Goldwyn

by A. Scott Berg

  Hilde Berl worked another wonder on the Goldwyn family. Ruth Capps answered her phone one afternoon and heard a voice completely foreign to her. “This is Frances Goldwyn,” said the cultured voice. “Don’t you think it’s time your father and you got together?” The rift between Sam and his daughter troubled Frances. “She was experiencing her own pain—loneli—ness,” suggested Hilde Berl; “and she knew what it was like to grow up without a father.” After one of her sessions with Miss Berl, she invited Ruth and her husband to Laurel Lane for dinner; then she invited them for holidays. Ruth never felt that Frances was taking a real interest in her, only that Frances was carrying out Goldwyn’s unspoken wishes, taking hold of a situation too emotional for him to handle; nonetheless, Frances performed with aplomb. The gatherings were uncomfortable, but Frances did her best to see that conversation ran smoothly. Sammy and Ruth delighted in discovering each other. Father and daughter were always civil, keeping their feelings at a polite distance. From then on, Sam hurt her only unconsciously, excluding her in ways he was not even aware of. On one occasion, he bragged of having recently hosted the President’s wife, saying how much Ruthie would have enjoyed meeting her. “He was right,” Ruth admitted many years later; “I would have given anything to have met Mrs. Roosevelt, but it would never have even occurred to my father to have invited me.”

  When in 1939 Ruth gave birth to her second child, a son named Alan, she was startled to awaken in a private room—with coffee brewing, an air conditioner, and her own full-time nurse. She was flabbergasted when Frances walked into her room—with Sam, who had ordered and paid for the deluxe accommodations. Mac Capps handwrote his father-in-law a letter of thanks, noting that “more than the considerable physical benefits of your visit,” Ruth “is more touched that you should have thought of them at all.... I wish I could tell you how happy your visit and solicitude have made Ruthie.” In a postscript, Mac Capps explained that he had not put a salutation on his missive because after seven years of marriage, “you’ve never told me what to call you.”

  The economics of the thirties brought every Gelbfisz relative out of the woodwork, as well as several pretenders. Goldwyn rewarded most those who demanded least. He sent checks to his father’s three siblings in Poland and monthly allowances to his sisters Mania (in Warsaw) and Sally (who had become a dressmaker in Birmingham, England). Early in the decade, he had loaned several thousand dollars to each of his American siblings. Ben and Bernard (they had changed their last name to Fish), who worked as salesmen for their brother, used the money as down payments on houses. So did their sister Nettie (who had married a wholesale-grocery salesman named Leo Sherman and moved from Chicago to central Los Angeles). One day, without explanation, Goldwyn canceled their debts.

  Ben idolized Sam and spent his life staying in his good graces. He was so discreet in his motion picture sales and distribution career that few knew he was Sam Goldwyn’s brother. Bernard moved to San Francisco, where he became a Christian Science practitioner, and Sam never saw or spoke to him again. In fact, he denied having a second brother. Nettie made constant demands on Sam for money, which were met by angry letters, then silence. In all her time in the United States, even when she lived a few miles away in Los Angeles, Sam never saw her. In June 1935, she had been rushed to the hospital with what doctors suspected was peritonitis. From her bed, she cried out to her daughter, Sally, “I want to see my brother Sam.” The girl got through to him on the telephone and pleaded with Goldwyn to visit. “I hate hospitals,” he said. “When Eddie Cantor was sick in the hospital, I didn’t even visit him.”

  “But this isn’t Eddie Cantor,” she said, “it’s your sister.” Goldwyn sent a get-well letter signed by his secretary. A few days later, Nettie Sherman died. When Sally called to inform him of the funeral, she got a similar response: “I don’t go to funerals.” But he did show up at the burial and stood alone. Afterward he approached his teenaged niece and said, “Don’t you worry; I’ll always take care of you.” From that day forward, he sent her a check for fifty dollars every month; when she got engaged, the checks stopped. Except for one chance meeting in a theater, they never spoke again.

