At that time Phifer retired to his farm in Gillette, New Jersey, where he kept other animals used on Broadway. However, it is rumored that Phifer trained the lion to growl on cue, despite the fact that synchronized sound would not be used in motion pictures until 1927. Unlike his successors, Slats did nothing but look around in the logo, making him the only MGM lion not to roar. The first MGM film that used the logo was He Who Gets Slapped (1924). Born at the Dublin Zoo on March 20, 1919, and originally named Cairbre ( Gaelic for 'charioteer' ), Slats was used on all black-and-white MGM films between 19. Slats, trained by Volney Phifer, was the first lion used in the branding of the newly formed studio. Names of the first 2 lions used for the Goldwyn Pictures logos are unknown.ġ923-1924 (seen in Wild Oranges) Slats (1924–1928) Slats, used from 1924 to 1928 Dietz was most directly inspired by the university's fight song, ' Roar, Lion, Roar'. The lion was chosen as the company's mascot in 1916 by publicist Howard Dietz, as a tribute to his alma mater Columbia University, whose mascot is a lion.

History Goldwyn Pictures lions (1917–1924) In 2021, MGM introduced a new CGI logo which features a lion partially based on Leo. Mayer's company in 1924, several different lions have been used for the MGM logo.Īlthough MGM is referred to all of the lions used in their trademark as 'Leo the Lion', only the lion in use since 1957 (a total of 66 years), was actually named 'Leo'. Since 1917, and through the time the studio was formed by the merger of Samuel Goldwyn's studio with Marcus Loew's Metro Pictures and Louis B. Reiss, who served as art director at Paramount Pictures. Leo the Lion is the mascot for the Hollywood film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and one of its predecessors, Goldwyn Pictures.

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