Goldwyn

by A. Scott Berg

  The Goldwyns tried to stay in touch with the new names in the industry, but Frances was less interested than her husband in the recent crop of films. No sooner would a picture begin than she would be at the bar, where she kept a private batch of martinis. Audrey Wilder noticed she would throw back the first one, then down another four during the course of a film. With a few people, Frances would allow herself to reveal a bawdy sense of humor, occasionally even joke at herself. At one big post-premiere party at Romanoff’s, she sat next to Audrey Wilder and ordered a pink gin—straight gin and bitters. “The drink of the London whores,” Frances said, stifling a giggle that threatened to shake her rigid back.

  On one of their recent trips east, the Goldwyns called on Irene Mayer Selznick, who upon divorcing had uprooted herself from Beverly Hills and moved to the Pierre Hotel in New York. There she forged a new life for herself as the producer of such Broadway hits as A Streetcar Named Desire, Bell, Book and Candle, and The Chalk Garden; she also bought forty acres with ponds and waterfalls in Bedford Village, an hour north of the city. Sam and Frances visited her house, surrounded by stone walls, dogwoods, and pungent lilacs. One afternoon, coming in from a walk, Frances stopped in her tracks, stared at the idyllic setting, and burst into tears. She was happy to see that the very house she had long dreamed of for herself did in fact exist. “I’m glad you have it,” she conceded to her old friend. The place made Sam melancholy as well. After a long hike through the adjacent wildlife sanctuary, he stopped Irene on the dusty dirt road leading back to the house and placed his hands on her head. “I’ll tell you what I want,” he said, his eyes glistening. “I want to live longer.” Tears rolling down his cheeks, he added, “I just want to live to see Cricket married.”

  “ MY father liked the idea of a dynasty,” said Sam Goldwyn, Jr. , “but he was never sure how it would work. It was a subject of great ambivalence for him. Part of him believed, ‘Après moi le deluge’; but then he’d reveal his obsession that his name endure and he’d say, ‘We’ve got to continue.’” The way Jules Stein multiplied his interests into the largest empire in show business elicited Goldwyn’s admiration but not his envy. “He was afraid if he built too strong an organization,” Sam Goldwyn, Jr., added, “he would have to watch out all the time.” The result was a net worth of some twenty million dollars, one tenth what the MCA founder amassed in half the time. “I could’ve been worth many times more than I was,” Goldwyn admitted, “but I wouldn’t have survived.” His son said, “Even when his picture-making instincts started to go, he just wanted to be in command of a ship. He didn’t care how big or if it went down.”

  After establishing trust funds for his family, Goldwyn abdicated the real decisions about the future of his family’s involvement in his business to his wife. “When [the] time comes,” Frances told a newspaper interviewer in late 1959, “I hope my son will take over. I won’t. I’m involved in things at the studio because I’m interested in my husband’s career, but I don’t want the same things for myself. I’m a woman. But don’t get the idea I’ll sit around and knit. Not on your life. I’m going to WRITE.”

  After abandoning her attempt at a Hollywood novel, Frances took a stab at one other book—a biography of her husband. She wrote two pages and quit. Over the next few years, she showed no signs of losing interest in the operation of the studio, nor in involving Sammy. She persisted in economizing at every turn—fixing her own cigarette holder filters with swabs of cotton, shopping for fabric to re-cover an umbrella that could not have been worth more than five dollars in the first place. Billy Wilder remembered Frances’s asking if he had received one of those wartime Oscars, which had been made of some inferior alloy that tarnished badly. Wilder had (for directing and writing The Lost Weekend) and recommended a man he had found who shined each trophy up for eighty dollars. Frances thanked him. A week later, she told him she had found somebody to do the job for twenty-five. “I’ve lived through three generations of the very rich here,” she took to saying. “I’d like to live through a fourth.”

