Samuel Goldwyn Jr. dies at 88; indie film champion was son of movie mogul

LOS ANGELES -- Samuel Goldwyn Jr. grew up with Hollywood royalty.

Charlie Chaplin, Katharine Hepburn, Clark Gable and George Cukor were among the many luminaries who would come to his parents' palatial home for parties or tennis.

But even as a boy, Goldwyn knew that the house was sitting on precarious financial ground. His legendary father, one of the movie business' original moguls, would regularly mortgage it to make his prestigious films.

When the younger Goldwyn started his own independent film company, which became a major force in 1980s and '90s Hollywood, he took on modestly budgeted movies that didn't risk the house but often scored with critics and audiences -- the Julia Roberts breakout film "Mystic Pizza" (1988); "Longtime Companion" (1989), which took up the topic of AIDS; and "The Madness of King George" (1994), to name a few.

None was aimed at being instantaneous blockbusters. "I was brought up," Goldwyn said, "in a tradition of patience."

Goldwyn, 88, died Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The cause was congestive heart failure, said his son, Peter.

Although Samuel Goldwyn Sr., who produced more than 100 films including "Wuthering Heights" (1939), "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) and "The Bishop's Wife" (1947), was a founding father of Hollywood, he was in his own way an independent producer. He had to sell his Goldwyn company -- which eventually became Metro Goldwyn Mayer -- in the silent era because of debt.

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"My father always emphasized that this business was like a greased pole; you go up and you go down," Goldwyn Jr. said in 1995. "The important thing is not to be destroyed by failure and not to take hits too seriously."

By the early 1990s, Goldwyn had built his Samuel Goldwyn Co. into one of three major independent film operations -- along with New Line and Miramax -- while several other highly touted indie operations had failed.

"The independents who were our fiercest competitors all succumbed to the one-hit-makes-you-a-genius philosophy," he said in a 1992 interview. "It is a mistake to think you have the magic touch. Show business is roulette.

"If you start to play for stakes you can't afford, there's no way you can survive," Goldwyn said.

If the stakes looked right, he would bet on new talent. Early in their directing careers, his company got involved with Ang Lee's "The Wedding Banquet" (1993) and "Eat Drink Man Woman" (1994); Anthony Minghella's "Truly Madly Deeply" (1990); and Kenneth Branagh's "Henry V" (1989).

Other notable films distributed by the company include "Mississippi Masala" (1991), the gritty "Straight Out of Brooklyn" (1991) and Luc Besson's "La Femme Nikita" (1990).

Goldwyn also bolstered his company with television productions, including the syndicated "American Gladiators." He produced the Oscars telecasts of 1987 and 1988.

For the most part, his career might not have been as glamorous as that of his father, who died in 1974. But Goldwyn was taught early that the glamour of Hollywood was not what was important.

"I'm often asked what it was like to be part of the old Hollywood, and what people want to hear is how I was dangled on Clark Gable's knee," Goldwyn said in 1995. "But what I remember most is the days my father's movies were paid off."

Samuel Goldwyn Jr. was born Sept. 7, 1926, in Los Angeles. He served in the Army then worked in film in London, then for the CBS news operation in New York.

In the mid-1950s, Goldwyn came back to L.A. His first Hollywood film as producer was the 1955 Western "Man With the Gun," starring Robert Mitchum.

His best-known period in the business is the 1980s and early 1990s.

He had a particular fondness for 1994's "The Madness of King George," based on George III's descent into mental illness in the 18th century. It wasn't exactly a box-office natural, but Goldwyn fell in love with it.

"Good movies are what I wait my whole life for," Goldwyn said. "Every so often you get a gut [feeling] on something, you feel, 'I've got to do this picture, I've got to.' "

The bet paid off. The film was a commercial and critical success.