Goldwyn

by A. Scott Berg

  Invariably they found themselves in Zukor’s wake. Through Lasky’s connections, they were able to reel in a number of minor Broadway successes, including a play called Brewster’s Millions; it was a trifle about a playboy who stood to inherit many millions of dollars if he could spend one million within two months. For five thousand dollars, they purchased the film rights in perpetuity directly from the author, George Barr McCutcheon, and it was the second feature play from the Lasky Company.

  DeMille became entrenched in studio operations on the West Coast, Lasky shuttled between coasts, and Goldfish minded the store in New York. In expanding, Goldfish held the company’s reins, for it was he who had to generate income on a product that did not yet exist and whose quality could not be guaranteed.

  The company seemed doomed yet again when Brewster’s Millions was shot and assembled. Goldfish, alone in the theater with Lasky, ran it in New York just before his trade showing. For an hour, there was not a titter between them, and it was too late to do anything about it. It would just have to be shown to the buyers as it was.

  Goldfish introduced the film and the houselights dimmed, but he could not bear to sit through the silence. He paced outside for most of the five reels, then returned to face an apathetic full house. The first sound that greeted him when he went through the lobby door was a roar of laughter. Another followed. Goldfish allegedly looked at the screen in disbelief, and looked again just to be certain it was their production of Brewster’s Millions. He instantly realized the importance of screening motion pictures before audiences that were seeing the story unfold for the first time. He also understood that theatrical experiences are social situations and that certain emotions—especially laughter—are contagious.

  These trade screenings proved doubly important for Goldfish. They were the only occasions during which he received any recognition. Except for those few times a year, Goldfish was practically invisible in the industry. Being a hidden partner gnawed at him, especially now that Jesse Lasky was dropping his vaudeville interests so that he could devote full time to motion pictures.

  Goldfish wanted to be known the way Adolph Zukor was—or at least as several up-and-comers were: The Warner brothers—small—time exhibitors before opening an exchange (the Duquesne Amusement Supply Company) —began producing two-reel westerns; Louis B. Mayer was building his own film exchange as well as theaters; Carl Laemmle formed the Universal Film Manufacturing Company; and Lewis Selznick had sold himself to Laemmle as a general manager.

  During the next year, the Lasky Company bought the screen rights to two dozen plays. Realizing that a good screenwriter was as crucial to their existence as a cameraman or actors, they approached DeMille’s brother. William and Cecil discussed the importance of developing a technique of storytelling that would “follow the old dramatic principles, but adapt itself to a new medium; find its own compensations for its lack of words ... to make a train of thought visible enough to be photographed.” William de Mille went west for three months and stayed twenty years.

  Oscar Apfel called the shots on most of the pictures until Cecil DeMille felt equipped to direct by himself. With two directors working at once, the Lasky Company could easily meet the increasing demand for their films; but DeMille wanted to decrease his output. Like Griffith, he became enchanted with the artistic possibilities of motion pictures. “As his flair for sweeping dramatic spectacle developed,” Lasky recalled, “his shooting schedules stretched from five to six to seven and then eight weeks. He was responsible for many innovations in the interest of pictorial ‘class.’”

  Lighting intrigued DeMille. In 1914, while filming his brother’s play The Warrens of Virginia, he experimented with bolts of black velvet, blocking out the sunlight streaming through windows when filming night scenes. As a result, he was the first director to depict interior night scenes that actually resembled night. When stage directions called for a light to be turned down, he would dim the lights on his set. He discovered that great effects could be achieved if the actors’ faces were not always fully lighted. As Agnes de Mille observed of moviemaking in its paleozoic era, “Every picture broke boundaries.”

  When Goldfish caught his first glimpses of actors who were only partially visible, he fired off telegrams to the set in Hollywood, “demanding how in hell [they] expected him to sell a picture in which the lighting was so lousy that you couldn’t even see the characters’ faces half the time.” Lasky was at DeMille’s side in Hollywood when one such wire arrived. Cecil pondered for a moment, then, borrowing a phrase then popular at Griffith’s studios, said, “Tell him it’s Rembrandt lighting.” That gave Goldfish an idea. “For Rembrandt lighting,” he decided, “they pay double.”

