Benjamin Thau (15 December 1898 – 5 July 1983) was an American businessman who became vice-president of the Hollywood film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), a subsidiary of the Loew's theater chain.

[1] Born to a Jewish family,[2][3] Thau started his career as a vaudeville booking agent for Keith's and the Orpheum Circuit.

[6] Thau belonged to Mayer's executive team, called "the college of cardinals", along with Eddie Mannix, Lawrence Weingarten and Hunt Stromberg.

"[8] In 1938 Thau, along with other executives, agreed to produce a film version of Erich Maria Remarque's classic novel Three Comrades, but watered down the script to avoid anything that could offend Germany's Nazi government.

[11] Dore Schary wrote in his 1979 memoirs, "Ben Thau was and is smooth and cool, and in a short time I asked myself, “When will Benny thaw?” He never did.

The director and producer Gottfried Reinhardt recalled that at one time Thau explained to Garbo that if she accepted a sizable salary reduction she would move into a lower tax bracket and receive the same net pay.

[15] When MGM first approached Rosalind Russell for a screen test in the early 1930s she was not enthusiastic, remembering poor treatment at her audition for Universal.

[20] Benny Thau was to remain the "only MGM executive" she fully trusted during subsequent years, because, according to Alexander Walker, "he had, out of kindly habit, made the gesture that showed her she was loved".

[21] Thau remembered her as a "little dark-haired beauty ... [with] those strange and lovely eyes that gave the face its central focus, oddly powerful in someone so young.

[24] The year 1956 was a turbulent one at MGM, the result of poor financial performances of some of its films, leading to the resignation of long standing president Nicholas Schecnk, eventually replaced in November 1956 by Joseph Vogel.

[26] [27] [28] Thau's executive team would include Eddie Mannix, J.J. Cohn, producer Lawrence Weingarten, story editor Kenneth MacKenna, lawyer Saul Rittenberg and Marvin Sehenck, most of whom carried over from the Schary regime.

Of these were 15 films for immediate release made under the Schary regime, including Raintree County, Designing Woman, The Vintage, The Little Hut, This Could Be the Night, Something of Value, The Seventh Sin and Man on Fire.

Planned films to be made by MGM included The Brothers Karamazov, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Gigi, Some Came Running, Ben Hur, The Journey, Jailhouse Kid (which became Jailhouse Rock), Merry Andrew, The Wreck of the Mary Dreare directed by Alfred Hitchcock and The Boyfriend.

[40][41] As the producer Pandro S. Berman was busy on The Brothers Karamazov, he let Thau, then head of the studio, and Abe Lastfogel, president of the William Morris Agency, decide the cast.

Of the twenty films produced in house in 1956–57, all but one lost money, but Thau turned a loss of almost $500,000 in 1957 into a profit of $5 million the next year.

Others greenlit were The Reluctant Debutante, The Journey, Party Girl, The End of the World, Green Mansions, The Village of the Damnded produced by Milo Frank (this was later made in England), Company of Cowards produced by Edmund Grainger, Some Came Running, Northwest by North from Hitchcock, The Boyfriend with Debbie Reynolds (this was not made until 1971), Hell Below with Glenn Ford, Devil May Care with Frank Sinatra, High School Confidential, Never So Few from Sam Zimbalist, I Thank a Fool with Ingrid Bergman, and The Bells Are Ringing starring Judy Holliday.

Films it was releasing in 1958 were The Brothers Karamazov, Merry Andrew, Gigi, Saddle with Wind, Seven Hills of Rome, Underwater Warrior, The Safecracker, The Sheepman, I Accuse, The Law and Jake Wade, Tom Thumb, Cry Terror, The High Cost of Loving and Handle with Care.

The studio's new contract players included Dean Jones, Gena Rowlands, John Cassavetes and Claire Kelly and at that stage stories were agreed upon by Thau, Eddie Mannix and Kenneth Mackenna.

The studio was about to start filming on Ben Hur, The Journey, The Reluctant Debutante, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Green Mansions.

In September 1958 Thau sold his entire block of Loew's stock - 11,300 shares - leading to speculation he might leave the company.

[63] In January 1959 MGM listed the films they would be releasing: The Journey, Night of the Quarter Moon, First Man into Space, The Mating Game, Nowhere to Go, Green Mansions, Ask Any Girl, The World, The Flesh and the Devil, Watusi, Count Your Blessings, The Big Operator, North by Northwest, The Best Generation, Tarzan the Ape Man, For the First Time, The Scapegoat and The Angry Hills.

(The line up for 1959-60 was Bells Are Ringing, Never So Few, Strike Heaven on the Face, Say It With Music, Lady L, Travels with Jamie McPheeter, The Elsie Janis Story, Home from the Hill, Please Don't Eat the Daisies, The Wreck of the Mary Dreare Cimarron, I Thank a Fool, Bridge to the Sun and It Started with a Kiss.

[1] Benny Thau died in the Motion Picture Home, Los Angeles, in July 1983, after a crippling heart attack.