  Just before one of the Goldwyns’ next visits to Hawaii—an annual trip between their vacations to Bad Gastein with the Wilders and their retreats to Palm Springs—Frances made an appointment with Claudette Colbert’s husband. Dr. Joel Pressman was a highly respected nose and throat doctor on the staff at UCLA Medical Center, who also performed cosmetic surgery on many Hollywood personalities. Frances had her face lifted. At the same time, she stopped dying her hair (which had in fact lost its natural color when she was twenty-one). Frances stepped off the boat from Hawaii a month later sporting a new look. It was a shocking metamorphosis, which most of her friends said made her look twenty years younger—rested and vigorous beneath her cap of snow-white hair. With a figure in vogue for the fashions of the sixties, she dressed more with the times, sometimes trendily.

  Her robust husband had at last become the model of the American success story he had long dreamed of, that character he began inventing back in Warsaw. He rested more and more on his laurels, as his survival of each additional year warranted some new accolade. In 1959, the Producers Guild of America presented him with their Milestone Award—even though he did not belong to the organization. The next year, the Emperor of Japan bestowed on him the Order of the Rising Sun for “contribution to the cultural understanding between our two countries.” In 1961, the state of Israel specially commended Goldwyn for “two decades of service to world Jewry through the United Jewish Welfare Fund.” The Hollywood Foreign Correspondents Association christened their Golden Globe for the Best Foreign Picture the Samuel Goldwyn International Film Award; the American Council for Nationalities Service presented Goldwyn their first Golden Door Award.

  Goldwyn reduced his daily appointments to official audiences with the press and important powers in town. Lunch every ten days would be with somebody of current prominence—Jonas Salk or Alfred Hitchcock or David Ben-Gurion or Julie Andrews. Otherwise he dined with his immediate studio staff, almost always including his new general manager, Jack Foreman—a sharp, go-getting alumnus of the University of Southern California’s school of cinema, who had served ten years at CBS. As the once lengthy log of telephone calls during the day shortened to a few influential names, Goldwyn usually found himself going home after his midday nap for a round of croquet or an appointment with one doctor or another. A slip on the croquet lawn resulted in a knee operation; a kidney stone had to be removed; otosclerosis demanded ear surgery and a hearing aid. In lieu of Christmas cards, well-wishing form letters were typed and sent to fifty powerful friends in business and industry (Howard Hughes, Arthur Sulzberger, Walter Annenberg, Norman Chandler, William S. Paley, etc.). No actors or writers made the Goldwyns’ list; in fact, most of the show business names were heads of companies. Goldwyn’s secretary wired another twenty messages to such special acquaintances as Lord Beaverbrook, Averell Harriman, Sherman Adams, and the Eisenhowers.

  In the summer of 1960, Goldwyn met Senator John F. Kennedy—in Los Angeles for the Democratic National Convention—at Charles Feldman’s. Goldwyn would never forget Joseph Kennedy’s anti-Semitism, a trait he assumed the senator had inherited; he also thought young Kennedy was too much of a playboy to be President. Goldwyn became a staunch supporter of Richard Nixon, and later ticked off for the press the tough world issues that his man was most qualified to tackle: “The defense budget, the U.S. foreign policy mess, Castro,” Goldwyn said. “And that H-bomb. That’s dynamite!”

  After the election, Goldwyn congratulated the President-elect. He invited the also-ran to a private luncheon—just Nixon and Dorothy Schiff, publisher of the New York Post, in his studio dining room. Goldwyn said the television debates had cost Nixon the election and told him, “I’d have gotten you a make-up man.” For several hours, Goldwyn gave Nixon a piece of his mind. Nixon did not know his host was thinking of his own track record when he said, “Only one thing is important—to survive. If you can survive 51% of the time ... you’re a winner.”

