Samuel Goldwyn was born Szmul Gelbfisz in Warsaw, Poland in 1879, and died in Los Angeles, California in 1974, aged around 94.
He is best known as a movie producer. Although he spent most of his life in the film industry he actually began working in the garment business where he became a successful glove salesmen for a New York based company, eventually serving as vice-president for sales.
Possibly due to the fact than English was not his mother tongue, Goldwyn was also known to make various errors of speech such as malapropisms, and paradoxes.
These eventually became known as ‘Goldwynisms’ which were defined as “A humorous statement or phrase resulting from the use of incongruous or contradictory words, situations, idioms, etc.”
In 1913, Samuel Goldwyn got into the film business through his brother-in-law, Jesse.S. Lansky. Together with Cecil B. DeMille and Arthur Friend they formed a partnership to produce feature length motion pictures. Thus began Goldwyn’s illustrious career which spanned some 60 years with a number of different companies.
Strangely enough he never had an operating role in M.G.M., the company that bore his name (the ‘G’ was for Goldwyn.)
Browse our selected list of “Goldwynisms” to understand what he did with the English Language:
- I’m willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong.
- If I look confused it is because I am thinking.
- Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day.
- The harder I work, the luckier I get.
- I don’t think anyone should write their autobiography until after they’re dead.
- A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
- A bachelor’s life is no life for a single man.
- A Hospital is no place to be sick.
- Don’t pay any attention to the critics – don’t even ignore them.
- The reason so many people turned up at his funeral is that they wanted to make sure he was dead.
- Include me out.
- Any man who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
- If I could drop dead right now, I’d be the happiest man alive.
- Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union.
- It’s absolutely impossible, but it has possibilities.
So, that was a short selection from the quirky English of Samuel Goldwyn.
Do you think he really understood what he was saying? Or was it part of the image he sought to create around himself?
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