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Goldwyn Pictures

From Wikipedia, in a visual modern way
Goldwyn Pictures Corporation
IndustryFilm studio
FoundedNovember 19, 1916; 106 years ago (1916-11-19)
FoundersSamuel Goldwyn
Edgar Selwyn
Archibald Selwyn
DefunctApril 17, 1924; 98 years ago (1924-04-17)
FateMerged with Metro Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer Pictures to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
SuccessorsStudio:
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Library:
Warner Bros.
Headquarters
Fort Lee, New Jersey
,
U.S.
ProductsMovies

Goldwyn Pictures Corporation was an American motion picture production company that operated from 1916 to 1924 when it was merged with two other production companies to form the major studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was founded on November 19, 1916, by Samuel Goldwyn, an executive at Lasky's Feature Play Company (later Paramount Pictures), and Broadway producer brothers Edgar and Archibald Selwyn, using an amalgamation of both last names to name the company.

The studio proved moderately successful, but became most famous due to its iconic Leo the Lion trademark. Although Metro was the nominal survivor, the merged studio inherited Goldwyn's old facility in Culver City, California where it would remain until 1986. The merged studio also retained Goldwyn's Leo the Lion logo.

Lee Shubert of The Shubert Organization was an investor in the company.[1]

Discover more about Goldwyn Pictures related topics

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924, and based in Beverly Hills, California.

Samuel Goldwyn

Samuel Goldwyn

Samuel Goldwyn, also known as Samuel Goldfish, was a Polish-born American film producer. He was best known for being the founding contributor and executive of several motion picture studios in Hollywood. He was awarded the 1973 Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award (1947) and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award (1958).

Famous Players-Lasky

Famous Players-Lasky

Famous Players-Lasky Corporation was an American motion picture and distribution company formed on June 28, 1916, from the merger of Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company—originally formed by Zukor as Famous Players in Famous Plays—and the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company.

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production and distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global. It is the fifth-oldest film studio in the world, the second-oldest film studio in the United States, and the sole member of the "Big Five" film studios located within the city limits of Los Angeles.

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, or Broadway, are the theatrical performances presented in the 41 professional theatres, each with 500 or more seats, located in the Theater District and the Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Broadway and London's West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world.

Edgar Selwyn

Edgar Selwyn

Edgar Selwyn was a prominent figure in American theatre and film in the first half of the 20th century. An actor, playwright, director and producer on Broadway, he founded a theatrical production company with his brother, Archibald Selwyn, and owned a number of Selwyn Theatres in the United States. He transferred his talents from the stage to motion pictures, and directed a film for which Helen Hayes received the Academy Award for Best Actress. Selwyn co-founded Goldwyn Pictures in 1916.

Archibald Selwyn

Archibald Selwyn

Archibald Selwyn was an American play broker, theater owner and stage producer who had many Broadway successes. He and his brother Edgar Selwyn were partners. They were among the founders of Goldwyn Pictures, later to be merged into MGM.

Amalgamation (names)

Amalgamation (names)

An amalgamated name is a name that is formed by combining several previously existing names. These may take the form of an acronym or a blend.

Leo the Lion (MGM)

Leo the Lion (MGM)

Leo the Lion is the mascot for the Hollywood film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and one of its predecessors, Goldwyn Pictures, featured in the studio's production logo, which was created by the Paramount Pictures art director Lionel S. Reiss.

Culver City, California

Culver City, California

Culver City is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 40,779. The city boasts the "third-most diverse school district in California" in 2020.

Lee Shubert

Lee Shubert

Lee Shubert was a Lithuanian-born American theatre owner/operator and producer and the eldest of seven siblings of the theatrical Shubert family.

The Shubert Organization

The Shubert Organization

The Shubert Organization is a theatrical producing organization and a major owner of theatres based in Manhattan, New York City. It was founded by the three Shubert brothers in the late 19th century. They steadily expanded, owning many theaters in New York and across the country. Since then it has gone through changes of ownership, but is still a major theater chain.