  After the Lasky Company’s first six months, Goldfish felt completely in the shadows himself. One of the spring issues of Moving Picture World boldly announced the production of Brewster’s Millions, hailing Jesse Lasky as “America’s Most Artistic Director,” Oscar Apfel as “Acknowledged Peer of Directors and Genius of Innovators,” and Cecil B. DeMille as “Master Playwright, Director and Author of Numerous Dramatic Successes.” Samuel Goldfish’s name was nowhere to be found.

  Never again was there such an omission. Goldfish planted his name in all subsequent announcements of the activities of the Lasky Company. One article simply referred to him as “head of the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company.”

  Nobody was more mindful of the company’s sudden prominence than W W Hodkinson. The operator of his own small motion picture theater in Ogden, Utah, he branched out, becoming a district manager for the Trust. After representing several western film exchanges, he dreamed of manifest destiny—a nationwide distribution company that would supply all forty-eight states with two new motion pictures every week. On an ink blotter, he sketched the trademark of a snow-capped mountain peak, which he thought best illustrated the name he had appropriated from a New York City apartment house, the Paramount.

  Hodkinson wanted at least thirty-six pictures a year from the Lasky Company. According to their contract of June 1, 1914, Paramount agreed to pay on the day of release of each production the sum of $18,750 as an advance against 65 percent of the gross income of each picture. The advance was only a fraction of what it cost to produce a film, but it guaranteed income and demand for their product. The Lasky Company would, overnight, have to triple its output. The officers raised their salaries to $500 a week.

  Ever since The Squaw Man, Adolph Zukor (who was supplying Paramount with one film per week) and Jesse Lasky had lunched regularly. Goldfish made a point of joining them. Lasky was charming and full of enthusiasm for show business; Goldfish, Zukor found, talked only of dollars and cents and knew next to nothing of the new personalities and plays then capturing filmgoers’ attention. A short time later, in fact, Goldfish walked into Zukor’s office and noticed him talking to a small girl in a simple navy suit. She was saying, “They’ve offered me five hundred for the use of my name, but do you really think that’s enough? After all, it means a lot to those cold-cream people.” When the girl left the office, Goldfish asked who she was. Zukor was stunned that he had not recognized Mary Pickford.

  But Goldfish was a quick study, intrepid in his curiosity. In 1914, he and Zukor were both eager to sign Marguerite Clark, a dark-haired girl with waiflike innocence, who was giving Mary Pickford a run for her money at the box office. While she was on the auction block, an enraged Zukor got Goldfish on the phone. “Now I want to tell you something,” he said. “I’m going to get her, no matter what I have to pay. So you’ll do me a favor if you don’t bid me up any higher.” Goldfish agreed to withdraw if Zukor would allow her to appear in a filmed version of a successful play called The Goose Girl, which he had just acquired. Zukor reluctantly agreed.

  Later that year, Goldfish pulled a coup so big it indicated that even he knew its magnitude. In the summer of 1914, David Belasco, the most renowned theatrical producer of the day, was selling the rights to ten of his plays for motion picture films. Zukor—t
he undisputed leader in transferring plays to the screen—had already formed a successful alliance with the other leading stage producer of the day, Daniel Frohman, and had the inside track. Through Belasco’s business manager, Goldfish wangled a meeting with the great white-haired producer. Goldfish promoted his company with his customary zeal. Belasco was further impressed with the youth of the Lasky Company’s partners. He agreed to sell his block of ten plays for $100,000 as an advance against 50 percent of the profits—one quarter up front. It was an exorbitant amount of money, but Goldfish knew the deal was worth it even if their company did not make a cent. The prestige of such plays as Rose of the Rancho and The Girl of the Golden West was just the magnet the company needed to attract more quality material and the best stars. Zukor—who was quietly buying up Paramount stock—had been bettered in the business of motion picture production for the first time. The Lasky Company, begun on a $25,000 shoestring, was now capitalized at ten times that amount.

