Samuel Goldwyn

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Samuel Goldwyn (1919)

Samuel Goldwyn (born August 17, 1879 in Warsaw , † January 31, 1974 in Los Angeles ; born Szmul Gelbfisz , 1894-1918 Samuel Goldfish ) was an American film producer . He was involved in founding well-known film studios such as United Artists and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . As an independent producer, he helped shape Hollywood history for many decades .

life and career

Rise in the film business

Samuel Goldwyn was born in Warsaw in the summer of 1879 under the name Szmul Gelbfisz, the oldest of six children. His parents, Abram and Anna Gelbfisz, were Hasidic Jews . In 1895, after the death of his father, he decided to leave Poland. He reached Hamburg on foot, from where he took a ship to Birmingham in Great Britain in 1898. There he anglicized his name to Samuel Goldfish. In early 1899, he came to the United States from Canada and became a US citizen. Soon he became a successful glove maker. In 1910 he married Blanche Lasky, sister of the vaudeville artist and producer Jesse L. Lasky . In the wake of a sharp drop in sales in the glove industry around 1912, Goldwyn, enthusiastic about the rapid development of cinema, planned to enter the film industry. He persuaded his brother-in-law, Jesse L. Lasky, to found the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. Lasky was President, Goldwyn was in charge of finances, and the then little-known Cecil B. DeMille took on the role of director. Together with Louis B. Mayer , they produced The Squaw Man in 1913 . The film became a financial success, and the company produced 21 films in its first year of existence.

Founding of Paramount Pictures and Goldwyn Pictures

Samuel Goldwyn (center) in 1916 for the Famous Players-Lasky

In 1916 there was a cooperation with Adolph Zukor and his company Famous Players , one of the parent companies of Paramount Pictures . The company Famous Players-Lasky was created , with Goldwyn responsible for the distribution of the films. The constant quarrels between those responsible for influence led to Zukor and Lasky agreeing to buy Goldwyn's shares for USD 900,000. With this start-up capital, Goldwyn founded the film company Goldwyn Picture Corporation in 1916 together with Broadway producers Edgar and Archibald Selwyn . Goldfish also used this name, which resulted from the combination of Goldfish and Selwyn, for itself after it was officially renamed Goldwyn in 1918. The company developed, but Goldwyn had more and more problems dealing with investors and partners, working in the big studios made him dissatisfied. The trademark of his company became Leo the Lion , who made a brief appearance in the opening credits of all films. The company nearly went bankrupt in 1922 and Goldwyn was more or less pushed out of the company. His shares were then taken over by Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company . In 1924 the prosperous company Metro Pictures Corporation took over the shares in Zukor from Louis B. Mayer. At the end of the merger process, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer , or MGM for short , was finally created in 1924 .

Independent producer

Goldwyn was no longer involved in this development and has since acted as a producer at Samuel Goldwyn, Inc. , which shortly thereafter renamed Samuel Goldwyn Studios . He set high quality standards and at the same time kept an eye on the economic success of his productions. He had his breakthrough in the middle of the decade thanks to the success of Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky , who rose to become one of the most popular screen couples since 1925 and The Dark Angel , whose remake from 1935 Goldwyn also produced, and had romantic adventures together in lavishly produced films six times experienced. The 1927 Magic Flame alone cost a total of $ 800,000 and was an example of the opulent production values ​​that set Goldwyn films apart. He employed several renowned screenwriters and paid large sums of money to film prestigious novels or plays.

He made the switch to sound film thanks to the popularity of Eddie Cantor , who made some very successful revue films for Goldwyn, including Whoopee! , Palmy Days and The Kid from Spain . Productions such as the Sinclair-Lewis films Arrowsmith (1931) directed by John Ford and Zeit der Liebe, Zeit des Abschiedes (1936), with William Wyler celebrated its big break, made Goldwyn the most influential independent producer of the 1930s. The stars he has signed include Gary Cooper , Merle Oberon , Danny Kaye and Susan Hayward . In addition, Goldwyn was also responsible for one of the most spectacular failed attempts to create a new star: his protégée Anna Sten , whom he had brought to the USA in 1932 and wanted to build up with a lot of money and even more publicity in response to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich , flopped and became known as Goldwyn's Folly .

