ROCKFORD — Decades before Robert Greenblatt ran NBC Entertainment, he stepped into a movie theater in Rockford to watch a musical documentary that gave him a new vision for what he wanted to do with his life.
It was 1974’s “That’s Entertainment,” which celebrated MGM studio’s 50th anniversary, and Greenblatt said his teenage self was blown away by the idea that one movie studio could be responsible for so many classic pictures. He was about 14 years old and dreamed of becoming the next Louis B. Mayer, the famed film producer who co-founded MGM in 1924.
“I never thought it was really going to happen, but I also didn’t think it wouldn’t,” Greenblatt said this week on a Zoom call with local reporters. “Years and years and years later I had a job working at MGM, working in the same building that I saw in that movie when I was kid. It never lost its effect on me.”…