Samuel Goldwyn Pictures

Samuel Goldwyn Pictures was an American film production company and a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company and absorbs Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 2024. it was founded in 1916 by Samuel Goldwyn and is located in Burbank.

Goldwyn Pictures Corporation
Goldwyn Pictures Corporation (GPC) was founded on Nov 19 1916 by Samuel Goldfish partnering with Broadway producers Edgar and Archibald Selwyn using an amalgamation of both last names to create the name. Goldfish 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's wife & play writer, and Arthur Hopkins, a Broadway producer, joined the trio as writer and director general.

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 play, in September 1917 starting Mae Marsh. 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 with out 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. 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.

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 rely on comedies starring Madge Kennedy and Mabel Normand. In August 1918, GPC 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. The company purchased the Triangle Studios in Culver City in 1918. Goldwyn then headed west out to Culver City in the Winter of 1918 which opening operations there also caused an increase in film expenses. 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.

Goldwyn began looking at 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.

By 1920 in addition owning its Culver City studio, GPC was renting two New York studios and nearly ceased operations in Fort Lee.

After personality clashes, Sam Goldwyn left the company in 1922. 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 about adding his Louis B. Mayer Productions into the post merger company, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Samuel Goldwyn Productions
After the sale of his previous firm Goldwyn Pictures, Samuel Goldwyn organized his productions beginning in February 1923, initially in a partnership with director George Fitzmaurice. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, created by merger in April 1924, bears Goldwyn's name, but he did not produce films there.) Goldwyn Production's first release, Potash and Perlmutter, successfully opened in Baltimore on September 6, 1923.

Some of the early productions bear the name "Howard Productions", named for Goldwyn's wife Frances Howard, who married Goldwyn in 1925. In the 1920s, Goldwyn released films through Associated First National. Throughout the 1930s, Goldwyn released most of his films through United Artists. Beginning in 1941, Goldwyn released most of his films through RKO Radio Pictures.

With consistently high production values and directors like John Ford and Howard Hawks, Goldwyn consistently received Academy Award for Best Picture nominations: Arrowsmith (1931), Dodsworth (1936), Dead End (1937), Wuthering Heights (1939), and The Little Foxes (1941). In 1946, he won best picture for The Best Years of Our Lives.

Through the 1940s and 1950s, many of Goldwyn's films starred Danny Kaye. Goldwyn's final production was the 1959 version of Porgy and Bess.

Goldwyn Studios
in 1959, Samuel Goldwyn Productions was renamed Goldwyn Studios. it has purchased the pre-1964 American International Pictures films in 1968, as well as films from Boulting brothers in 1971, and King Brothers Productions in 1974.

Goldwyn distributed all the Shaw Brothers Studios films in English, the Tigon and Rank films outside of the United Kingdom and the Hal and Jim McElroy films outside of Australia.

The Samuel Goldwyn Company
The company originally distributed and acquired art-house films from around the world to U.S. audiences; they soon added original productions to their roster as well, starting with The Golden Seal in 1983.

In succeeding years, the Goldwyn company was able to obtain (from Samuel Sr.'s estate) the rights to all films produced under the elder Goldwyn's supervision, including the original Bulldog Drummond (1929), Arrowsmith (1931), and Guys and Dolls (1955). The company also acquired some distribution rights to several films and television programs that were independently produced but released by other companies, including Sayonara, the Hal Roach–produced Laurel & Hardy–starring vehicle Babes in Toyland (1934), the Flipper TV series produced by MGM Television, the Academy Award–winning Tom Jones (1963), and the Rodgers and Hammerstein film productions of South Pacific (1958) and Oklahoma! (1955), as well as the CBS Television adaptation of Cinderella (1965).

Animated films include Swan Lake, Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, The Care Bears Movie, The Chipmunk Adventure and Rock-a-Doodle. Among the television programs in the Goldwyn company's library are the television series American Gladiators and Steve Krantz's miniseries Dadah Is Death.

In 1991, after a merger with Heritage Entertainment, Inc., the company went public as Samuel Goldwyn Entertainment. Heritage and Goldwyn attempted to merge during late 1990, but the plans fell apart while Heritage went through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The merger also allowed Goldwyn to inherit the Landmark Theatres chain, which was a unit of Heritage.

That company and its library were acquired by Metromedia on July 2, 1996 for US$125 million. To coincide with the purchase, the Samuel Goldwyn Company was renamed Goldwyn Entertainment Company, and was reconstituted as a subsidiary of Metromedia's Orion Pictures unit. That year, Orion and Goldwyn became part of the Metromedia Entertainment Group (MEG). Goldwyn became the specialty films unit of MEG, though they would seek out films with crossover appeal. While Orion and Goldwyn would share the overhead costs, the production/acquisition operations would operate independently from each other.

In 1997, Metromedia sold its entertainment group to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The Landmark Theatres group, which Metromedia did not sell to MGM, was taken over by Silver Cinemas, Inc. on April 27, 1998.

In September 1997, the company was renamed Goldwyn Films and operated as MGM's specialty films unit. A month later, Samuel Goldwyn Jr. sued MGM and Metromedia, claiming that he was abruptly let go of the company despite promises that he would continue to run it under different ownership. Another concern in the lawsuit was the use of the Goldwyn name, with the defendants being accused of “palming off specialized films produced or acquired by” the unit as though the plaintiff was still involved in its management. Goldwyn Films changed its name to G2 Films in January 1999 as part of the settlement.

In July 1999, G2 Films was renamed United Artists International. As well as all that, UA become an arthouse film producer/distributor. The younger Goldwyn has since gone on to found Samuel Goldwyn Films. This successor company has continued to release independent films such as What the Bleep Do We Know!? and the Academy Award–nominated The Squid and the Whale.

Since the new Goldwyn company has formed, MGM currently holds much of the original Goldwyn Company's holdings (including, with few exceptions, the non-Goldwyn-produced properties) that would end up with the library of Orion Pictures, now an MGM division. One Goldwyn-produced film, The Hurricane, which was a part of the original Goldwyn Company library, has had its ownership returned to its original distributor, United Artists (also an MGM division).

Samuel Goldwyn Films
in 2000, Goldwyn launched it's Arthouse film company called Planet Pictures and a foreign film distributor called Solar Films.

in 2005, Lasie was released and performed poorly at the box office, causing Goldwyn to shut down Planet Pictures. Instead, merging Planet and Solar to form Solar Planet Pictures.

in 2008, Goldwyn has problems producing Shrink, Happy Tears, Winter's Bone, Circumstance, Friends with Kids, Gloria, and Our Kind of Traitor (film). they are sold to Roadside Attractions due to the box office failiare of the thriller film Rise: Blood Hunter.

in 2011, Goldwyn purchased the projects October Baby, The Last of Robin Hood, Lila & Eve, and Brother Nature from Sony Pictures Classics, witch did not finish these projects.

Samuel Goldwyn Pictures
after Disney purchased MGM in the 2020's, Goldwyn shall have MGM's pre-1986 and post-1986 libraries, the Orion Pictures films, RKO, Cannon, MGM's Cartoons, and the Nelson libraries.