Samuel Goldwyn

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(born July 1879, Warsaw, Pol.died Jan. 31, 1974, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.) U.S. film producer. He emigrated alone at age 13 from Poland to New York, where he worked in a glove factory and became a salesman. He formed a film company with his brother-in-law, Jesse L. Lasky (18801958), and Cecil B. DeMille in 1913. In 1917 he left the company and with Edgar Selwyn established Goldwyn Pictures Corp. By the time that company merged into MGM (1924), he had become an independent producer. He employed top screenwriters, directors, and actors to produce films of high quality, including Wuthering Heights (1939), The Little Foxes (1941), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Guys and Dolls (1955), and Porgy and Bess (1959).

For more information on Samuel Goldwyn, visit Britannica.com.

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Polish-born American film producer Samuel Goldwyn (born 1882) was notable among Holly wood executives for his belief that artistic aspirations need not conflict with commercial success.

Samuel Goldwyn (original surname, Goldfish) was born in Warsaw on Aug. 17, 1882, ran away from home at the age of 9, and arrived in the United States 4 years later. He learned English in night school, supporting himself as a glove salesman.

In 1913 Goldwyn joined vaudeville producer Jesse L. Lasky and theatrical director Cecil B. DeMille in forming the first feature motion picture company on the West Coast. Their initial production, The Squaw Man (1913), was an instant success, as was Carmen (1915). When Lasky and DeMille merged with another film producer in 1916, Goldwyn became an independent producer and distributor. In 1919 he was instrumental in importing the European masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which, despite its box office failure, helped establish Goldwyn's reputation.

Among Goldwyn's early films were Jubilo (1919), a drama about farm life; The Penalty (1922), a story of drug addiction; Stella Dallas (1925), a mature domestic drama; and The Winning of Barbara Worth (1927), the western that introduced Gary Cooper. Goldwyn was credited with making Cooper - and later Laurence Olivier and Danny Kaye - a movie star.

Goldwyn met the challenge of talking pictures by seeking writers who could furnish literate dialogue. Such literary figures as Lillian Hellman, Ben Hecht, Robert E. Sherwood, and Sidney Howard wrote scripts worthy of the talented directors Goldwyn chose. Goldwyn's first talking picture, Bulldog Drummond (1929), was a witty satire by Howard. Arrowsmith (1931), adapted from Sinclair Lewis's novel, was directed by John Ford. The Wedding Night (1935), about a strife-torn New England family, was powerfully directed by King Vidor.

With the highly acclaimed film of Lewis's Dodsworth (1936), Goldwyn began his long association with director William Wyler, collaborating on such excellent films as These Three (1936); Lillian Hellman's adaptation of her controversial play The Children's Hour; Wuthering Heights (1939), brilliantly acted by Laurence Olivier; The Little Foxes (1941), also written by Hellman; and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), which won nine Academy Awards.

Other important Goldwyn productions included The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), Hans Christian Andersen (1952), and Guys and Dolls. His last film was Porgy and Bess (1959). His impact and influence on the movie industry was significant.

Goldwyn was also known for his quick wit and humor. He was reported to have commented, "Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union." When asked about his autobiography, Goldwyn reportedly replied, "I don't think anybody should write his autobiography until after he's dead."

Further Reading

Goldwyn's Behind the Screen (1923) gives historical and autobiographical information. A well-written and entertaining biography is Alva Johnston, The Great Goldwyn (1937). Background information is in Richard Griffith and Arthur Mayer, The Movies: The Sixty-year Story of the World of Hollywood and Its Effect on America (1957), and Richard Schickel, Movies: The History of an Art and an Institution (1964). Arthur Marx chronicles the life of the famed film producer in Goldwyn: the Man Behind the Myth (1976).

Columbia Encyclopedia:

Samuel Goldwyn

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Goldwyn, Samuel (gōl'dwĭn), 1882-1974, American film producer, b. Warsaw, Poland. Goldwyn arrived in the United States in 1896, and with Jesse L. Lasky and Cecil B. De Mille he organized the Jesse Lasky Feature Photoplay Company, coproducing The Squaw Man (1913). In 1916 he formed the Goldwyn Pictures Corp., which later merged with Metro Pictures and the company organized by Louis B. Mayer to become Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). To promote superior screenwriting he founded Eminent Authors Pictures, Inc. (1919). Goldwyn later produced many major films independently, including Wuthering Heights (1939), Guys and Dolls (1955), and Porgy and Bess (1959). He won an Academy Award for The Best Years of Our Lives (1947).