History

Goldwyn had left Lasky's Feature Play Company, of which he was a co-founder, in 1916 when Feature Play merged with Famous Players. Margaret Mayo, Edgar Selwyn's wife and play writer, and Arthur Hopkins, a Broadway producer, joined the trio as writer and director general.[1]

At the beginning, Goldwyn Pictures rented production facilities from Solax Studios when it and many other early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The company's first release was Polly of the Circus, an adaptation of Mayo's 1907 play of the same name, released in September 1917 and starting Mae Marsh.[2][3] By April 1917, Goldwyn Pictures agreed to rent the Universal Pictures studios in Fort Lee, then having the second largest stage, and had two film companies operating at the time with plans for more production companies. The company management planned on having 12 films done by September 1, 1917, without distributing the films so as to be able to show advanced footage to the theaters. Goldfish also associated the company with Columbia University via Professor Victor Freeburg's Photoplay Writing class in 1917 to increase the company's artistic standings.[1] The company also released other production companies films with Marie Dressler's Dressler Producing Corporation film, The Scrub Lady, in 1917. The company was forced in October 1917 to switch out The Eternal Magalene for Fighting Odds, both starring Maxine Elliott, after the National Board of Review cleared the Magalene movie while censors in Pennsylvania state and Chicago city did not approve the film. Thais starring Mary Garden was released in late 1917 which was a costly loss.[1]

In January 1918, Goldfish signed director Raoul Walsh and prematurely announced it as there were two years left on Walsh's contract with Fox. With Thais being the company's second costly loss, Goldwyn decreased film budgets partly by not using theater divas to cross over to film and reducing design driven films. Instead, he relied on comedies starring Madge Kennedy and Mabel Normand. In August 1918, Goldwyn Pictures signed Will Rogers, at that time a Broadway Follies favorite, to star in a Rex Beach production, Laughing Bill Hyde, filmed at the Fort Lee studio for release in September.[1] The company purchased the Triangle Studios in Culver City in 1918.[2][4] Goldwyn then headed west to Culver City, California in 1918; opening operations there also caused an increase in film expenses.[1] Seeing an opportunity in December, Samuel Goldfish then had his name legally changed to Samuel Goldwyn.

In 1919, Frank Joseph "Joe" Godsol became an investor in Goldwyn Pictures.[5] Since 1912 Godsol had been making deals for the Shubert organization in the U.S. and abroad.[6]

Goldwyn began looking to follow other film companies, like Loews Theaters/Metro Pictures and First National, into vertical integration. Goldwyn and the company backers were looking at renting the Astor Theatre for movie premiers. Instead, with the Capitol Theatre's financial problems in May 1920, the backer purchased a controlling interest in that theater. Shubert and Godsol, however, did not want the theater to rely only on Goldwyn films and operated it separately from the company.[7]

By 1920 in addition owning its Culver City studio, Goldwyn Pictures was renting two New York studios and operations in Fort Lee.[2]

After personality clashes, Samuel Goldwyn left the company in 1922. Godsol became Chairman of the Board and President of Goldwyn Pictures in 1922.[8] In 1923 Lee Shubert of Shubert Theater contacted Marcus Loew about merging the company with Loew's Metro. Loew agreed to the merger. Louis B. Mayer heard about the pending merger and contacted Loew and Godsol,[9] about adding his Louis B. Mayer Productions into the post merger company, which became the blockbuster Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.[10]

Discover more about History related topics

Famous Players-Lasky

Famous Players-Lasky

Famous Players-Lasky Corporation was an American motion picture and distribution company formed on June 28, 1916, from the merger of Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company—originally formed by Zukor as Famous Players in Famous Plays—and the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company.

Margaret Mayo (playwright)

Margaret Mayo (playwright)

Margaret Mayo, born Lillian Elizabeth Slatten, was an American actress, playwright, and screenwriter.

Arthur Hopkins

Arthur Hopkins

Arthur Hopkins was a well-known Broadway theater director and producer in the early twentieth century. Between 1912 and 1948, he produced and staged more than 80 plays – an average of more than two per year – occasionally writing and directing as well. His repertoire included plays by playwrights in American Expressionist theater, including Elmer Rice, Sophie Treadwell, and Eugene O'Neill.

