William Goetz
Encyclopedia
William Goetz was an American
Hollywood film producer
and studio executive. William Goetz died of cancer in 1969 at his home in Los Angeles and was buried in Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery
in Culver City, California
.
, Goetz was the youngest of eight children. His mother died when he was ten years old and shortly thereafter his father abandoned the family. Raised by older brothers, at the age of twenty-one he followed some of his brothers to Hollywood where he found work as a crew hand at one of the large studios. After a few years, he began doing production work and in 1930 was made an associate producer at Fox Films. That same year he married Edith Mayer (1905–1987), daughter of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
studio head Louis B. Mayer
– who at first was less-than-enthusiastic at the idea. Nevertheless, the marriage worked and they remained together for life.
, the former president of United Artists
, and Darryl F. Zanuck
from Warner Brothers to create Twentieth Century Pictures. Zanuck was named president and Goetz served as vice-president. Successful from the very beginning, their 1934 film The House of Rothschild was nominated for an Academy Award
for Best Picture
. In 1935, they bought out the financially strapped Fox Films to create 20th Century Fox
.
Goetz served as vice president of the new 20th Century Fox, but in 1942 he took charge of the studio temporarily when Zanuck, a World War I
veteran, joined the United States military effort in the Second World War
. Goetz liked the top role in the company and after Zanuck returned, relationships became strained and Goetz resigned to form his own independent company with Leo Spitz, a former lawyer
who worked as a movie company advisor. Their partnership, under the name "International Pictures," ended its short-lived existence when they made a deal in July 1946 to merge with the British
Rank Organization's
distribution arm and Universal Pictures
. Goetz was made president and placed in charge of production for the newly merged "Universal-International" studio.
Although one of the studio executives who formulated the 1947 Waldorf Statement
, Goetz later softened his stand on the issue. In 1949, Goetz called upon his close friendship with MCA
head Lew Wasserman
, one of the most powerful agents in Hollywood. They revolutionized the motion picture industry when they agreed to a deal whereby James Stewart
was signed to a profit participation deal to act in a Universal film. In lieu of a salary for his performance, Stewart was guaranteed half of the film's profits, and the concept was soon negotiated for other stars who recognized the value of their own box office drawing power. Universal-International was acquired by Decca Records
in late 1951, and was replaced by Edward Muhl in 1953. After leaving Universal, Goetz became an independent producer, making films such as 1957's Sayonara
, which was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.
won the 1950 Santa Anita Derby
and subsequently sired Kelso
, a Hall of Fame
inductee and one of the greatest horses in racing history.
Goetz and his wife also were major investors in art, acquiring a significant collection of impressionist
and post-impressionist
works. They owned paintings and sculptures by great artists such as Edgar Degas
, Paul Gauguin
, Claude Monet
, Paul Cézanne
, Berthe Morisot
, Edouard Manet
, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
, Pablo Picasso
, Amedeo Modigliani
, Chaim Soutine
, Pierre Bonnard
, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, and Henri Fantin-Latour
. In 1949, a controversy erupted over a Vincent van Gogh
self-portrait called "Study by Candlelight" that Goetz had purchased two years earlier. The painting was declared a fake by art expert Willem Sandberg
and the artist's nephew, V. W. van Gogh, resulting in an international debate amongst art experts. The painting remained controversial and was not put up for auction with the rest of the Goetz collection following Mrs. Goetz's death in 1987.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Hollywood film producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
and studio executive. William Goetz died of cancer in 1969 at his home in Los Angeles and was buried in Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery
Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery
The Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary is a Jewish cemetery located at 6001 West Centinela Avenue, in Culver City, California, USA. Many Jewish people from the entertainment industry are buried here.-Notable interments:*Irving Aaronson, composer...
in Culver City, California
Culver City, California
Culver City is a city in western Los Angeles County, California. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 38,883, up from 38,816 at the 2000 census. It is mostly surrounded by the city of Los Angeles, but also shares a border with unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County. Culver...
.
Early Life
Born to a Jewish working class family in Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
, Goetz was the youngest of eight children. His mother died when he was ten years old and shortly thereafter his father abandoned the family. Raised by older brothers, at the age of twenty-one he followed some of his brothers to Hollywood where he found work as a crew hand at one of the large studios. After a few years, he began doing production work and in 1930 was made an associate producer at Fox Films. That same year he married Edith Mayer (1905–1987), daughter of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
studio head Louis B. Mayer
Louis B. Mayer
Louis Burt Mayer born Lazar Meir was an American film producer. He is generally cited as the creator of the "star system" within Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in its golden years. Known always as Louis B...
– who at first was less-than-enthusiastic at the idea. Nevertheless, the marriage worked and they remained together for life.
Career Highlights
In 1932, Goetz received the financial support necessary from his new father-in-law to become a minor partner with Joseph SchenckJoseph Schenck
Joseph Michael Schenck was a pioneer executive who played a key role in the development of the United States film industry.Born in Rybinsk, Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia to a Jewish household, he and his family-including younger brother Nicholas- emigrated to New York City in 1893, he and Nicholas...
, the former president of United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
, and Darryl F. Zanuck
Darryl F. Zanuck
Darryl Francis Zanuck was an American producer, writer, actor, director and studio executive who played a major part in the Hollywood studio system as one of its longest survivors...
from Warner Brothers to create Twentieth Century Pictures. Zanuck was named president and Goetz served as vice-president. Successful from the very beginning, their 1934 film The House of Rothschild was nominated for an Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
for Best Picture
Academy Award for Best Picture
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...