Bibliography

See his Behind the Screen (1923); A. S. Berg, Goldwyn (1989); C. Easton, The Search for Samuel Goldwyn (1989).

Quotes By:

Samuel Goldwyn

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Quotes:

"That's the kind of ad I like, facts, facts, facts."

"A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on."

"I hate a man who always says yes to me. When I say no I like a man who also says no."

"A Hospital is no place to be sick."

"I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it."

"That's the trouble with directors. Always biting the hand that lays the golden egg."

See more famous quotes by Samuel Goldwyn

AMG AllMovie Guide:

Samuel Goldwyn

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Biography

One of the most distinguished of the old Hollywood movie moguls, Samuel Goldwyn probably rose the farthest of them all from the humblest of beginnings. Born Schmuel Gelbfisz in Warsaw, Poland, in 1879, he grew up in a life of dire poverty. At age 16, he headed west on foot, adopted the name Samuel Goldfish, worked, begged, and perhaps also stole to survive, and then got passage on a ship to Nova Scotia. After arriving in New York without a penny to his name, he began working his way up the corporate ladder at a glove company. In the process of living a middle-class American life, he developed one special cultural love and fixation -- the movies, which were just becoming a vehicle for serious entertainment. In 1913, Goldfish and his brother-in-law, the vaudeville producer Jesse L. Lasky, went into business together, forming the Jesse Lasky Feature Photoplay Company; their debut release, The Squaw Man (1914), directed by Cecil B. DeMille, was an enormous hit. Their company had a good three years before it merged with Adolph Zukor's Famous Players studio, thus forming the nucleus of what became Paramount Pictures. Soon after, Goldfish went into partnership with Edgar Selwyn in a company called the Goldwyn Pictures Corp., which took its name from the first syllable of Goldfish's name and the last one of Selwyn's -- Samuel Goldfish himself soon adopted Goldwyn as his own legal name.

The original Goldwyn company merged with Metro Studios and Louis B. Mayer's production company in the early '20s to form Metro Goldwyn Mayer, but Samuel Goldwyn wasn't long in that partnership. He exited in 1923, leaving the Goldwyn corporate name as part of MGM -- a fact that would cause him some mild distress in later years, owing to the public's confusion -- and formed Samuel Goldwyn Productions, the company that he was to run for the next four decades. Goldwyn 's philosophy, in contrast to that of the other major studios, was to make one picture at a time, but make it very well, sparing no expense in bringing the best actors, directors, designers, composers, and writers together to create only the finest in feature films -- Goldwyn never made B-pictures, and every Samuel Goldwyn production was an important film, getting the full devotion of its producer's resources and attention. In its heyday, at any given moment the company had one film at the pre-production stage, one movie in the process of being completed, and one film in release.

The company came into its own with the arrival of sound. Bulldog Drummond, Street Scene, and Arrowsmith, were all huge successes, and Goldwyn also exerted a profound influence on the development of movie music during the sound era through his hiring of Alfred Newman, a young New York-based conductor and arranger, to work as music director on the 1930 Eddie Cantor musical Whoopee! -- Newman proved to be an inspired choice for that film and went on (beginning with Goldwyn's Street Scene) to become one of the most influential composers of movie music over the next 35 years. Goldwyn's one-film-at-a-time approach proved completely competitive with the more factory-like methods of production utilized by his ex-partners at MGM and Paramount, and he became one of Hollywood's great success stories -- indeed, to this day, more than a quarter century after his death and four decades since his last new film went into release, Samuel Goldwyn is the most successful independent producer in the history of Hollywood. Included in the Goldwyn company's illustrious talent pool at various times were Ronald Colman, Gary Cooper, Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon, Eddie Cantor, Danny Kaye, David Niven, Will Rogers, Walter Huston, Susan Hayward, and Joel McCrea; director William Wyler; the composers Alfred Newman and George and Ira Gershwin; choreographer Busby Berkeley; and the authors Lillian Hellman, Sinclair Lewis, and Robert Sherwood. Goldwyn 's films, whether serious dramas like These Three (1936) (a partly censored version of Hellman's play The Children's Hour), Dodsworth (1936), Wuthering Heights (1939), and The Little Foxes (1941), or comedies like Ball of Fire (1941), were all quality entertainment -- indeed, his family films such as Hans Christian Andersen (1952) rivaled the best live-action movies that Disney created, while his musicals, from the early Eddie Cantor vehicles (Whoopee! [1930], Palmy Days [1931], and Roman Scandals [1933]) up through Guys and Dolls (1955), starring Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando, were more than a match for any contemporary releases by Warner Bros. or MGM.