After the success of Time of Love, Time of Farewell , Goldwyn worked increasingly with director William Wyler. Wuthering Heights , the film adaptation of Emily Brontë 's novel of the same name , from 1939 has been described by Goldwyn as his personal favorite. In 1941 he had further success with the adaptation of The Little Foxes , a play by Lillian Hellman , which had already worked for the producer on the filming of Infame Lies a few years earlier . Bette Davis received a salary of $ 385,000 for her lead role and an Oscar nomination for best actress . In 1946 Goldwyn had one of his greatest hits with The Best Years Of Our Lives , a drama about war returnees directed by Wylers. Goldwyn was honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award and received the Oscar for Best Picture, and The Best Years of Our Life at the box office was the most successful film since Gone With the Wind (1939).

Immediately afterwards, his star began to decline a little, and he produced not only highly successful films with Danny Kaye and Loretta Young but also a few flops such as Roseanna McCoy . In the 1950s he produced several musicals, including 1955 Schwere Jungs - light girls with Marlon Brando . In 1957 he was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his humanitarian commitment . He produced his last film in 1959 with Porgy and Bess , the adaptation of George Gershwin 's opera of the same name . Sidney Poitier , Dorothy Dandridge , Sammy Davis, Jr. and Pearl Bailey starred in the three Academy Award-winning film .

Retirement and private matters

Samuel Goldwyn (middle, 1953)

Samuel Goldwyn was known as a tough businessman with rowdy manners. On the occasion of the death of his former partner Louis B. Mayer in 1957, he is said to have said:

"The reason so many people turned up at his funeral was because they all wanted to be sure that he was really dead."

After Porgy and Bess , Samuel Goldwyn retired from the film business. He died at his Los Angeles home in 1974 at the age of 94. Samuel Goldwyn Studios were sold to Warner Brothers in the 1980s . He was married twice: from 1910 until his divorce in 1915 with Blanche Lasky, from this marriage there was a daughter; and from 1925 until his death with the actress Frances Howard , from this marriage came the son Samuel Goldwyn junior , who also worked as a film producer. His grandchildren include actor Tony Goldwyn and film producer John Goldwyn .

There is a movie theater named after him in Beverly Hills, and he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1631 Vine Street. Based on Goldwyn's birth name Gelbfisz, one of the protagonists in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel Voll im Bilde is called Thomas Silberfisch, in the original: Thomas Silverfish. Silberfisch is the head of one of the film studios.

Filmography (selection)

Individual evidence

  1. according to copies of original documents from the Kay Less film archive . The year of birth 1879 was already mentioned in 2001 in Weniger's Das große Personenlexikon des Films , Volume 3, p. 311. The tracing of the early years in Goldwyn's life is shaped by his own stories, which sometimes diverge strongly. In the census of 1900 (survey of June 11, 1900) a Samuel Goldfish is listed as glove cutter . The age is given as 20 . Under the headings 'year of birth', 'month of birth' and 'place of birth' are mentioned 1879 , August and Russia (Warsaw was part of the Russian Empire at the time). According to his own statement, he came to the country in 1898. The last statement contradicts an entry in the passenger list of Pennland , which left Liverpool at the beginning of January 1899 , with which Goldfish / Goldwyn, last based in Great Britain in Birmingham, landed in the port of Philadelphia on January 19, 1899 . Again, the age is 20 . It was not until some time later that Goldwyn made himself three years younger and gave the year of birth 1882.
  2. The name yellow fish can also be read several times.
  3. a b according to the family tree
  4. At this point in time, the ship's documents already state the job title glove maker
  5. According to an official US document from December 1924, in which he had applied for a passport for a trip to Europe.
  6. Thomas Silberfisch . Discworld Wiki, as of February 21, 2008, accessed November 19, 2016.

literature

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