  Goldfish had been noticing the vast numbers of immigrants in movie audiences. Silent pictures offered them the opportunity to see all aspects of America, often idealized, without any language barrier. In fact, moving pictures, with their occasional captions in plain talk, proved good primers for learning English. Griffith often said the medium was “the universal language.” The immigrant audiences convinced Goldfish that he could issue his films around the world. In the summer of 1914, he took a sales trip to Europe. Adolph Zukor asked Goldfish if he would promote Famous Players films over there as well.

  Goldfish launched his campaign in England, whose film industry had made great artistic strides in recent years. But even at full throttle, the United Kingdom could barely supply one fourth of its public’s demand for new films. Combining his own product with Zukor’s, Goldfish signed with a distributor named J. D. Walker. Under their contract, the Americans would receive ten thousand dollars advance against 65 percent of the films’ grosses. With the trail blazed, the rest of Goldfish’s European journey was easy. Sweden, Norway, and Denmark promised to buy every picture Goldfish could offer, for some three thousand dollars each. Belgium, Switzerland, and France all placed orders; Germany—with but twentyfive film companies of its own—guaranteed four thousand dollars per picture. Weeks later, an assassin’s bullet in Sarajevo would set off gunfire in most of the countries in which Goldfish had just closed deals; but none of his business would be affected for a while.

  Poland was never more than a short detour away, but again Goldfish got no closer to his homeland than Germany. He invited his mother to meet him in Berlin. On this visit—almost twenty years after he had run away—Hannah Gelbfisz’s son was almost unrecognizable to her. Schmuel had grown into a tall, solid man—a little over five feet ten inches tall, weighing one hundred sixty pounds, with a perfectly erect carriage and the step of a Prussian officer. He was completely bald, except for a fringe of brown hair, and he wore a pince-nez.

  Schmuel promised to send his mother photographs of his wife and his three-year-old daughter, whom she had never seen. He also assured her of a monthly allowance—enough money to support her and some of their poorer relatives. Hannah said that would enhance the social position of his sisters. Within the next few years, all three of them would find husbands. Schmuel’s checks arrived every month like clockwork. The photographs were never mailed.

  In truth, there was no family to capture in a portrait. In 1914, the Goldfishes separated. It was not just the new business that kept Sam so preoccupied. The time they spent together at their apartment at 808 West End Avenue—between Ninety-ninth and One Hundredth streets, in the same building as Jesse’s family—was more difficult than their time apart. When Jesse realized that most of his work was to be accomplished in Los Angeles, he took his entire family with him—not only his mother, wife, and child, but also Blanche and the baby, Ruth. Jesse put them all up in the lively Hollywood Hotel.

  Even before Blanche left him, Sam Goldfish dallied with other women. After years of sexual rejection, even from his wife, he had become, by virtue of his position and self-confidence, attractive to women who were once beyond his dreams. He had many love affairs, none of them of importance. Goldfish became known as a “chaser,” a popular label for men in his profession who were always ostensibly “looking for new talent.”

  He was looking for new talent. In England, he met Edna Goodrich, one of the beautiful “Floradora girls,” and enticed her to America with a promise of five thousand dollars for making one picture. He encountered the beautiful stage actress Fanny Ward one day in an elevator in the Hotel Claridge in New York and offered her a contract on the spot. A chance meeting at a restaurant led to the hiring of Wallace Reid.

  Now that Goldfish was actively involved in the selection of stars and properties as well as the negotiating of their deals, he spent more time where the movies were being made.

  The Lasky Company leased several hundred acres in the San Fernando Valley—a wide open, scrubby expanse with oaks and yucca plants—which became known as the Lasky Ranch. Their own team of real cowboys stocked their westerns. The company added to its real estate in Hollywood, renting the rest of the land from Selma Avenue to Sunset Boulevard, between Vine and El Centro. Their rent doubled to $150 a month, and they cleared away more orange groves near their barn to build additional dressing rooms for their growing list of players. (“Extras could be plucked like ripe tomatoes whenever needed, right outside the studio,” Lasky remembered years later. “There were benches under the pepper trees in the middle of Vine Street and they became a gathering place for people who wanted jobs. A director could run halfway across the street and pick up a bit actor, an assistant director, or a prop man. Work was work, and when a fellow got a nod he didn’t always know until he got on the set whether he’d be required to chew the scenery or push it around. If he wasn’t particular, he worked oftener.”) Several directors and actresses—including Blanche Sweet, the idol of young Lillian Gish—were signed to yearly contracts.

