Born in 1885 in Minsk, Russia. Emigrated to New York as a child, and then moved to Canada, where his dad sold junk door-to-door. Eventually this built up into a profitable scrap metal business, and Louis set up his own dealership in Boston, where he got married in 1904. In 1907 he bought an old rundown cinema, and by 1914 he owned the largest cinema chain in New England. He formed his own production company in 1917, which was merged with the Goldwyn company in 1924 to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, or MGM, which he ran until 1951. He helped create some of the best Hollywood movies of the period. He died in 1957.