Goldwyn 's focus on quality allowed him to transcend his own limitations. The perfect example is The Pride of the Yankees (1942), which is generally regarded as the best movie biography of a sports figure of all time. During WWII, his film output was weighted decidedly toward comedy and he delighted audiences by the millions with films like Up in Arms, Wonder Man, andThe Princess and the Pirate. Goldwyn reached his peak as a producer, however, with his best and most serious film -- The Best Years of Our Lives, a 181-minute drama about returning servicemen and their families that not only won eight Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director for William Wyler), but has endured as perhaps the best and most watchable of all of Hollywood's old-style dramatic epics.

Like many of the other moguls, Goldwyn's judgment and business fortunes faltered in the years after WWII, and he saw disappointing returns for endeavors like The Bishop's Wife, Enchantment, Ball of Fire, A Song Is Born, My Foolish Heart, and The Elusive Pimpernel. He did find some success with Hans Christian Andersen (1952) and Guys and Dolls (1955), however, his adaptation of the musical Porgy and Bess was so ill received that the estate of the play's original composer, George Gershwin, withdrew it from circulation as soon as the term of Goldwyn's license on the material expired.

Goldwyn ceased production in 1959 following the release of Porgy and Bess, the first time since 1913 that he had been out of the movie business. Because his company owned virtually every picture it ever produced, however, Goldwyn 's films continued to enjoy prestige presentations on television and in theatrical presentation well past his retirement, and Samuel Goldwyn was still a well-known, beloved name in moviemaking when he died 15 years after retiring. His movies have continued to be shown only in the best broadcast and cable venues, and to receive the most respectful home video treatment in the decades since. Indeed, the Samuel Goldwyn Company, run by Samuel Goldwyn Jr., experienced a major expansion of its own in the 1980s when it bought the American distribution rights to the library of Alexander Korda's London Film Productions, and also financed a reissue of Tony Richardson's 1963 hit Tom Jones. The combined Goldwyn and Korda libraries reached a new high point of presentation when they were licensed by HBO Home Video in the early '90s, which invested money heavily in the remastering and upgrading of their film materials and shot excellent supplementary wrap-around and commentaries for the laser disc releases of movies such as The Best Years of Our Lives (which was available for a time at the end of the 1990s on DVD from HBO with those extra materials). Additionally, Samuel Goldwyn's knack for finding or approving properties with enduring appeal to the public was borne out in 1996, 22 years after his death, when The Bishop's Wife was remade successfully by Penny Marshall as The Preacher's Wife.

~ Bruce Eder, Rovi
Filmography:

Samuel Goldwyn

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Guys and Dolls

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Hans Christian Andersen

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I Want You

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The Elusive Pimpernel

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Our Very Own

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My Foolish Heart

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Roseanna McCoy

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A Song Is Born

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See also Samuel Goldwyn (disambiguation)
Samuel Goldwyn

Samuel Goldwyn centre frame, circa 1916
Born Schmuel Gelbfisz
c. July 1879
Warsaw, Russian Empire (present day Warsaw, Republic of Poland)
Died 31 January 1974(1974-01-31) (aged 94)
Los Angeles, California, USA
Resting place Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California
Other names Samuel Goldfish, Mister Malaprop
Years active 1917-1953
Spouse Blanche Lasky (1910-1915)
Frances Howard (1925-1974)

Samuel Goldwyn (c. July 1879 – January 31, 1974) was an American film producer. He was most notably well known for being the founding contributor executive of several motion picture studios in Hollywood.[1]

Contents

Biography

Goldwyn was born Schmuel Gelbfisz in Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire to a Hasidic, Polish Jewish family. At an early age, he left Warsaw on foot and penniless. He made his way to Birmingham, England, where he remained with relatives for a few years using the name Samuel Goldfish. In 1898, he emigrated to the United States, but fearing refusal of entry, he got off the boat in Nova Scotia, Canada, before moving on to New York in January 1899. He found work in upstate Gloversville, New York, in the bustling garment business. Soon his innate marketing skills made him a very successful salesman at the Albano Glove Company. After four years, as vice-president for sales, he moved back to New York City.[citation needed][2]

Paramount

In 1913, Goldfish along with his brother-in-law Jesse L. Lasky, Cecil B. DeMille, and Arthur Friend formed a partnership, The Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, to produce feature length motion pictures. Film rights for the stage play The Squaw Man were purchased for $4000 and Dustin Farnum was hired for the leading role. Shooting for the first feature film made in Hollywood began on December 29, 1913.[3]