. In 1935, they bought out the financially strapped Fox Films to create 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
.
Goetz served as vice president of the new 20th Century Fox, but in 1942 he took charge of the studio temporarily when Zanuck, a World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
veteran, joined the United States military effort in the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Goetz liked the top role in the company and after Zanuck returned, relationships became strained and Goetz resigned to form his own independent company with Leo Spitz, a former lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
who worked as a movie company advisor. Their partnership, under the name "International Pictures," ended its short-lived existence when they made a deal in July 1946 to merge with the British
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
Rank Organization's
Rank Organisation
The Rank Organisation was a British entertainment company formed during 1937 and absorbed in 1996 by The Rank Group Plc. It was the largest and most vertically-integrated film company in Britain, owning production, distribution and exhibition facilities....
distribution arm and Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...
. Goetz was made president and placed in charge of production for the newly merged "Universal-International" studio.
Although one of the studio executives who formulated the 1947 Waldorf Statement
Waldorf Statement
The Waldorf Statement was a two-page press release issued on December 3, 1947, by Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, following a closed-door meeting by forty-eight motion picture company executives at New York City's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel...
, Goetz later softened his stand on the issue. In 1949, Goetz called upon his close friendship with MCA
Music Corporation of America
MCA, Inc. was an American talent agency. Initially starting in the music business, they would next become a dominant force in the film business, and later expanded into the television business...
head Lew Wasserman
Lew Wasserman
Lewis Robert "Lew" Wasserman was an American talent agent and studio executive, sometimes credited with creating and later taking apart the studio system in a career spanning more than six decades...
, one of the most powerful agents in Hollywood. They revolutionized the motion picture industry when they agreed to a deal whereby James Stewart
James Stewart (actor)
James Maitland Stewart was an American film and stage actor, known for his distinctive voice and his everyman persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition and receiving one Lifetime...
was signed to a profit participation deal to act in a Universal film. In lieu of a salary for his performance, Stewart was guaranteed half of the film's profits, and the concept was soon negotiated for other stars who recognized the value of their own box office drawing power. Universal-International was acquired by Decca Records
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
in late 1951, and was replaced by Edward Muhl in 1953. After leaving Universal, Goetz became an independent producer, making films such as 1957's Sayonara
Sayonara
Sayonara is a 1957 color American film starring Marlon Brando. It tells the story of an American Air Force flier who was an "ace" fighter pilot during the Korean War....
, which was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.
Hobbies
A very wealthy man, Goetz raised thoroughbred racehorses. His horse Your HostYour Host (horse)
Your Host was an American Thoroughbred racehorse. Foaled in California, he was by the imported British stallion Alibhai out of the Irish mare Boudoir by the French stallion Mahmoud. Bred in the stables of Louis B. Mayer , Your Host was owned by Mayer's son-in-law and trained by Harry L. Daniels...
won the 1950 Santa Anita Derby
Santa Anita Derby
The Santa Anita Derby is an American Grade 1 thoroughbred horse race for three-year-olds run each April at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, California and carries a purse of $1 million. Inaugurated in 1935, it is considered the most important West Coast stepping-stone to the Kentucky Derby...
and subsequently sired Kelso
Kelso (horse)
Kelso was an American thoroughbred race horse considered among the best racehorses of the 20th century. In the list of the top 100 U.S. thoroughbred champions of the 20th Century by The Blood-Horse magazine Kelso ranks 4th, behind only Man o' War , Secretariat and Citation...
, a Hall of Fame
National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame
The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame was founded in 1950 in Saratoga Springs, New York, to honor the achievements of American thoroughbred race horses, jockeys, and trainers...
inductee and one of the greatest horses in racing history.
Goetz and his wife also were major investors in art, acquiring a significant collection of impressionist
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
and post-impressionist
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
works. They owned paintings and sculptures by great artists such as Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...
, Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
, Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
, Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...
, Berthe Morisot
Berthe Morisot
Berthe Morisot was a painter and a member of the circle of painters in Paris who became known as the Impressionists. She was described by Gustave Geffroy in 1894 as one of "les trois grandes dames" of Impressionism alongside Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt.In 1864, she exhibited for the first...
, Edouard Manet
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....
, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...
, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form...
, Chaim Soutine
Chaim Soutine
Chaïm Soutine was a Jewish painter from Belarus. Soutine made a major contribution to the expressionist movement while living in Paris....
, Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard was a French painter and printmaker, as well as a founding member of Les Nabis.-Biography:...
, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, and Henri Fantin-Latour
Henri Fantin-Latour
Henri Fantin-Latour was a French painter and lithographer best known for his flower paintings and group portraits of Parisian artists and writers.-Biography:...
. In 1949, a controversy erupted over a Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
self-portrait called "Study by Candlelight" that Goetz had purchased two years earlier. The painting was declared a fake by art expert Willem Sandberg
Willem Sandberg
Jonkheer Willem Jacob Henri Berend Sandberg known as Willem Sandberg was a Dutch typographer and museum curator.He was born in Amersfoort, Holland in 1897 and studied art in Amsterdam. He became a follower of the Mazdaznan movement. As a young man he travelled, serving as an apprentice to a...
and the artist's nephew, V. W. van Gogh, resulting in an international debate amongst art experts. The painting remained controversial and was not put up for auction with the rest of the Goetz collection following Mrs. Goetz's death in 1987.