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ocean liner. That was all the camera needed. It was a landscape of bits and pieces.
    No doubt Elizabeth paused to marvel, or at least tried to. "I was terrifically impressed," she'd recall after her first tour of the studio. "The lot was so huge—at that time they were doing maybe thirty films at once and it was teeming with life—people dressed up in Greek clothes, people dressed up as cowboys, people dressed up as apes, and real live movie stars. Of course, everybody, even the extras, looked like movie stars to me."
    In 1943 MGM was a veritable city unto itself. "When I think of MGM," said actress Elinor Donahue, "I think of light and color and flowers and bigness. Everything was just big. " Indeed, more than thirty soundstages on five different lots covered 176 acres. A private police force with nearly fifty officers kept the peace. There was a clinic, a dentist's office, a foundry, a commissary that fed employees at any time of the day. "It was a complete city," said actress Janet Leigh. "You could live there."
    The commissary was surprisingly egalitarian, with extras rubbing elbows with stars, and everyone sipping Mr. Mayer's mother's chicken soup made with matzo balls. "The commissary seemed huge to me," Donahue said. "Years later, when I went back to MGM, it didn't seem quite so big, but for a young girl it was enormous. Lunches were called usually around the same time, so you'd have the whole lot in there. You'd look out and see Judy Garland and Spencer Tracy strolling in from their sets, still in costume. The place was filled with every star. I remember Xavier Cugat coming in carrying his miniature Chihuahua in his pocket."
    The various players sat according to type. "I'm not sure if it was structured that way or if they just naturally gravitated together," Donahue said, "but the younger players sat together, and the western players. The comics were always together, horsing around, always very loud and cutting up. It seemed every day Red Skelton would stand up on top of the table and deliver some routine. Everyone would be laughing."
    George Cukor observed, "I think people don't understand how a place like MGM needed to be fed, sustained, and organized every day." It wasn't just actors, directors, writers, cameramen, and editors who populated the lot, but also hairdressers, manicurists, tailors, musicians, architects, film loaders, electricians, prop men, script girls, sound technicians, bricklayers, painters, cooks, and dozens more. The wardrobe department went on for blocks. Studio press releases boasted that with just one day's notice MGM could costume one thousand extras. That's not even counting the regular background players, "the $75-a-week people with standard contracts," Donahue said, "who came to work every day and were told where to report, what film they'd be in that day. Crowds of people were always moving back and forth across the lot."
    And by 1943 MGM lived up to its claim of being the most star-studded of all the studios. More than sixty top names—from Clark Gable and Katharine Hepburn to top character players like Edmund Gwenn and animal stars like Lassie—headed the Metro roster during the war years.
    Now her mother was telling Elizabeth that she'd be a movie star herself. It all depended on Clarence Brown—and producer Mervyn LeRoy and, of course, Mr. Mayer—signing her for National Velvet . Brown, to his great relief, finally managed to shake off his pursuers that day, but the passion they'd displayed stayed with him. "What impressed me most," he said, "was [Elizabeth's] conviction that the picture ... would provide a vehicle for her eventual stardom." Of course, it was her industrious mother whispering in her ear every morning who convinced the eleven-year-old that National Velvet— and stardom—were her fate.
    In these years it was hard to discern where Sara ended and Elizabeth began. One movie-magazine writer immediately recognized the "spiritual affinity" between mother and daughter