Film lovers have long heard of the legendary names that built Hollywood into a global entertainment empire - Goldwyn, Mankiewicz, Laemmle, Mayer, Loews. But it was The Schenck Brothers, a ruthless pair of Bowery boys, who worked their way up to launch the Hollywood studio system, creating a lasting legacy of 'star maker machinery" while simultaneously breaking all the business rules. MOGULS: The Lives and Times of Film Pioneers Nicholas and Joseph Schenck (Sept. 24, 2024) is co-authored by Producers Guild of America member and film director Craig Singer, and Brooklyn-based writer Michael Benson (Gangsters vs. Nazis). MOGULS is a noirish, incredible Hollywood history. The Schenck brothers held controlling interests in three major studios: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Twentieth Century-Fox, and United Artists (UA). But chances are you've never heard of them because they preferred to run their global empire behind closed doors. Nick was Louis B. Mayer's boss. Think Mank meets Chinatown and LA Confidential, with a heaping dose of Hail, Caesar! and The Godfather II (of course). Twice as powerful as the Warner Brothers, the Schencks were immigrants who quietly ran Hollywood out of the spotlight, bringing film into a world of blazing color. They were as American as jazz and baseball, as flashy as Gatsby, as cunning as gangsters, who controlled a third of the motion picture industry at their height - and were some of the richest men in America.