Samuel Goldwyn

Film studio executive Samuel Goldwyn

Samuel Goldwyn (born Szmuel Gelbfisz (c. July 1879 – January 31, 1974), also known as Samuel Goldfish, was an American film producer. He was most well known for being the founding contributor and executive of several motion picture studios in Hollywood.

Quotes

• I don't think anybody should write his autobiography until after he's dead.
  • Quoted in Arthur Marx, Goldwyn: The Man Behind the Myth (1976), prologue

• Unnamed director: [The script is] too caustic.
  Goldwyn: To hell with the cost. If it's a good picture, we'll make it.
  • Quoted by Alva Johnston in The Great Goldwyn (1937)

Misattributed

• A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.
  • A misreporting of an actual quote praising the trustworthiness of a colleague: "His verbal contract is worth more than the paper it's written on". The identity of the colleague is variously reported as Joseph M. Schenk in Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It (1990), p. 42, or as Joseph L. Mankiewicz in Carol Easton, The Search for Sam Goldwyn (1976). Goldwyn himself was reportedly aware of - and pleased by - the misattribution.

• Our comedies are not to be laughed at.
  • Reported in Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It (1990), p. 38-39.

• I can answer you in two words: im-possible!
  • Reported in Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It (1990), p. 40.

• Gentlemen, include me out. (or just "Include me out.")
  • Reported in Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It (1990), p. 40.

• We have that Indian scene. We can get the Indians from the reservoir.
  • Alternately reported as "We can get all the Indians we need at the reservoir", in Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It (1990), p. 40.

• The next time I send a damn fool for something, I go myself.
  • Reported in Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It (1990), p. 41-42.

• I read part of it all the way through.
  • Reported in Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It (1990), p. 42.

• Anyone who would go to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined!
  • Reported in Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It (1990), p. 42. A similar quote appears in the landmark book by Hollingshead and Redlich, Social Class and Mental Illness (1958), p. 237: The old saw, 'Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined,' is applicable here.

• If you have a message, call Western Union.
  • The popular attribution to Goldwyn is false according to his biographer in A. Scott Berg, Goldwyn: A Biography (1998). The earliest known print attribution is to Moss Hart in Van Wert (Ohio) Times Bulletin (26 August 1954) as cited in Fred Shapiro, The Yale Book of Quotations (2006). Also attributed to Humphrey Bogart in Stephen Humphrey Bogart, Bogart: In Search of My Father (1995), and to Ernest Hemingway in James R. Mellow, Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences (1992).

About

• " When Sam Goldwyn can with great conviction
  instruct Anna Sten in diction,
  then Anna shows,
  Anything goes!"
  • Cole Porter, Anything Goes.