When the movie business was young and brash, it seemed only fitting that those who ran it were equally liberated from the constraints of respectable behavior. Behind the conservative appearance of Irving Thalberg was an artistic revolutionary – a man whose singular vision and creativity probably did more to shape the future of movies than any single person. And to its credit, “Irving Thalberg: Prince of Hollywood,” the new documentary about Thalberg that premieres tonight at 8 p.m. on Turner Classic Movies, gives proper due to the man whose instinctive love of stars and stories has never been equaled.

It’s stunning to be reminded, at the end of this well-made and instructive 70-minute documentary by Robert Trachtenberg, that Thalberg died at the age of 37; by then he had been the head of production at MGM for more than a decade, and had his hand in so many movies that his death was mourned by the likes of President Roosevelt. He created and nurtured stars like Norma Shearer (who became his wife), Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, Helen Hayes, and the Marx Brothers, and supported the vision of screenwriters like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Anita Loos. Somehow he managed to maneuver directors and writers and actors without being perceived of as an interfering businessman; rather, he was trusted as an innovator and storyteller. Despite his ill health – he’d been a sickly child and never quite recovered his strength – his confidence and attitude shaped the behavior patterns, if not the decisions, of generations of movie executives to come.

It wasn’t as though Thalberg was an infallible arbiter of taste; indeed, he missed the mark on many crucial turning points in moving history, most notably the shift in the 1920s to the sound era. But when he finally acknowledged the trend, the movies he supported – such as “Broadway Melody” and “The Barretts of Wimpole Street” – represented the apotheosis of the form up to that point. When Garbo talked, Thalberg was there to film it. But he also opposed the growth of the craft unions that eventually came to reshape the financial structure of the movie business. That’s where Thalberg’s vision clashed with reality: in not recognizing the inequities that lay at the heart of a huge and growing industry.

In the end it proved to be Thalberg’s greatest weakness, as he obsessively battled with MGM boss Louis B. Mayer for a bigger slice of the studio’s profits. Thalberg was, after all, not an owner of MGM, but merely a hired functionary who as head of production was focused exclusively on making movies – not paying for them. Mayer may have trusted Thalberg’s instincts, but he only grudgingly acquiesced to the executive’s frequent financial demands.

It didn’t matter, though. Thalberg would never tire of developing, making, or fixing movies, in a manner that ought to still inspire those who run studios today. He was an early and passionate supporter of women in the industry; not only were his movies often centered around female stars, but they were written by them as well – a level of female dominance that substantially dissipated in modern, maleoriented moviemaking of the late 20th century. He wasn’t exactly enamored of directors, but nonetheless supported the vision of men like King Vidor, whose experimental 1928 movie “The Crowd” stood as an early example of auteurist vision.

Modern filmmakers will bemoan the Thalberg influence on market testing, and perhaps rightly so; studios today depend excessively on Thalberg’s method of interviewing test audiences to shape their product. But, at least in Mr. Trachtenberg’s telling of the Thalberg story, it seems that Thalberg was selective and intelligent in his use of audience reactions. Like many of the powerful studio chiefs who followed in his wake generations later – men like Robert Evans, or even Michael Eisner – Thalberg was a man who trusted his own fingertips, and made judgments based on his own intuitive sense of story. Mr. Trachtenberg (through interviews with many living members of Thalberg’s extended MGM family) credits Thalberg with improving movies like “The Big House” and “The Champ” by ordering changes according to his gut reactions to early, flawed versions of those eventual hits.

There’s perhaps too little in this account of Thalberg’s life that calls his story into question; Mr. Trachtenberg can be fairly accused of sanitizing the saga of this studio chief for consumption on a channel that worships old movies and those who made them. It might have benefited, too, from more interviews and perspective; the same half-dozen talking heads dominate this documentary for most of its 74 minutes, and to its detriment. Thalberg himself would have wanted more of a through-line for his life story; he probably wouldn’t have tolerated Stanley Tucci’s tedious narration, or Mr. Trachtenberg’s dependence on maudlin melodies.

But Thalberg probably would have approved of this documentary’s worshipful tone – and given the inspiration that his story may provide to the latest generation of corporate goons in charge of Hollywood studios, it’s a forgivable lapse in perspective. It’s inspiring to be reminded that when young men and women somehow get hold of the power so rarely afforded them, they tend to make use of it in extraordinary and unexpected ways. Perhaps it’s time for the people who own Hollywood to again entrust its operation to those who more closely resemble the consumers of its product. Thalberg was the ultimate young, wide-eyed moviegoer, and that was the root of his genius.