Amazon has nabbed a lion in winter.
The retail and entertainment giant announced Wednesday that it would acquire MGM, the storied movie studio for $8.5 billion, giving them the keys to franchises like James Bond and Rocky, and landing the flagging studio around $3 billion more than its valuation. If all this consolidation seems like a product of the 21st century’s rapacious online monopolies, it’s actually true to the spirit of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s multihyphenate origins.
It all started with a few Jews. Samuel Goldwyn (né Goldfish), a Polish immigrant, who founded Goldwyn Pictures in 1916, produced a raft of silent films, standing out from the crowd of upstart studios with a striking production card featuring a real-life lion encircled in a crest.