In 1914, Paramount was a film exchange and exhibition corporation headed by W. W. Hodkinson. Looking for more movies to distribute, Paramount signed a contract with the Lasky Company on June 1, 1914 to supply 36 films per year. One of Paramount's other suppliers was Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Company. The two companies merged on June 28, 1916 forming The Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. Zukor had been quietly buying Paramount stock, and two weeks prior to the merger, became president of Paramount Pictures Corporation and had Hodkinson replaced with Hiram Abrams, a Zukor associate.[4]

With the merger, Zukor became president of both Paramount and Famous Players-Lasky, with Goldfish being named chairman of the board of Famous Players-Lasky, and Jesse Lasky first vice-president. After a series of conflicts with Zukor, Goldfish resigned as chairman of the board, and as member of the executive committee of the corporation on September 14, 1916. Goldfish was out as an active member of management, although he still owned stock and was a member of the board of directors. Famous Players-Lasky would later become part of Paramount Pictures Corporation, and Paramount would become one of Hollywood's major studios.[5][6]

Goldwyn Pictures

In 1916, Goldfish partnered with Broadway producers Edgar and Archibald Selwyn, using a combination of both names to call their movie-making enterprise Goldwyn Pictures. Seeing an opportunity, Samuel Gelbfisz then had his name legally changed to Samuel Goldwyn, which he used for the rest of his life. Goldwyn Pictures proved successful but it is their "Leo the Lion" trademark for which the organization is most famous.

On April 10, 1924, Goldwyn Pictures was acquired by Marcus Loew and merged into his Metro Pictures Corporation. Despite the inclusion of his name, Goldwyn never produced any films at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Samuel Goldwyn Productions

From the trailer for The Hurricane (1937)

Before the sale and merger of Goldwyn Pictures in April 1924, Goldwyn had established Samuel Goldwyn Productions in 1923 as a production-only operation (with no distribution arm). Their first feature was Potash and Perlmutter, released in September 1923 through First National Pictures. Some of the early productions bear the name "Howard Productions", named for Goldwyn's wife Frances Howard.

For 35 years, Goldwyn built a reputation in filmmaking and an eye for finding the talent for making films. William Wyler directed many of his most celebrated productions and he hired writers such as Ben Hecht, Sidney Howard, Dorothy Parker, and Lillian Hellman. (According to legend, at a heated story conference Goldwyn scolded someone—in most accounts Mrs. Parker—who recalled he had once been a glove maker and retorted: "Don't you point that finger at me. I knew it when it had a thimble on it!" Another time, when he demanded a script that ended on a happy note, she said: "I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions and billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending."[7])

For more than three decades, Goldwyn made numerous films and reigned as the most successful independent producer in the US. Many of his films were forgettable, however his collaboration with John Ford resulted in Best Picture Oscar nomination for Arrowsmith (1931). William Wyler was responsible for most of Goldwyn's highly lauded films with Best Picture Oscar nominations forDodsworth (1936), Dead End (1937), Wuthering Heights (1939), The Little Foxes (1941) and [[The Best Years of Our Lives] (film)|The Best Years of Our Lives]] (1948). The leading actors in several of Goldwyn films, especially those directed by William Wyler, were also Oscar-nominated for their performances.

Throughout the 1930s, Goldwyn released all his films through United Artists, but beginning in 1941, and continuing almost through the end of his career, Goldwyn released his films through RKO Radio Pictures.

Oscar

In 1946, the year he was honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, Goldwyn's drama The Best Years of Our Lives, starring Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Teresa Wright and Dana Andrews, won the Academy Award for Best Picture. In the 1950s Samuel Goldwyn turned to making a number of musicals including the 1955 hit Guys and Dolls starring Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, Frank Sinatra, and Vivian Blaine. This was the only independent film that Goldwyn ever released through MGM. (Goldwyn had previously made several musicals starring Eddie Cantor and Danny Kaye, as well as 1938's The Goldwyn Follies.)

In his final film, made in 1959, Samuel Goldwyn brought together African-American actors Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Pearl Bailey in a film rendition of the George Gershwin opera, Porgy and Bess. Released by Columbia Pictures, the film was nominated for three Oscars, but won only one. It was also a critical and financial failure, and the Gershwin family reportedly disliked the film and eventually pulled it from distribution. The reception of the film was a huge disappointment to Goldwyn.[citation needed]

Awards

Death

Goldwyn died at his home in Los Angeles in 1974 from natural causes, at the probable age of 94. He was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. In the 1980s, Samuel Goldwyn Studio was sold to Warner Bros. There is a theater named after him in Beverly Hills and he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1631 Vine Street.

