Goldwyn, Samuel

Related Category: Film and Television: Biographies

(gōl´dwĭn), 1882–1974, American film producer, b. Warsaw, Poland. Goldwyn arrived in the United States in 1896, and with Jesse L. Lasky and Cecil B. De Mille he organized the Jesse Lasky Feature Photoplay Company, coproducing The Squaw Man (1913). In 1916 he formed the Goldwyn Pictures Corp., which later merged with Metro Pictures and the company organized by Louis B. Mayer to become Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. To promote superior screenwriting he founded Eminent Authors Pictures, Inc. (1919). Goldwyn later produced many major films independently, including Wuthering Heights (1939), Guys and Dolls (1955), and Porgy and Bess (1959). He won an Academy Award for The Best Years of Our Lives (1947).

See his Behind the Screen (1923); A. S. Berg, Goldwyn (1989); C. Easton, The Search for Samuel Goldwyn (1989).