Film studio

Film studio

A film studio is a major entertainment company or motion picture company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to make films, which is handled by the production company. Most firms in the entertainment industry have never owned their own studios, but have rented space from other companies.

Fort Lee, New Jersey

Fort Lee, New Jersey

Fort Lee is a borough at the eastern border of Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, situated along the Hudson River atop The Palisades.

Mae Marsh

Mae Marsh

Mae Marsh was an American film actress with a career spanning over 50 years.

Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhattan, it is the oldest institution of higher education in New York, the fifth-oldest in the United States, and one of nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence.

Marie Dressler

Marie Dressler

Marie Dressler was a Canadian stage and screen actress, comedian, and early silent film and Depression-era film star. In 1914, she was in the first full-length film comedy. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1931.

Fighting Odds

Fighting Odds

Fighting Odds is a 1917 American silent drama film produced and distributed by Goldwyn Pictures and starring stage beauty Maxine Elliott. The film is based on the play Under Sentence by Irvin S. Cobb and Roi Cooper Megrue. The picture was amongst Goldwyn's first productions as an independent producer. It was directed by veteran Allan Dwan and is a surviving film at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Gosfilmofond in Russia.

Maxine Elliott

Maxine Elliott

Maxine Elliott also known as Little Jessie, Dettie or by her birth name Jessie Dermot, was an American actress and businesswoman. She managed her own theater and experimented with silent films in the 1910s. Immensely popular, she was rumoured to have intimate relationships with highly notable people such as King Edward VII and J.P. Morgan. During World War I, she was active on the cause of the Belgian relief.

National Board of Review

National Board of Review

The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures is a non-profit organization of New York City area film enthusiasts. Its awards, which are announced in early December, are considered an early harbinger of the film awards season that culminates in the Academy Awards.

Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and the third most populous in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. With a population of 2,746,388 in the 2020 census, it is also the most populous city in the Midwest. As the seat of Cook County, the city is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, one of the largest in the world.

Feature staff

Discover more about Feature staff related topics

Mae Marsh

Mae Marsh

Mae Marsh was an American film actress with a career spanning over 50 years.

Mabel Normand

Mabel Normand

Amabel Ethelreid Normand, better known as Mabel Normand, was an American silent film actress, screenwriter, director, and producer. She was a popular star and collaborator of Mack Sennett in their Keystone Studios films, and at the height of her career in the late 1910s and early 1920s had her own film studio and production company. Onscreen, she appeared in twelve successful films with Charlie Chaplin and seventeen with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, sometimes writing and directing films featuring Chaplin as her leading man.

Pauline Frederick

Pauline Frederick

Pauline Frederick was an American stage and film actress.

Madge Kennedy

Madge Kennedy

Madge Kennedy was a stage, film and TV actress whose career began as a stage actress in 1912 and flourished in motion pictures during the silent film era. In 1921, journalist Heywood Broun described her as "the best farce actress in New York".

Tallulah Bankhead

Tallulah Bankhead

Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an American actress. Primarily an actress of the stage, Bankhead also appeared in several prominent films including an award-winning performance in Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944). She also had a brief but successful career on radio and made appearances on television. In all, Bankhead amassed nearly 300 film, stage, television and radio roles during her career. She was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1972 and the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1981.

Will Rogers

Will Rogers

William Penn Adair Rogers was an American vaudeville performer, actor, and humorous social commentator. He was born as a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, in the Indian Territory, and is known as "Oklahoma's Favorite Son". As an entertainer and humorist, he traveled around the world three times, made 71 films, and wrote more than 4,000 nationally syndicated newspaper columns. By the mid-1930s, Rogers was hugely popular in the United States for his leading political wit and was the highest paid of Hollywood film stars. He died in 1935 with aviator Wiley Post when their small airplane crashed in northern Alaska.

