Samuel Goldwyn was the premier dream-maker of his era - a fierce independent force i a time when studios ruled, a producer of silver screen sagas who was, in all probability, the last Hollywood tycoon. In this riveting book, Pulitzer Prize winning biographer A. Scott Berg tells the life story of this remarkable man - a tale as rich with drama as any feature length epic and as compelling as the history of Hollywood itself.
Sam Goldwyn’s career spanned almost the entire history of Hollywood. He made his first film, The Squaw Man, in 1913, and he died in 1974 at the age of ninety-one. In the many years between, he produced an enormous number of films—including such classics as Wuthering Heights, Street Scene, Arrowsmith, Dodsworth, The Little Foxes, and The Best Years of Our Lives—and worked with many luminaries—Gary Cooper, Ronald Colman, Laurence Olivier, George Balanchine, Lillian Hellman, Howard Hawks, John Ford, Eddie Cantor, Busby Berkeley, Danny Kaye, Merle Oberon, and Bob Hope among them. When Samuel Goldfisch was born in the Warsaw ghetto, he was penniless; when Sam Goldwyn died in Los Angeles, he was worth an estimated $19 million. The Search for Sam Goldwyn locates the real Sam Goldwyn and shatters the “hostile conspiracy of silence” that protected his legend. In writing Goldwyn's story, Carol Easton has given us a fine examination of “the civilization known as Hollywood” and how Goldwyn himself shaped that culture.
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Liz Goldwyn's lifelong fascination with the inimitable glamour of classic burlesque inspired her to spend the past eight years corresponding with, visiting, interviewing, receiving striptease lessons from, and forming close relationships with the last generation of the great American burlesque queeens. Goldwyn invites us to step back into an era when the hourglass figure was in vogue and striptease was a true art form. Meet Betty "Ball of Fire" Rowland, who was known for her flaming red hair and bump–and–grind routines. (It turns out she once sued the author's grandfather, Samuel Goldwyn Jr., for using her stage name and costume in his Hollywood picture, Ball of Fire.) Meet Sherry Britton, who, with her long black hair and curvy, trim physique, was among the most stunning of the burlesque stars before Mayor LaGuardia outlawed burlesque in New York. Meet Zorita, whose sexually explicit "Consummation of the Wedding of the Snake" dance (performed with a live snake) and other daring performances earned her legendary status. Goldwyn draws back the curtain to reveal the personal journeys of yesteryear's icons of female sexuality and power, restoring their legacy to an age that has all but forgotten them–despite today's resurgence of burlesque.
A brilliantly imaginative, illustrated recreation of an 1890s Los Angeles pocket guide, or "Sporting Guide," to the brothels of the day. Los Angeles, 1897, When Vice Ruled The City Long before the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, Los Angeles was a city where dreamers from all over the world came to make their fortunes—where a madam named Pearl Morton entertained the most powerful politicians and entrepreneurs inside her namesake brothel. In a series of haunting, interlinked stories set in the period, author and filmmaker Liz Goldwyn re-creates a “sporting guide”—a secret diary and guidebook of the best brothels and prostitutes in the city. In this world a hushed conversation inside a velvet-lined boudoir could destroy a man, and the rustle of bushes might reveal a sordid assignation. Based on original research in the libraries and archives of Los Angeles, these fictional stories are often inspired by real historical characters—like the laudanum-addicted Cora Phillips, whose tombstone Goldwyn rediscovered, or Bartolo Ballerino, Italian immigrant slumlord of the forgotten red-light district, or thirteen-year-old Frances dreaming of life beyond the Children’s Orphan Asylum. Interspersed in these stories—and featuring over a hundred historical photos and illustrations—Goldwyn reveals the history of the period, from the rage for corsets to crushed pearl powder cosmetics and the awful cures for syphilis. Sporting Guide evokes a lost world of those on the margins of Los Angeles, of the hustlers who made it into one of the great cities of the world, and Goldwyn gives a poignant voice to the people and stories forgotten by time.
Sam Goldwyn's career spanned almost the entire history of Hollywood. He made his first film in 1913, and he died in 1974 at the age of ninety-one. In the many years between, he produced an enormous number of films and worked with many luminaries. When Samuel Goldfisch was born in the Warsaw ghetto, he was penniless; when Sam Goldwyn died in Los Angeles, he was worth an estimated $19 million