Marriages

Goldwyn was married to Blanche Lasky, a sister of Jesse, from 1910 to 1915. In 1925, he married actress Frances Howard to whom he remained married for the rest of his life. Their son, Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., would eventually join his father in the business.

Grandchildren

Samuel Goldwyn's grandchildren include

  • Francis Goldwyn, founder of the Manhattan Toy Company and Managing Member of Quorum Associates LLC
  • Tony Goldwyn, actor
  • John Goldwyn, film producer
  • Peter Goldwyn, the current vice-president of Samuel Goldwyn films
  • Catherine Goldwyn, created Sound Art, a non-profit organization that teaches popular music all over Los Angeles
  • Liz Goldwyn, has a film on HBO called Pretty Things, featuring interviews with queens from the heyday of American burlesque; her book, an extension of the documentary titled, Pretty Things: The Last Generation of American Burlesque Queens, was published in October 2006 by HarperCollins.[citation needed]

Nephew

Goldwyn's relatives include Fred Lebensold (see Lebensold Family), an award-winning architect (best known as the designer of multiple concert halls in Canada and the United States). Fred was the son of Sam's younger sister, Manya (who, despite the best efforts of Sam and his brother Ben in 1939 and 1940, could not be extricated from the Warsaw Ghetto and perished in the Holocaust).[citation needed]

The Samuel Goldwyn Foundation

Samuel Goldwyn's will created a multi-million dollar charitable foundation in his name. Among other endeavors, the Samuel Goldwyn Foundation funds the Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards, provided construction funds for the Frances Howard Goldwyn Hollywood Regional Library, and provides ongoing funding for the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital.

The Samuel Goldwyn Company

Several years after the Sr. Goldwyn's death, his son, Samuel Goldwyn Jr., initiated an independent film and television distribution company dedicated to preserving the integrity of Goldwyn's ambitions and work. In 1997, the company's assets were acquired by MGM.

Goldwynisms

Samuel Goldwyn was also known for malapropisms, paradoxes, and other speech errors called 'Goldwynisms' ("A humorous statement or phrase resulting from the use of incongruous or contradictory words, situations, idioms, etc.") being frequently quoted. For example, he was reported to have said, "I don't think anybody should write his autobiography until after he's dead."[8] Some famous Goldwyn quotations are misattributions. For example, the statement attributed to Goldwyn that "a verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on" is actually a well-documented misreporting of an actual quote praising the trustworthiness of a colleague: "His verbal contract is worth more than the paper it's written on". The identity of the colleague is variously reported as Joseph M. Schenk[9] or Joseph L. Mankiewicz[10] Goldwyn himself was reportedly aware of - and pleased by - the misattribution.

Upon being told that a book he had purchased for filming, The Well of Loneliness, couldn't be filmed because it was about lesbians, he reportedly replied: "That's all right, we'll make them Hungarians." The same story was told about the 1934 rights to The Children's Hour with the response "That's okay; we'll turn them into Armenians."[11] Upon being told that a dictionary had included the word "Goldwynism" as synonym for malapropism, he raged: "Goldwynisms! They should talk to Jesse Lasky!"[citation needed]

Having many writers in his employ, Goldwyn may not have come up with all of these on his own. In fact Charlie Chaplin took credit for penning the line, "In two words: im-possible"; and the quote, "the next time I send a damn fool for something, I go myself," has also been attributed to Michael Curtiz.[citation needed]

In the Grateful Dead's Scarlet Begonias,[12] the line "I ain't often right but I've never been wrong" appears in the bridge - this is very similar to Goldwyn's "I’m willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong."

References

  1. ^ Obituary Variety, February 6, 1974, page 63.
  2. ^ A. Scott Berg, Goldwyn, a Biography
  3. ^ A.Scott Berg, Goldwyn, a Biography. pp.31-35,41.
  4. ^ A.Scott Berg, Goldwyn, a Biography. pp.49,58
  5. ^ A.Scott Berg, Goldwyn, a Biography. pp.58,59,63. And Wikipedia main article: Paramount Pictures.
  6. ^ Wikipedia main article: Major Studios.
  7. ^ Silverstein, Stuart Y., ed. (1996, paperback 2001). Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker. New York: Scribner. p. 42, n. 75. ISBN 0-7432-1148-0 (paperback). 
  8. ^ Quoted in Arthur Marx, Goldwyn: The Man Behind the Myth (1976), prologue.
  9. ^ Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It (1990), p. 42.
  10. ^ Carol Easton, The Search for Sam Goldwyn (1976).
  11. ^ These Three
  12. ^ [1]

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