This book began with the image of Thalberg flipping a coin in the air. The introduction argued that the number of interpretations of this single act represented the desire to understand a figure so integral to film history and popular culture. Now, after exploring Thalberg's significance as a theorist of film production, the continual back-and-forth of the coin offers all the more allegorical resonance. In so tracing the evolution of his vision for popular filmmaking across industrial and technical shifts, as well as across a number of stars and films, these analyses have followed Thalberg's trajectory from the historical to the theoretical; the “dream factory” of MGM to the dream worlds of his motion pictures. But here, at the conclusion of this work, the motion of the coin runs parallel to a final journey for Thalberg: that one between the past and present of cinema. Why, and how, does Thalberg still matter today?

Martine Beugnet has noted that “the question of the multiple origins and genealogies of the medium of the moving image” (2015: 200) is one that preoccupies scholars, particularly in the digital age. Equally fascinating is discerning a figure such as Thalberg's role in those intertwined histories—not only in terms of the medium itself, but also in the industrialization of filmmaking. He helped to found one of the greatest studios in film history, and as its head of production refined—and in certain cases pioneered—processes of star-making and storytelling, editing and sound technology. Thalberg collaborated on the drafting of the Production Code that defined an entire era; he established a relationship with his audience through previews and retakes. In 1932, Fortune posited that “[Thalberg] is what Hollywood means by MGM” (“Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer” 1976: 257); now, in the 2000s, a question to consider is what Thalberg still means to Hollywood.

Complicating this is the strength of the Thalberg mythology, which emerged almost immediately after his death and has at times threatened to overshadow the gravitas of his work as a producer. The Boy Wonder grew into the intelligent producer; he, in turn, became a figure of romance evoked in fiction and historical accounts alike.