  Sam’s sister Mania and her husband, Abraham Lebensold, sensed that Poland was no place for Jews in 1939. They prepared to move to England that fall. Goldwyn heard of these plans and sent $2,500 to the Home Office in London as a token of faith that he would provide for them if they were allowed to enter England. But the Lebensolds “took a cure” every summer in Krynica, a Polish spa, and 1939 would be no exception. While they were enjoying the waters that September, German troops marched into the country and ordered them back to Warsaw. Confined to the ghetto, the Lebensolds plotted their escape. Lebensold worked in a Nazi munitions plant for several months, handing over most of his wages to guards who promised to help him and his wife steal out of the country. Then, instead of abetting the Lebensolds, they arrested them, packing them off to Treblinka, where they were killed.

  Goldwyn and his brothers tried to get their remaining relatives out of Poland. But it was too late. Those who had not already left were subsequently sentenced to concentration camps, where they all perished. Sam sent monthly allowances to his three surviving nieces in England; but he never gave anything to his nephew Fred Lebensold, who migrated on his own to Canada and became a prominent architect.

  Nobody knew what the Holocaust cost Goldwyn emotionally. Like most of the Hollywood moguls, he wore an American flag on his sleeve to cover the yellow armband; he never discussed his family’s losses. In late 1940, the religious feelings he had long concealed were put to another test.

  Joseph P. Kennedy, after serving almost three years as ambassador to Great Britain, tendered his resignation to President Roosevelt and toured the country on a “peace crusade.” In a series of off-the-record talks with Americans of influence he voiced many of the sentiments of the America First Committee, a popular isolationist organization. When Kennedy reached Hollywood on November 13, his rhetoric took some unusual twists, revealing several of his own prejudices. Fifty of the town’s power brokers gathered for lunch at Warner Brothers, Sam Goldwyn among them. After dessert, Kennedy rose to report unofficially on London after its first few months of the blitz. He said that America should limit its aid to Britain so as not to jeopardize itself in the event of an Axis victory. Then he filled the room with the fear of God by telling them to “stop making anti-Nazi pictures or using the film medium to promote or show sympathy to the cause of the ‘democracies’ versus the ’dictators.‘” He said that anti-Semitism was growing in England and that the Jews were being blamed for the war; any Jewish outcries, he said, would “make the world feel that a ’Jewish War‘ was going on.” The audience sat stunned. Kennedy told them that Hitler liked movies and would want America to continue producing them; but, the ambassador added, “You’re going to have to get those Jewish names off the screen.”

  The comments utterly dumbfounded most of those present. “As a result of Kennedy’s cry for silence,” observed Ben Hecht, “all of Hollywood’s top Jews went around with their grief hidden like a Jewish fox under their Gentile vests. In New York, the influential Jews I met had also espoused the Kennedy hide-your-Jewish-head psychology.”

  Goldwyn burrowed deeper into his work. His salary was now $200,000 a year. Still fighting United Artists, he hesitated to start another picture until he realized he could use it to win that war. With his ranks reduced to one movie star and one director, Goldwyn rushed into production the only project he had in development that might suit them both. It was called The Westerner.

  Jo Swerling and Niven Busch wrote most of the script about the legendary Texas lawman Judge Roy Bean. Lillian Hellman and Oliver La Farge did rewrites. William Wyler saw an opportunity to do right by his years of directing western quickies and could hardly wait to get started, but Gary Cooper wanted nothing to do with the film. Goldwyn meant for him to play the saddle tramp who rides into town; but it was plain to the actor that the starring role
was Judge Roy Bean. The producer already intended to cast Walter Brennan as the flea-bitten old varmint, and Cooper knew he would end up stealing every scene. He wired Goldwyn that he did not approve of the material. “Goddamned Cooper is trying to kill me,” the producer ranted.

  Over the next few weeks, Goldwyn assured Cooper that his part was being fattened ... and that if he failed to report for work, he would be sued for all the expenses incurred on the project to date—$400,000. Cooper showed up for his wardrobe fitting. Two weeks later, he read the final shooting script and wrote Goldwyn, “After careful and reasonable consideration I regret to advise you that the character, Cole Harden, is still inadequate and unsatisfactory for me, in my opinion, as is the story.” Cooper went on to state that the script’s inferiority violated both the spirit and the letter of their working agreements. “Like you,” he wrote, “I have a position to uphold. My professional standing has been jeopardized from the beginning.”