Raoul Walsh

Raoul Walsh

Raoul Walsh was an American film director, actor, founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), and the brother of silent screen actor George Walsh. He was known for portraying John Wilkes Booth in the silent film The Birth of a Nation (1915) and for directing such films as the widescreen epic The Big Trail (1930) starring John Wayne in his first leading role, The Roaring Twenties starring James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, High Sierra (1941) starring Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogart, and White Heat (1949) starring James Cagney and Edmond O'Brien. He directed his last film in 1964. His work has been noted as influences on directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jack Hill, and Martin Scorsese.

Ralph Ince

Ralph Ince

Ralph Waldo Ince was an American pioneer film actor, director and screenwriter whose career began near the dawn of the silent film era. Ralph Ince was the brother of John E. Ince and Thomas H. Ince.

Frank Lloyd

Frank Lloyd

Frank William George Lloyd was a British-born American film director, actor, scriptwriter, and producer. He was among the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and was its president from 1934 to 1935.

Sidney Olcott

Sidney Olcott

Sidney Olcott was a Canadian-born film producer, director, actor and screenwriter.

Filmography

A 1965 fire in an MGM storage facility destroyed many negatives and prints, including the best-quality copies of every Goldwyn picture produced prior to 1924; over half of MGM's feature films from before 1930 are completely lost. On March 25, 1986, Ted Turner and his Turner Broadcasting System company purchased the pre-May 1986 MGM films (including Goldwyn Pictures films) from Kirk Kerkorian for $600 million.

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1965 MGM vault fire

1965 MGM vault fire

On August 10, 1965, a fire erupted in Vault 7, a storage facility, at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio (MGM) backlot in Culver City, California. It was caused by an electrical short explosively igniting stored nitrate film. The initial explosion reportedly killed at least one person, and the resulting fire destroyed the entire contents of the vault, archived prints of silent and early sound films produced by MGM and its predecessors. The only known copies of hundreds of films were destroyed.

Lost film

Lost film

A lost film is a feature or short film that no longer exists in any studio archive, private collection or public archive.

Kirk Kerkorian

Kirk Kerkorian

Kirk Kerkorian was an Armenian-American businessman, investor, and philanthropist. He was the president and CEO of Tracinda Corporation, his private holding company based in Beverly Hills, California. Kerkorian was one of the important figures in the shaping of Las Vegas and, with architect Martin Stern Jr., is described as the "father of the mega-resort". He built the world's largest hotel in Las Vegas three times: the International Hotel, the MGM Grand Hotel (1973) and the MGM Grand (1993). He purchased the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie studio in 1969.

Polly of the Circus (1917 film)

Polly of the Circus (1917 film)

Polly of the Circus is a 1917 American silent drama film notable as the first film produced by Samuel Goldwyn after founding his studio Goldwyn Pictures. This film starred Mae Marsh, usually an actress for D.W. Griffith, but now under contract to Goldwyn for a series of films. The film was based on the 1907 Broadway play Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo which starred Mabel Taliaferro. Presumably when MGM remade Polly of the Circus in 1932 with Marion Davies, they still owned the screen rights inherited from the 1924 merger by Marcus Loew of the Metro, Goldwyn, and Louis B. Mayer studios. This film marks the first appearance of Slats, the lion mascot of Goldwyn Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Prints and/or fragments were found in the Dawson Film Find in 1978.

Baby Mine (1917 film)

Baby Mine (1917 film)

Baby Mine is a 1917 American silent comedy film directed by both John S. Robertson and Hugo Ballin and starring Madge Kennedy. The picture marked Kennedy's screen debut and was one of the first films produced by Samuel Goldwyn as an independent after founding his own studio.

Fighting Odds

Fighting Odds

Fighting Odds is a 1917 American silent drama film produced and distributed by Goldwyn Pictures and starring stage beauty Maxine Elliott. The film is based on the play Under Sentence by Irvin S. Cobb and Roi Cooper Megrue. The picture was amongst Goldwyn's first productions as an independent producer. It was directed by veteran Allan Dwan and is a surviving film at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Gosfilmofond in Russia.

