William Goetz

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William Goetz (born March 24, 1903 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , † August 15, 1969 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American film producer and art collector.

Life

William Goetz was born in Philadelphia as the youngest of eight children to a Jewish working class family. His mother died when he was ten years old; his father abandoned the family shortly afterwards. Raised by his older siblings, Goetz followed some of his brothers to Hollywood , where he soon took his first odd jobs in film. After a few years he became increasingly active in the field of film production.

In 1930, Fox Film Corporation hired him as a producer. In the same year he married Edith Mayer, the daughter of MGM boss Louis B. Mayer . From his father-in-law he finally received the financial support that made him junior partner of Joseph Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck in 1932 at the newly founded 20th Century Pictures , of which Goetz acted from then on as Vice President. He kept this post after the merger of 20th Century Pictures and Fox to form 20th Century Fox in 1935.

After 1945 there were tensions between him and Zanuck, whereupon Goetz left the studio to found his own independent production company, International Pictures, with the former lawyer Leo Spitz. In July 1946 the small company merged with the British Rank Organization and Universal Studios to form Universal-International, where Goetz was appointed president.

In 1949 Goetz revolutionized the film industry together with Hollywood agent Lew Wasserman when he assured James Stewart that he would share in the profits of his films for Universal. This lead actor-sharing concept then became the standard in Hollywood. In 1953 Goetz left Universal. As an independent producer, he was nominated for an Oscar for the film drama Sayonara (1957) starring Marlon Brando .

William Goetz died of cancer in his Los Angeles home in 1969. He was buried in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City , California.

Art collection

Vincent van Gogh's controversial self-portrait

Together with his wife Edith, Goetz was also a passionate art collector. Together they acquired paintings and sculptures by famous artists such as Edgar Degas , Paul Gauguin , Claude Monet , Paul Cézanne , Édouard Manet , Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Pablo Picasso .

In 1948 Goetz acquired a self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh entitled Study by Candlelight for an extraordinary 60,000 dollars at the time. When the picture was to be exhibited at a Gogh retrospective in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1949 , disputes arose over the authorship of Van Gogh. The painter's nephew, Vincent Willem van Gogh , and Willem Sandberg , director of the Stedelijk Museum , questioned the authenticity of the picture. Although there were art historians in the Netherlands who found the self-portrait to be real, a jury at the New York Museum also spoke out against the authenticity and rejected it as an exhibit.

After Goetz's wife died in 1987, parts of the Goetz collection were auctioned off in 1988 by Christie's auction house in New York for a total of 85 million dollars.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stefan Koldehoff: Study by candlelight . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , April 5, 2013.
  2. ^ Ruth Ryon: Goetz Estate on the Market . In: Los Angeles Times , October 2, 1988.
  3. ↑ Suzanne Muchnic: corralling the collectors . In: Los Angeles Times , November 27, 2005.
personal data
SURNAME Goetz, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film producer and art collector
DATE OF BIRTH March 24, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH 15th August 1969
Place of death Los Angeles , California, United States