  Twelve
hundred people filled the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Sunday night, August 26, 1962, to dine on roast beef, asparagus, and a flaming ice cream cake—all in honor of Samuel Goldwyn’s “eightieth birthday.” The dais alone held more than two dozen celebrities, from Jack Benny to Mayor Sam Yorty, with such as Senator Jacob Javits, Danny Kaye, Leonard Firestone, and William Wyler in between. Toastmaster George Jessel conducted the ceremonies, noted the Los Angeles Times, “as if they were half-men’s smoker and half-religious ‘shabbas.’” President Kennedy sent a telegram of congratulations. Richard Nixon (whom Goldwyn was actively supporting for governor) said Goldwyn was “one of those who began with nothing but his own ability, and achieved greatness on just that.” Frank Sinatra and Eddie Fisher sang, Loretta Young kissed Goldwyn to prove she “wasn’t afraid of him any more,” Harpo Marx spoke, and Jimmy Durante stole the show with a rendition of “Inka Dinka Doo.” Along with messages from former Presidents Eisenhower and Hoover, Goldwyn received one hundred fifty congratulatory telegrams on the occasion and another one hundred cards and letters; dozens of flowers; a pair of shoes from Fred Astaire; and an encomiastic editorial in the New York Times.

  The next morning, Goldwyn announced to the press his plans for a sweeping new code of ethics for Hollywood. It was an extensive program that called on all branches of the industry to:(1) provide fine entertainment, (2) see to it that the money which goes into making pictures and which comes from the public is not squandered and (3) restore standards of conduct—personal and business—to the highest possible levels.

  With Hollywood currently plagued by “runaway production” (the abandonment of Los Angeles soundstages for cheaper locations elsewhere), soaring salaries, and several companies on the verge of bankruptcy, Goldwyn said, such a plan was “the only way this industry is going to be saved.” When asked if he had sounded out other studio heads about his proposed code, Goldwyn said, “I don’t sound out anybody. I do it.”

  He continued to use each birthday to summon the press and talk more about the state of the business than about his own affairs. When Ben Hecht came to him with a new idea for a film, Goldwyn told him outright, “As things are right now, I am not taking on any obligations to produce any pictures.” Two years later, he was telling people he had “decided to wait until the climate is a little better for picture making.”

  What Goldwyn had taken out of Hollywood, he began putting back, in increasing amounts. A $250,000 donation to the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Halls resulted in the Samuel Goldwyn Plaza, sixteen cottages and a large recreational area. Dorothy Chandler confidentially assured him that the center stage of Los Angeles’s new theater compound would be named the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in return for his $100,000 donation; the chagrined Mrs. Chandler had to renege when the Ahmanson Foundation offered one million dollars for those nominal rights.

  On November 21, 1963, an invitation was mailed from the White House—the President requesting the pleasure of Mr. Goldwyn’s company at lunch three weeks thence. The next day, Goldwyn’s secretary rushed into his office, where he was meeting with Jack Foreman, and announced that the President had been shot. “We turned on the TV,” Foreman remembered, and “Sam cried like a baby.” For the next three days, he sat glued to the television at Laurel Lane. He wrote condolence letters to Kennedy’s widow and his mother.

  “Goldwyn played both sides of the street,” said William Paley, “wherever the power was.” He supported Lyndon Johnson in 1964, before swinging back to support Republican actors playing new roles in California politics—George Murphy (whom Goldwyn had brought to Hollywood) and Ronald Reagan. The Goldwyns contributed more than $15, 000 to Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign.

  “Conservatism became an important philosophy in Goldwyn’s life,” observed Jack Foreman. “I felt he thought he’d never produce again.” Goldwyn focused most of his attention on his catalogue of eighty films, fifty-three of which were marketable to television. “Protect those pictures,” he told Sammy repeatedly, “and they’ll protect you.”

  A “flamboyant wheeler-dealer” named Matthew “Matty” Fox was among the first to approach Goldwyn with the idea of buying his old films for resale to television. “He’d come around with a check for one million dollars made out to Samuel Goldwyn,” Foreman remembered, “and he’d wave it under his nose.” Goldwyn sneezed at it. By the sixties, all the studios had unloaded their theatrical film libraries on television, and Goldwyn knew television would devour them instantly. NBC’s Saturday Night at the Movies could gobble up the best product of an entire studio in a single year. Keeping his films off the air could only make them more valuable. For years, he flirted with several television syndicates and networks. One afternoon, Dan Seymour, the future chairman of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, asked Goldwyn how much money he was looking to make from the sale of his film library. “I don’t know,” said Goldwyn, tapping his index finger against his temple, “but when I hear the number, I’ll know it.”

