical books by Bacon, Epictetus, or Kant. “They stimulate me. I’d drop out of sight in no time if I didn’t read and keep up with current thought—and the philosophers are brain sharpeners.”

During the early 1930s, Thalberg was ambivalent about political events in Europe. While he feared Nazism and the rise of Hitler, he also feared Communism. At the time, notes Vieira, “given a choice between communism and fascism, many Americans—including Thalberg—would prefer the latter.” Thalberg stated his opinion:

When a dictator dies, his system dies, too. But if communism is allowed to spread, it will be harder to root out. What is at stake is our whole way of life, our freedom. They will have vanished forever.

When others suggested that many Jews could die in Germany as a result of Nazi anti-Semitism, he replied that in his opinion “Hitler and Hitlerism will pass.” On one occasion, Catholic Prince Lowenstein of Germany, who himself had almost been captured before fleeing Germany, told him: “Mr. Thalberg, your own people are being systematically hunted down and rooted out of Germany.” Thalberg suggested that world Jewry should nevertheless not interfere, that the Jewish race would survive Hitler. Within a few years. American film distribution was “choked off” in Germany. Led by Warner Brothers, all American studios eventually closed their German offices.

A few years after he joined MGM, Thalberg began dating actress Norma Shearer, and they married in 1927. The wedding took place in the garden of his rented home at 503 Sunset Boulevard, in Beverly Hills. Rabbi Edgar F. Magnin officiated the private ceremony, with Shearer's bother, Douglas Shearer giving the bride away, and Louis B. Mayer acting as best man. After the wedding, they drove up the coast to Monterey to spend their honeymoon.

After having her second child with Thalberg, Shearer considered retiring from films, but Thalberg was convinced he could continue to find good roles for her and encouraged her to continue acting. She went on to be one of MGM's biggest stars of the 1930s. Their two children were Irving Jr. (1930–1988) and Katherine (1935–2006).