Isidor Goldschmidt

Isidor Goldschmidt , also IG Goldsmith or Isadore Goldsmith , (born May 26, 1893 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; † October 8, 1964 in Putney , Vermont , United States ) was an Austrian-American film distributor with German and producer in British and American film.

Live and act

Goldschmidt had worked as an official in the consular system when he was young. At the end of the First World War (1918) he switched to film. He quickly made a career there; initially he was managing director at Apollo-Film, seven years later Goldschmidt was appointed representative of the British film company BIP on the European mainland. At the same time, Goldschmidt was General Director of the Berlin distribution company Südfilm AG, which belonged to the BIP parent company. In this capacity Goldschmidt sold key German productions from the outgoing Weimar Republic such as EA Dupont's early sound film production “ Atlantik ” and Richard Oswald's social drama “ Der Hauptmann von Köpenick ” .

After the German National Socialists came to power, the Austrian Jew Goldschmidt was forced out of all his offices. He settled in the UK in 1935 and tried his hand at being an independent producer. With the film adaptation of AJ Cronin's miners drama " The Stars Look Down " in Wales , he achieved an artistic success in 1939. After another Cronin adaptation (" The Hatter and His Castle "), Goldschmidt decided in December 1941, shortly after the end of the Battle of Britain , to travel on to the United States. There he was taken over by Columbia Pictures , but could not realize a film as a producer. Shortly before the end of the war, Goldschmidt, who Anglicized himself in IG Goldsmith or Isadore Goldsmith in the Anglo-American region, returned to London. There he was able to make another film with the implementation of the crime novel “ Bedelia ”, which his American wife (since 1948), the writer Vera Caspary (1899–1987), had written. As early as 1947 Goldsmith went to the USA again, where he only appeared as a B-film producer. On January 11, 1952, he was naturalized in the United States.

Filmography (complete as producer)

• 1935: Whom the Gods Love
• 1936: Southern Roses
• 1937: Mademoiselle Doktor / Under Secret Orders
• 1937: The Lilac Domino
• 1939: I Killed the Count
• 1939: The Stars Look Down ( The Stars Look Down )
• 1941: The hatter and his castle ( Hatter's Castle )
• 1945: The Voice Within
• 1946: Bedelia (Bedelia) (also co-script)
• 1947: Out of the Blue
• 1950: Three Husbands
• 1951: The Scarf
• 1951: The Screen (script and direction only)
• 1953: The Tell-Tale-Heart (short film)

literature

• Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 3: F - H. Barry Fitzgerald - Ernst Hofbauer. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 309.
• Kay Less: "In life, more is taken from you than given ...". Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview. ACABUS Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8 , p. 203.

Web links

• Isidor Goldschmidt in the Internet Movie Database (English)