Editing Irving Thalberg (section)

==== Bad decisions and missed opportunities ====
Thalberg felt he had his "finger on the pulse of America. I know what people will do and what they won't do," he said.<ref name="friedrich1997">{{cite book | title=City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in 1940s | publisher=University of California Press | author=Friedrich, Otto | year=1997 | edition=reprint | location=Berkeley and Los Angeles | pages=[https://archive.org/details/cityofnetsportra00frie/page/16 16–17] | isbn=0-520-20949-4 | url-access=registration | url=https://archive.org/details/cityofnetsportra00frie/page/16 }}</ref> His judgment was not always accurate, however. Thalberg's bringing Broadway productions to the screen to develop higher picture standards sometimes resulted in "studied" acting or "stagey" sets, notes Flamini.<ref name=Flamini />{{rp|6}} In 1927, after the successful release of the first full-length talking picture, ''[[The Jazz Singer]]'' (1927), he nevertheless felt that talking pictures were a fad. Thalberg likewise did not think that color would replace black-and-white in movies.<ref name=Vieira-1 />{{rp|71}}

When an assistant protested against a script that envisioned a love scene in Paris with an ocean background, Thalberg refused to make changes, saying "We can't cater to a handful of people who know Paris."{{r|friedrich1997}} A more serious distraction to Thalberg's efforts was his obsession with making his wife Norma Shearer a prominent star, efforts which sometimes led to "overblown and overglamorous" productions.<ref name=Flamini />{{rp|7}} Thalberg himself admitted to his obsession years later when he told a fellow producer: "You're behaving like I did with Norma. I knew positively that she could play anything. It's a kind of romantic astigmatism that attacks producers when they fall for an actress."<ref name=Vieira-1 />{{rp|201}}