  But Cooper never thought of himself as anything but a gun for hire. While Goldwyn’s means of intimidation were “unprecedented” in Cooper’s years in the picture business, he said he would “bow to your threats since normal reasoning and friendly relations mean little, if anything to you.” He agreed to report for work and “to perform my services ... to the fullest of my ability, with the express understanding that I am doing so under protest.” But he was fed up with Goldwyn. This latest action, he wrote, only “serves as confirmation that my experience since the beginning of the contract has been consistently unsettled, insecure, lacking inspiration and enthusiasm and it is, therefore, best for you to realize that our association is incompatible, holding small hope for any mutually happy solution and I fail to see how we can profitably continue this strained relationship.”

  “I disagree with your conclusion that our situation holds small hope for any mutually happy solution,” Goldwyn wrote back. “... There is no reason, Gary, why we can not both be very happy in our relationship. I will certainly do everything possible to bring this about, and if you are willing to go part way toward this end there is no reason why our association can not be a most pleasant one for each of us.” Goldwyn conceded nothing.

  Cooper grumbled his way through the filming of the million-dollar production on location outside Tucson. The introverted Cooper and the extroverted Brennan proved to be excellent foils for each other, no matter who was scoring the most points. Brennan also developed the best vocal impersonation of Sam Goldwyn of anyone in Hollywood. More than once, he telephoned Cooper and chewed him out in the producer’s voice. “You goddamned son-of-a-bitch,” he would say, “you’re so lousy I want Brennan to have top billing in this picture.” The film would bring Brennan his third Supporting Actor Oscar within five years.

  Goldwyn liked The Westerner enough to announce that he was not going to distribute it through United Artists, despite his legal obligation. He interested Warner Brothers in releasing the film, until UA warned them they had better prepare for a lawsuit. None of the other studios in town would become Goldwyn’s stalking horse in his battle with UA.

  So Goldwyn returned to court, filing a new bill of complaint. He would let United Artists distribute The Westerner, but he was suing them for damages in delaying its distribution. In more than 150 pages, he listed the rest of his grievances, ranging from his partners’ malicious attempt “to drive him out of business” to withholding moneys due and releasing “misleading statements to the press intimating that Goldwyn was a contract-breaker.” Goldwyn’s latest action did not intimidate his partners. Knowing he wanted to leave the company, they intended to fight to the finish. The longer the case dragged through the judicial quagmire, the better for them. The next year, Goldwyn’s lawyer, Max Steuer, died, further delaying the case.

  Goldwyn ceased to develop projects, loath to put any pictures into production so long as his distribution situation was unresolved. United Artists was prepared to sit him out, for they could always find product to release. Besides, they realized, even with his recent increase in output, Goldwyn had not provided a big hit since The Hurricane. He was counting on Oscar night to bring some badly needed luster to his name.

  The evening of February 29, 1940, at the Cocoanut Grove in the Ambassador Hotel started promisingly enough for Samuel Goldwyn. The winner of the New York Film Critics Award had reason to believe he might win his first Oscar at the twelfth presentation of the Academy Awards. The results in the first six categories did not indicate a Gone With the Wind sweep, and Gregg Toland won for his black-and-white cinematography on Wuthering Heights. But the Los Angeles Times had broken its vow with the Academy not to publish the names of the winners until after the ceremony, and word of the remaining winners began to spread from their sunset edition to every table in the room. By the time the major awards were presented, first-time master of ceremonies Bob Hope was able to quip, “What a wonderful thing, this benefit for David Selznick.” Clark Gable lost the Best Actor trophy to Robert Donat, but Gone With the Wind grabbed everything else. Goldwyn worried that one day his friend Selznick would have to pay a heavy price for the film’s extravagant success; but the next morning he wired only his sincerest congratulations. Selznick wrote back, “I have long felt, and often said, that the day must come, as it should have years ago, for the industry officially to give recognition publicly to what everyone feels privately: that you are one of the few men who is forever fighting to raise the level of our industry and one of the few men who has never deserted his ideals.”

  The next year, David Selznick’s Rebecca became box-office champion and took home another Best Picture statuette, the first time an independent studio had won the grand prize two years in a row. Sam Goldwyn felt the also-ran. He was no longer even the town’s leading independent producer.

  The Westerner would not be released until September 1940, nine months after Raffles. It was the longest lag between Goldwyn pictures since he had been producing. Worse still, he had nothing slated to go before the cameras for almost another year. Samuel Goldwyn and Samuel Goldwyn, Inc. v. United Artists Corporation was stagnating in the courts. His career was stuck.

