Leo the Lion (MGM)

Leo the Lion is the mascot for the Hollywood film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and one of its predecessors, Goldwyn Pictures, featured in the studio's production logo, which was created by the Paramount Studios art director Lionel S. Reiss.

Since 1916 (and when the studio was formed by the merger of Samuel Goldwyn's studio with Marcus Loew's Metro Pictures and Louis B. Mayer's company in 1924), there have been seven different lions used for the MGM logo. Although MGM has referred to all of the lions used in their trademark as "Leo the Lion", only the current lion, in use since 1957, was actually named "Leo".

Slats, trained by Volney Phifer, was the first lion used for the newly formed studio. Born at the Dublin Zoo on March 20, 1919 and originally named Cairbre, Slats was used on all black-and-white MGM films between 1924 and 1928. The original logo was designed by Howard Dietz and used by the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation studio from 1916 to 1924 (see left). Goldwyn Pictures was ultimately absorbed into the partnership that formed MGM, and the first MGM film that used the logo was He Who Gets Slapped (1924). Dietz stated that he decided to use a lion as the company's mascot as a tribute to his alma mater Columbia University, whose athletic teams' nickname is The Lions; he further added that Columbia's fight song, "Roar, Lion, Roar", inspired him to make the lion roar. Ironically, unlike his successors, Slats did nothing but look around in the logo (as did the Goldwyn Pictures lion), making him the only MGM lion not to roar (although it is rumored that Volney Phifer trained the lion to growl on cue, despite the fact that synchronized sound would not officially be used in motion pictures until 1927). Slats died in 1936; however, his hide is currently on display at the McPherson Museum in McPherson, Kansas.

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