The accidental wit and wisdom of Samuel Goldwyn

For some of you younger readers the name Schmuel Gelbfisz will not ring a bell. Yet back in the Thirties Schmuel Gelbfisz’s identity was a dinner-party quiz question, and the one who guessed correctly would receive a kiss from Mary Pickford — America’s sweetheart — if he happened to be a man, or an expensive trinket if a lady got it right. Schmuel was born in Warsaw, Poland, in July 1879, a Hasidic Jew, but later on falsified his birthday in order not to serve in the tsar’s army. He left my favourite country as a 16-year-old and walked to …Germany. He had no money and no friends, got to the Oder, fell into the water, was fished out by border guards, talked a good game and walked another 200 miles to Hamburg. When Gelbfisz died, in January 1974, President Nixon paid him a visit on his deathbed and headlines announced his passing. He was, of course, the last of the great independent producers of Hollywood, a giant of the industry better known as Samuel Goldwyn.

If Sheridan had not invented Mrs Malaprop, Goldwynism would be the word in the dictionary that identifies the misuse of language. I will give you just a few of them, having just read a magnificent biography of the mogul by Scott Berg, a very talented writer whose brother is a top Hollywood agent with whom I broke bread in Cannes last year following the premier of the greatest movie ever, Seduced and Abandoned.

Long after he had become fabulously rich and famous, Goldwyn would proudly show his art collection to his guests, always zeroing in on his ‘Toujours Lautrec’. When his wife suggested a friend seek psychiatric help, he interrupted with, ‘Anybody who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined.’