During this time Mayer, now the highest paid person in the United States at over one and a quarter million dollars per year, expanded his conservative Hollywood powerbase and became the California state chairman of the Republican party.

Though Mayer wasn't well-read, and it was said he hated intellectualism, he certainly had his finger on the pulse of common taste. His jingoistic attitudes espousing the virtues of 'Mom, apple pie and America' were an ideal fit for the times. Though Samuel Goldwyn, the G in MGM, was quoted as saying, "Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union," Mayer insured that his morality and ideology found their way to the screen. One has to wonder what he would have thought of later MGM classics like Midnight Cowboy, Silence Of The Lambs, The Graduate and Network.

Mayer died in 1957, just a few years after being ousted from the company that he had run with an iron fist for close to thirty years. Though MGM has continued to produce modern classics, and owns one of the most extensive film libraries in the world, there can be no doubt that the studio has diminished somewhat from its heyday when it was the largest and busiest studio in the United States.