Oscar Profile #111: Samuel Goldwyn

Born on August 17, 1879 in Warsaw, Poland, Schmuel Gelbfisz was the oldest of six children of a struggling furniture dealer and his wife. The penniless young man left home on foot at the age of 15 to seek his fortune in England. He stayed for a few years with relatives who Anglicized his name to Samuel Goldfish. In 1898 he either begged or stole the money for steerage passage to America, but fearing rejection he got off the boat in Nova Scotia, Canada and made his way to upstate New York.

Breaking into the garment business, he became a successful glove salesman and rose to Vice-President of sales for the Albano Glove Company. Moving to New York, he married Blanche Lasky, the sister of then theatrical producer Jesse L. Lasky in 1910. Fascinated by the burgeoning movie business, he convinced Lasky, Cecil B. DeMille and Arthur Friend to form The Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company to produce full-length motion pictures. Their first film, 1914’s The Sqauw Man, directed by DeMille, was, in fact, the first feature length film ever produced. Goldfish’s 1915 divorce from Lasky’s sister led to his disassociation with the company which became Paramount Pictures.

Goldfish next formed Goldwyn Pictures in 1916 with producers Edward and Archibald Selwyn, the name formed from the “Gold” in Goldfish and the “wyn” in Selwyn. Goldfish liked the name so much that he changed it to his own. He left the company in 1923 to form Samuel Goldwyn Productions, the year before Goldwyn Pictures was acquired by Metro Pictures to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Although the name Goldwyn is the “G” in MGM, Samuel Goldwyn himself never made a film for the company, remaining an independent producer for the next 35 years.

Despite the studio system in full force during the 1930s and 1940s, Goldwyn made many successful films during the period, employing the greatest directors – John Ford, William Wyler, Howard Hawks, etc. and some of the greatest stars of the era including Ronald Colman, Eddie Cantor, Sylvia Sidney, Gary Cooper, Walter Huston, Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogart, Laurence Olivier, Bette Davis, Teresa Wright, Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Danny Kaye, Cary Grant, Loretta Young, David Niven and others, many of them on loan from their home studios.

Goldwyn’s prolific output during the period included such films as Arrowsmith; Street Scene; Dodsworth; Stella Dallas; Dead End; The Hurricane; Wuthering Heights; The Little Foxes; Ball of Fire; The Pride of the Yankees; The Best Years of Our Lives; The Bishop’s Wife and Enchantment.

Goldwyn only produced two films after 1952’s Hans Christian Andersen, but both 1955’s Guys and Dolls and 1959’s Porgy and Bess were high profile productions.

Known as Mr. Malaprop for his many unintended funny expressions, his “Goldwynisms” include “include me out” and “a verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.”

Samuel Goldwyn died on January 31, 1974 at the age of 94. His second wife, actress Frances Howard, to whom he was married from 1925 until his death, was the mother of producer Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. and the grandmother of actor Tony Goldwyn.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

DODSWORTH (1936), directed by William Wyler

An uncompromising portrait of the dissolution of a marriage, Wyler’s first great directorial effort was given free reign by Goldwyn who later employed the director in some of his best work including Dead End; Wuthering Heights; The Little Foxes and The Best Years of Our Lives.

The film features unusually frank dialogue for the time and sterling performances by Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton and Mary Astor.

BALL OF FIRE (1941), directed by Howard Hawks

An unusual original production for Goldwyn whose films up to then had mostly been adaptations of literary works and Broadway plays. Hawks in the same year that he received his only Oscar nomination for Sergeant York arguably does an even better job with this heartfelt screwball comedy that is a play on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Barbara Stanwyck is not exactly pure as snow, but she is the right woman for young professor Gary Cooper and his elderly cohorts played by Oscar Homolka, Henry Travers, S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall, Tully Marshall, Leonid Kinskey, Richard Haydn and Aubrey Mather.

THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946), directed by William Wyler

Still the best film yet made about homecoming veterans, it is fittingly the best remembered film from Goldwyn’s long career. Robert E. Sherwood’s screenplay from MacKinley Kantor’s novel under Wyler’s astute direction is given the perfect production with the stellar casting of Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Harold Russell as the vets and Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright, Virginia Mayo and Cathy O’Donnell as the women in their lives.

The Best Picture trophy was officially won by Goldwyn’s production company, but Goldwyn himself did not go home empty-handed on Oscar night. He received the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award for which he had been a non-winning finalist nine years earlier.

ENCHANTMENT (1948), directed by Irving Reis

One of the least known films in Goldwyn’s canon, but unfairly so. Journeyman director Reis may not have been in the same company as some of Goldwyn’s other directors, but he does a remarkable job translating Rumor Godden’s lovely novel to the screen. It is along with Black Narcissus and The River one of the three best films made from her work.

David Niven has one of his most intriguing roles as a retired General looking back on his long-ago romance with Teresa Wright at her luminous best. Regretting having let her get away, he plays Cupid to his ambulance driver niece, Evelyn Keyes and her pilot lover, Farley Granger, who happens to be Wright’s nephew. Jane Meadows has a terrific supporting role as Niven’s neurotic sister.

GUYS AND DOLLS (1955, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Goldwyn paid a lot of money for the rights to the smash-hit Broadway musical and that meant he was going to make it to his own satisfaction, which hopefully would appeal to the public the same as it did him. That meant throwing out three of the show’s best songs “A Bushel and a Peck”, “I’ve Never Been in Love Before” and “More I Cannot Wish You” and hiring composer Frank Loesser to write replacements. It also meant ignoring Frank Sinatra’s pleases to be cast as lead Sky Masterson and giving him the secondary role of Nathan Detroit. Goldwyn gave the lead to Marlon Brando despite the actor’s lack of musical training. He does a fairly decent job as does Jean Simmons as Salvation Army Sergeant Sarah Brown. Best of all, however, is Vivian Blaine reprising her Broadway role of Miss Adelaide.