A long time ago, in a universe far, far away, in a place called Hollywood, the engines of entertainment genius that were the movie studios, and the actors who were under contract to them, celebrated their love of America, and enthusiastically indulged in overt displays of patriotism.
L.B. Mayer (b. Lazar Meir) of MGM, a pioneer of the motion-picture industry, and the man who invented the star system, adopted July 4th as his birthday. Scores of Hollywood historians get all snarky about Mayer’s birthday, claiming that he conveniently changed his birthday in order to cash in on a public identification with America.
What these historians fail to recognize is that Mayer probably did not know the date of his birth.