  Miss Sweet was one of the first to notice Goldfish’s increasing presence on the scene. “There he was back in New York feeling left out,” she said, “so he’d go out to California to be seen. At first, he would be extremely polite, to command our respect. After all, he signed our paychecks. Then he came around to our dressing rooms and rattled the cages. It wasn’t as if he had much control over what we were doing. Lasky and DeMille were there for that. He just wanted us to notice that he was there and know that he was the boss.”

  Although each Lasky Company film was earning more money faster than its Famous Players equivalent, it peeved Goldfish that he was not as successful as Zukor in acquiring talent. He had presented some actors, but he had not created a motion picture star. In early 1915, it struck Goldfish that he had not been looking in the right places.

  While motion pictures were still toddling, the biggest stars in the world were to be found not in Broadway theaters but in opera houses. Popularity for a few film stars was snowballing, yet the greatest money and attention were commanded by operatic divas. None had more talent and beauty than the blue-eyed, black-haired Geraldine Farrar, then the most famous prima donna in America. Both Goldfish and Zukor bid for her services.

  Samuel Goldwyn’s parents, Aaron and Hannah Gelbfisz, c. 1875.

  Goldwyn, age twenty, in Gloversville, New York, where after his illegal entry into the United States in 1899 the newly named Samuel Goldfish became a factory worker.

  Gloversville’s Kingsborough Hotel at the turn of the century. To Sam Goldfish, it was the height of luxury.

  Blanche and her brother Jesse Lasky, 1905—“The Musical Laskys” of vaudeville. To escape from show business, Blanche married Sam Goldfish, then the leading salesman for the Elite Glove Company.

  The founders of Famous Players-Lasky (which became Paramount Pictures) in 1916. Left to right: Jesse Lasky, Adolph Zukor, Samuel Goldfish, Cecil B. DeMille, and Zukor’s brother-in-law, Al Kaufman.

  Sam Goldfish and DeMille on the set of Joan the Woma
n. Hollywood, 1916. Their star, Geraldine Farrar, is in the background.

  With Farrar’s co-star Hobart Bosworth.

  Sam Goldfish formed a new production company in 1916 with Edgar Selwyn (INSET) and his brother, Archibald. A short time later, to the Selwyns’ dismay, Goldfish made the company name of Goldwyn his own.

  Goldwyn with seven of his Eminent Authors. Back row, left to right, LeRoy Scott, Gouverneur Morris, Goldwyn, Rupert Hughes; front row, Gertrude Atherton, Katherine Newlin Burt, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Rita Weiman.

  Goldwyn and his new Culver City lot, flanked by Mabel Normand and Rupert Hughes on the left, Geraldine Farrar and Rex Beach on the right.

  Mabel Normand conferring with Victor “Pops” Schertzinger, 1919. A jazz combo awaits the resumption of shooting. The silent screen’s leading comedienne—part Cinderella, part lovable scamp (BELOW)—stole Goldwyn’s heart ... until one fateful weekend together in Saratoga.

  Goldwyn with his daughter, Ruth, c. 1920. After Sam divorced her mother, his visits with the child were infrequent.

  Sam Goldwyn, ousted from the Goldwyn Company, took up horseback riding, tennis, and golf, and even commissioned the writing of his autobiography—all part of the process of “inventing himself,” during the summer of 1922.

  A Hollywood lunch for Dr. A. H. Giannini, the founder of the Bank of America and Goldwyn’s financier. At head of table are Sol Lesser, Dr. Giannini, Joseph Schenck, and Mack Sennett; Jack Warner and B. P. Schulberg sit at the center of the far side of the table; Goldwyn sits fifth from the left on the near side.