SPRING THAW-BERG by Dennis Doph

because why? 67

Once there was a film executive
named Irving Thalberg
Certainly (most certainly)
Irving was not a very Tall Berg
Though the Thalbergs did not like their Big
and Small Bergs to mix
Irving topped out his Small Berg
at five foot six

Irving was blessed by having the richest
of film biz femmelies
Namely his Uncle Carl and all
the fucking Laemmles
In their quest for filmic excellence
and femmily dispersal
They created their own Valley Kingdom
known as Universal

What Uncle Carl and all the Laemmles
did not have much of
Was smarts about what audiences wanted;
the such and such of
Which Our Hero had his little Jewish finger on;
in style unswerving
dog and horse movies were the specialty
of Little Irving.

Then as sound came to the Hollywoods
Irving continued to linger on
Split a contract with RKO and Columbia
with Miss Irene Dunne
Like a feverish dybbuk suffering from overload
and sometime Player
Irving shifted his slight hairy package over
to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

For he had met someone who could not be dearer
Doll of all the Metro-Goldwyn Dollies
Crosseyed little Norma Shearer
Was Queen of all Louis Mayer's Follies
At a teadance at the notorious
Chateau on Franklin
Norma left a bit of Shearer Spoor
to get Irv crankin'

Irving's tiny penis achieved a Thaw-Berg
which was quite immense
Joan Crawford's tales of this suddenly
mighty penis
Put every Metro Shtarker on the fence
Norma put her brand on this tiny Thaw-Berg
got some diamond rocks
While her totally crazy sister Athole
put her brand on Howard Hawks.

Joan worked the bosses and the secretaries
in her flossy Chateau eyrie
She had the back of every dyke at Metro
and every fairy
Her rival Norma got her golden band
from Charming Irv
Stardom took her by her chubby hand
to Live to Serve

All of Metro-Goldwyn perked
like a kettle on a stove
Norma and Joanie worked and worked
to make all the Machers love
Every quirk and every raised eyebrow
and every inanity
Norma got a bun in the oven and drove Irv
to near insanity.

Norma left enterprising Joan behind
in the Damsel Park
Started making sex comedies in kind
with that stud Gable Clark
Joanie took Fairbanks Junior by the hand
in her stroking claw
Soon she had Junior -- and Senior too
in a dribbling Spring Thaw

for at Metro (Boy Oh Boy!)
all this intimacy connects
Soon the woman-fancier Myrna Loy
was cashing Perfect Woman checks
In the middle of these steamin' chicks
and Dancing Daughters
They even had room for some Bull Dicks
like Ethel Waters.

Irving moved through his
short little life
Norma glittering like a Jew-ell
Norma sure as fuck kept the dew
upon Irv's too-ell

then in the summer of '36
Norma played Juliet opposite Leslie Howard
While Norma and Les were making out like bandits
Irving unflowered
In this Metro-Goldwyn-Mayerling
and Son-in-Lawberg
Soon there was nothing left -- not anything
of Irving Thalberg.

But in the foaming Metro party
Everybody had some fun
Selznick rose like Commedia dell'Arte
and a Grandson-in-Law-of-a-Gun

Norma and Joan and even Ethel
were on the back burner
Mervyn le Roy had each broth of a boy
getting his rocks off on Lana Turner.

As the penises rose Lana's retrousse nose
Could not have nosed it better
And nuzzled Gable in her shorty
In the Metro-Goldwyn-Mawberg
There was never a Spring Thaw-Berg
like 1940.