  One day in early 1941, somebody, at last, took action. Frances Goldwyn made a phone call, got in her car, and drove herself up Summit Drive to Pickfair. The mistress of the house met her in the foyer. Frances Goldwyn said that all this legal stalling was not doing anybody any good. Then she broke down in tears, flung herself prostrate on the floor, and pleaded with Mary Pickford to let Sam out of his United Artists contract. “I beg for my husband and child,” she said.

  Somehow these two women grasped the situation in a way that none of the moguls and their lawyers did. “Don’t do that,” said Mary Pickford. “I’ll settle. But for God’s sake, get up, Frances.”

  On March 11, 1941, United Artists canceled Goldwyn’s distribution contract. They allowed him to cash in his stock for $300,000, and he received another $200,000 from the Silverstone Plan.

  “THEY called me the lone wolf, and I have been called some other things, too,” Goldwyn said years later in an interview. “I had partners but I discovered I was spending more time trying to explain to them what I was doing than in making pictures.” As Hollywood’s “only individual who owns and operates his own studio,” Goldwyn would continue producing out of his plant on Formosa Avenue. But not since his beginnings in the film business had he been so devoid of properties and stars. For the first time in almost fifteen years, he lacked a distributor. More than ever, he lusted for the public approval and professional acknowledgment that persistently eluded him—a blockbuster hit at the box office and an Oscar.

  Once again he was starting over, on his own.

  PART THREE

  17 “We Did It Before and We Can Do It Again”

  HE WOULD OFTEN come to moments of self-despair,“ Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., observed of his father over the years, ”—moments in which he would sit with a faraway look in his eyes and contemplate the doom that lay ahead.“ The start of the 1940s marked one of those peri
ods. Sammy remembered trying to argue with his father that ”perhaps somewhere, somehow, there was sunshine. But he would even more soundly show me the illogicality of hope. Finally, when he had won the day and I agreed with him that all was lost, he would sit back in his chair, get a twinkle in his eyes, stick his jaw out and say, ‘Yes, it’s pretty bad. I just thank God I’ve still got Goldwyn.“’

  Samuel Goldwyn, Inc., had virtually shut down for almost a year, but his settlement from United Artists and his salary from the preceding year alone netted Goldwyn close to one million dollars. Since going independent in 1923, he had produced fifty-eight pictures; except for the two he produced for Art Cinema, he owned them all outright. One cataclysm after another had threatened to wipe him out ever since his entering motion pictures—the First World War, the oligopoly of the studio system, the advent of talkies, the Depression; and he had withstood them all. The global conflagration heating up would be just another storm he would have to survive. “You should be quite accustomed to [this],” said David Niven in bidding Goldwyn farewell, as he became Hollywood’s first star to enlist. “You were through the last war, weren’t you?” “Yes,” Goldwyn said wearily, “I was at Fort Lee.”

  From the second-floor northeast-corner office of the Samuel Goldwyn Studios, the commandant himself sounded reveille. He drafted his favorite public relations man—Lynn Farnol—to alert the press that “there are going to be Goldwyn pictures again.” Farnol was ordered to emphasize “that the chain and continuity of hit pictures, of quality pictures, interrupted and broken by the law suit, starts again,” and that Goldwyn should be presented as a man “with renewed vigor and vitality—eager to go—full speed ahead.”

  For several weeks after his settlement with United Artists, Goldwyn looked around for a distribution deal. The recent acceptance by the five major film companies of a consent decree outlawing “block booking” had opened new outlets to independent producers. The “majors” were selling individual pictures for outside producers on a percentage basis. Frank Capra had recently struck such an arrangement with Warner Brothers, as had Howard Hughes at Fox. Both those studios appealed to Goldwyn, until he learned that they would not grant him preferential distribution rates. Neither would Paramount. He would not even consider the industry’s colossus, MGM, as long as Louis B. Mayer was there. It looked as though Goldwyn had painted himself into a corner, his former partners appearing to be his only alternative. “AFTER IT’S ALL BEEN SAID AND DONE,” read a Variety headline on March 26, 1941, “GOLDWYN MAY RELEASE THROUGH UA.”