Sunshine Alley

Sunshine Alley

Sunshine Alley is a 1917 American silent drama film directed by John W. Noble and produced by Samuel Goldwyn. It was written by screenwriter Mary Rider specifically as a vehicle for actress Mae Marsh.

Nearly Married

Nearly Married

Nearly Married is a 1917 American silent comedy film directed by Chester Withey and starring Madge Kennedy. It is based on a 1913 stage play of the same name by Edgar Selwyn. It also featured an early film appearance by future gossip columnist Hedda Hopper.

Fields of Honor (1918 film)

Fields of Honor (1918 film)

Fields of Honor is a 1918 five-part film adapted from a story by Irvin S. Cobb. Ralph Ince directed. Advertising for the film described it as a dramatic portrayal of what women are sacrificing to the world war. It was produced by Samuel Goldwyn. It is not held at the Library of Congress.

Dodging a Million

Dodging a Million

Dodging a Million is a 1918 American comedy film starring Mabel Normand and Tom Moore, directed by George Loane Tucker, written by A. M. Kennedy, Edgar Selwyn, and Loane, and photographed by Oliver T. Marsh. The black and white silent film was released by the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation. It is not known whether the film currently survives, and it may be a lost film.

Go West, Young Man (1918 film)

Go West, Young Man (1918 film)

Go West, Young Man is a 1918 American silent comedy Western film directed by Harry Beaumont and starring Tom Moore, Ora Carew and Melbourne MacDowell.

Our Little Wife (1918 film)

Our Little Wife (1918 film)

Our Little Wife is a 1918 silent film directed by Edward Dillon. The film is based on the 1916 play of the same name by Avery Hopwood. It is not known whether the film currently survives.

Source: "Goldwyn Pictures", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, March 10th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldwyn_Pictures.

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Further Reading

Samuel Goldwyn

Maurice Tourneur

Rod La Rocque

George B. Seitz

Lewis J. Selznick

Marcus Loew

Metro Pictures

Sony Pictures Studios

Triangle Film Corporation

Edythe Chapman

Myrtle Stedman

Werner Krauss

June Elvidge

Hobart Henley

Christine Mayo

Herbert Blaché

George Walsh

Richard A. Rowland
See also
References
  1. ^ a b c d e f Koszarski, Richard (2004). "18. Goldwyn". Fort Lee: The Film Town. Indiana University Press. pp. 286–311. ISBN 0-86196-653-8.
  2. ^ a b c d e f "Studios and Films". Fort Lee Film Commission. Archived from the original on October 20, 2018. Retrieved May 30, 2011.
  3. ^ Fort Lee Film Commission (2006). Fort Lee: Birthplace of the Motion Picture Industry. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 0-7385-4501-5.
  4. ^ "Lot History". Sony Picture Museum. Sony Pictures Entertainment. p. 1. Archived from the original on February 5, 2015. Retrieved February 5, 2015.
  5. ^ Lewis, Kevin; Lewis, Arnold (June–July 1988). "Include Me out: Samuel Goldwyn and Joe Godsol". Film History. Indiana University Press. 2 (2): 133–153. JSTOR 3815031.
  6. ^ Berg, Scott (September 1998). "Goldwyn – A Biography". Film History. Riverhead Books (1): 95. ISBN 1-57322-723-4.
  7. ^ Melnick, Ross (March 4, 2014). "Part One Roxy and Silent Film Exhibition". American Showman: Samuel "Roxy" Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry, 1908–1935 (Reprint ed.). Columbia University Press. p. 187. ISBN 978-0-231-15905-0. Retrieved February 5, 2015.
  8. ^ "Godsol Heads Goldwyn Pictures". The New York Times. March 11, 1922.
  9. ^ Masek, Mark. "Hollywood Remains to Be Seen – Louis B. Mayer". Hollywood Remains to Be Seen.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  10. ^ Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. History. International Directory of Company Histories. Vol. 25. St. James Press. 1999. Retrieved December 20, 2014.
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