[2][3] It hired a number of well-known actors as contract players—its slogan was "more stars than there are in heaven"—and soon became Hollywood's most prestigious filmmaking company, producing popular musical films and winning many Academy Awards.

[4] He hired new management, reduced the studio's output to about five films per year, and diversified its products, creating MGM Resorts International as a Las Vegas–based hotel and casino company (which it later divested in the 1980s).

[citation needed] Three years later, an increasingly unprofitable MGM was bought by Kirk Kerkorian, who slashed staff and production costs, forced the studio to produce low-quality, low-budget fare, and then ceased theatrical distribution in 1973.

MGM included a sequence made in Technicolor's superior new three-color process, a musical number in the otherwise black-and-white The Cat and the Fiddle (1934), starring Jeanette MacDonald and Ramon Novarro.

The studio then produced a number of three-color short subjects including the musical La Fiesta de Santa Barbara (1935); the first complete Technicolor feature was Sweethearts (1938) with MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, the earlier of the popular singing team's two films in color.

[35] Within one year, beginning in 1942, Mayer released his five highest-paid actresses from their MGM contracts: Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Myrna Loy, Jeanette MacDonald and Norma Shearer.

Lavish musicals were Schary's focus, and hits like Easter Parade (1948) and the popular films of Mario Lanza (including The Toast of New Orleans (1950) and The Great Caruso (1951)) helped keep MGM profitable.

In 1958, MGM released what is generally considered its last great musical, Arthur Freed's Cinemascope color production of Gigi, starring Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, and Louis Jourdan.

[40] The year 1957 also marked the end of MGM's animation department, as the studio determined it could generate the same amount of revenue by reissuing older cartoons as it could by producing and releasing new ones.

[41] William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, by then the heads of the MGM cartoon studio, took most of their unit and made their own company, Hanna-Barbera Productions, a successful producer of television animation.

(Laurence Olivier's version of Hamlet was shown on prime time network TV a month later, but split in half over two weeks, and the 1950 film, The Titan: Story of Michelangelo was telecast by ABC in 1952, but that was a documentary.)

[43] In 1961, MGM resumed the release of new Tom and Jerry shorts, and production moved to Rembrandt Films in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) under the supervision of Gene Deitch, who had been hired away from Terrytoons.

In 1959, MGM enjoyed what is quite probably its greatest financial success of later years, with the release of its nearly four-hour Technicolor epic Ben–Hur, a remake of its 1925 silent film hit, loosely based on a true story—despite being adapted from the novel by General Lew Wallace.

Starring Charlton Heston in the title role, the film was critically acclaimed, and won 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, a record that held until Titanic matched it in 1997 and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King also did in 2003.

However the company's time was taken up fighting off proxy attacks by corporate raiders,[46] and then MGM backed another series of box office failures, including the musical remake of Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969) and Ryan's Daughter (1970).

As for film-making, that part of the company was bleeding money and was quickly and severely downsized under the supervision of James T. Aubrey Jr. With changes in its business model including fewer pictures per year, more location shooting and more distribution of independent productions, MGM's operations were reduced.

Under Melnick's regime, MGM produced a number of successful films in the 1970s, including Westworld (1973), Soylent Green (1973), The Sunshine Boys (1975), The Wind and the Lion (1975), Network (1976) and Coma (1978).

[83] Danjaq, LLC also began litigation against MGM during this time after Parretti attempted to sell the international TV rights to the James Bond franchise without their knowledge or approval, as a method of financing his buyout of MGM; this in turn caused the planned production of the seventeenth Bond film, Property of a Lady, to grind to a halt (the length of the lawsuit ultimately led to Timothy Dalton's departure from the role and Pierce Brosnan taking over for the seventeenth installment, 1995's GoldenEye).

MGM struck deals with The Weinstein Company (TWC), Lakeshore Entertainment, Bauer Martinez, and many other independent studios, and then announced its plans to release 14 feature films for 2006 and early 2007.

[140] A tentative agreement was signed in Seoul on March 15, 2006, between MGM, South Korea-based entertainment agency Glovit and Busan city officials for a theme park scheduled to open in 2011.

Glovit was expected to find funding and oversee management of the park, while MGM received a licensing agreement making them handle content and overall planning and the option to buy a 5%–10% share.

The list of movies included the likes of modern features such as Rocky, Ronin, Mad Max, and Dances with Wolves, along with more golden-era classics such as Lilies of the Field and The Great Train Robbery.

[155][158] There was some indication that Relativity Media and its financial backer, Elliott Associates (a hedge fund based in New York), had been acquiring MGM debt in an attempt to force the company into involuntary bankruptcy.

[183] In March 2017, MGM announced a multi-year distribution deal with Annapurna Pictures for some international markets and including home entertainment, theatrical and television rights.

[196] In December 2020, MGM began to explore a potential sale of the studio, with the COVID-19 pandemic and the domination of streaming platforms due to the closure of movie theaters as contributing factors.

[201] On February 8, 2022, Paul Thomas Anderson's Licorice Pizza became the studio's first fully produced, marketed and distributed film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture in 33 years, after 1988's Rain Man.

[11] On September 17, 2023, Orion Pictures' American Fiction earned the studio its first win for the People's Choice Award at that year's Toronto International Film Festival.

In April 2024, the studio, in collaboration with Fandango at Home, Rotten Tomatoes and iTunes, offered customers a "100 Essential Movies" bundle of 100 films from its library as part of their centennial for a limited time.

No expense seemed to be spared—from imported Italian marble for MGM's offices, to the company's exclusive use of a private garage, security checkpoint, and elevator bank, all to enable visiting celebrities discreet entry and exit.

[219] Emerging from bankruptcy protection in 2010, MGM announced that it planned to move its headquarters to Beverly Hills as part of an effort to resolve almost $5 billion in debt, since the lease in Century City was not scheduled to expire until 2018.