Mayer, along with fellow movie moguls Irving Thalberg, Carl Laemmle and the Warner brothers, helped bankroll the cavernous Wilshire Boulevard Temple, which debuted in 1929 as the cornerstone of the largest Jewish congregation west of Chicago.

NPR: $150 Million Reboot For Hollywood Temple To Stars

By contrast, the Consul General in Stuttgart, Samuel Honaker, made the visa process "unnecessarily hard, " at least according to letters from Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal Pictures and an ardent rescuer, to U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull.

WSJ: A Tortuous Road to Refuge | Against the Odds | Museum of Jewish Heritage | By Julia M. Klein

Indeed, just rehabbing the existing building would have been cheaper, Leder noted, but that wouldn't have upheld the vision that Mayer, the Warner brothers, Laemmle and the others had when they moved a congregation founded downtown in 1862 to the edge of a barley field and laid the foundation for what would become one of the city's most vibrant areas.

NPR: $150 Million Reboot For Hollywood Temple To Stars