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Samuel Goldwyn

America’s greatest independent film producer, Samuel Goldwyn, was an immigrant. Although semiilliterate and only able to speak coarse English, he made movies that spoke to the spirit and values of 20th Century America.

Schmuel Gelbfisz was the oldest of six children of a desperately poor Jewish family living in a Warsaw ghetto. When his father died at 43, the fifteen-year-old decided it was time to escape his prison of poverty.

“The only place I wanted to go was America”, he recalled years later, because “I heard…about how people were free in America.”

Schmuel sold his father’s clothes for a few coins to grubstake his future. He walked the 400 miles to Hamburg, Germany, then made his way to England and earned passage on a ship to Nova Scotia. Eventually, he entered the U.S. on foot through Canada.

An illegal alien whose natural tongue was Yiddish, the youth found work in the Jewish community of garment workers in New York. He Anglicized his name to “Samuel Goldfish” and was officially admitted as a Citizen of the United States in 1904.

A glove maker, by 1913 Goldfish was a successful young businessman. Then, he decided to risk it all on what he called his “first really big gamble”. Moving pictures were a hot new phenomenon. A visit to a nickelodeon convinced Samuel that his future was in film.

Sam and a partner formed a film company and hired an unknown, Cecil B. DeMille, to direct the silent classic The Squaw Man. Filmed in a dusty, sleepy suburb of Los Angeles, it was the first feature-length movie produced in Hollywood. A huge success, it established the California town as the movie capital of the world.

The young movie-maker was among the first to embrace the new audio technology that ushered in sound, “talkies”, and revolutionized the industry. Some years later, he likewise led the move to color technology.

To add class to his name and advance his new career, in 1918 he again changed his name, this time to Samuel Goldwyn. Over the next 35 years, Sam Goldwyn produced films that made the country laugh, sing and cry through the Roaring 20s, the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War 50’s.

Goldwyn discovered a galaxy of actors and entertainers, including Ronald Coleman, Eddie Cantor, Danny Kaye, Gary Cooper, Joel McCrea, Sidney Poitier, and Marlon Brando, to mention a few. He gave us such memorable movies as Arrowsmith (1931), Wuthering Heights (1939) and won an Academy Award for Best Picture with The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). In the 50’s, he brought Guys and Dolls and Porgy and Bess to the big screen as well.

Goldwyn was an American innovator. He developed a new art form and helped launch such giant dream-makers as Paramount Studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Goldwyn Studios. His name became synonymous with quality American motion pictures.

Not surprisingly for a man who risked everything for a better life, then bet his future and fortune on films, movie mogul Goldwyn was a poker player. In fact, nearly all the legendary studio heads during Hollywood’s Golden Era played in several weekly high stakes games.

There was a poker game every Sunday at Samuel Goldwyn’s house and Thursdays it was hosted by Irving Thalberg. Film industry giants Darryl Zanuck, Jack Warner, David O. Selznick, Cecille B. DeMille, and Hollywood Reporter publisher Billy Wilkerson were among the regulars. Known as “the heaviest game in town”, chip denominations went up to $20,000 and at least one player reported losing over a million dollars in a year!

Bette Davis was Jack Warner’s biggest star. Although it was common for studios to swap actors for film projects, Warner never did so. But Sam Goldwyn wanted the actress for a picture and wouldn’t be denied. He offered to cancel a $425,000 poker debt Warner owed him for the use of Davis in one picture. It was the only time Jack Warner ever let her out of his studio.

On another occasion, British aristocrat and film mogul Sir Alexander Korda won $100,000 from Goldwyn in a poker game.

He received a check in mail from Sam written in red ink. The accompanying note said, “Signed in my blood. Sam”.

Soon after, Sir Korda lost a similar amount to Goldwyn. The British Royal film maker promptly sent Sam a check written in blue ink, along with a note that read: “This

check is signed in my blood, too.”

During the Cold War 1950s, the country was overcome with the fear of Communism. At its height, the House Un-American

Activities Committee and Senator Joe McCarthy tried to purge Hollywood of Communist sympathizers. Members of the movie industry were called on to name names and point fingers. Samuel Goldwyn was the only studio head that refused to cooperate. Late in years, Samuel Goldwyn, a staunch Nixon supporter, was presented the Medal of Freedom, the nation?s highest civilian honor, by the President.

Politician Nixon took the opportunity to make an early election speech. After watching Nixon?s performance, Sam whispered in the President?s ear, “You?ll have to do better

than that if you want to carry California.”

Revealing his own philosophy, Goldwyn told Nixon, “If you can survive 51% of the time…you?re a winner.” A courageous risk-taker, a genius movie-maker, a crusader for Democracy, a no-holds-barred businessman, and a high limit poker player, All American Samuel Goldwyn died

in 1974 at the age of 92.

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