  In 1960, Goldwyn’s representative reported that he had gathered bids as high as five million dollars from stations in the United States and abroad. Goldwyn and Foreman decided to separate the blockbuster musicals of the fifties and license the rest as a package on a limited basis. In 1964, Goldwyn commanded one million dollars for two runs of Hans Christian Andersen; he got the same terms for Guys and Dolls.

  Through all the dealings, the head of CBS hung fire. Foreman said, “It hurt Sam when he announced he was releasing films for TV and Bill Paley didn’t come forward.” Paley knew better. “Sam Goldwyn wants me to buy some of his films,” he quietly announced to some people one weekend in Sands Point, “and I know the day I do will mark the end of our friendship.”

  In late 1964, Goldwyn at last released his library—to five of CBS’s privately owned and operated outlets (known as O & O’s), in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. Paley kept himself so far removed from the arrangements that he did not even know negotiations had been concluded. Goldwyn waited for a phone call from his old friend, and when none came, he placed one. “Well, I hope you’re happy with the deal,” he said to Paley, who could not make out what he was talking about. “Don’t you know,” said Goldwyn, playing along, “you’ve bought my pictures for television?” In truth, Paley did not know; the licensing of fifty old movies for fiveO & O stations was a routine matter for lower-echelon executives. “Come, come,” said Goldwyn, unable to imagine the head of CBS having anything more important on his desk than the licensing of Goldwyn films. “That’s very hard for me to believe.”

  Goldwyn scrutinized every detail concerning the broadcasting of his films. He announced the deal with his customary ruffles and flourishes, as if opening a new picture. At a press conference, he argued that “pictures worth showing shouldn’t be denigrated” and pointed out that “fine plays are produced many times and they are never called oldies.” He invited Cecil Smith, television critic of the Los Angeles Times, to a private lunch. “Well,” Smith said later, “that was an invitation you couldn’t turn down. But everything in the private dining room reminded me of my grandmother’s —the food and the furniture. The whole meeting was like walking into another century.”

  Goldwyn kept his finger on Hollywood’s pulse by renting out space at his studio, one of the best facilities in town. It became his plaything. Sam junior said, “He loved to up people’s rents.” Under Jack Foreman’s supervision, the modest fortress at Formosa Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard was billing close to four million dollars a year, leasing offices and stages to producers of television programs, commercials, and feature films. The studio’s primary tenant since 1957 was the Mirisch Company, a successful independent production outfit started by three brothers. In the changing industry of smaller production companies, they quickly became preeminent. Much of their success lay in creating partnerships with important directors, starting with Billy Wilder on Some Like It Hot. John Sturges made The Magnifuent Seven for
them. In 1960, the Mirisch Company won Best Picture with Wilder’s The Apartment, then repeated the honor the next year with Robert Wise’s West Side Story. In 1964, they slated ten films for production, with such directors as Wilder, George Roy Hill, Blake Edwards, Melville Shavelson, John Frankenheimer, and Norman Jewison. Goldwyn got to know as many of the new talents as possible, inviting each of them to lunch or croquet.

  The regular croquet game drifted apart. When he could not recruit any stray players, he would draft a studio underling or Sammy, pulling them away from their own work by insisting they spend the afternoon with him. Even looking the other way when Goldwyn moved his ball into better position, opponents invariably beat him; Goldwyn would throw his hands up and say, “Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?”

  “Life rolled along pleasantly enough,” Frances recalled of the sixties, until her husband developed a fear of aging. “He saw so many of his contemporaries pass on that he became touchy on the subject of age. When someone at the studio jokingly called him a senior citizen, he was depressed for days.” He sometimes lost his balance, but she almost always saw him quickly right himself. She tried to ignore his stray nonsensical comments, but on a few occasions she had to telephone agents and undo deals her husband had impetuously made.