Film producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr. who died January 9, 2015 of heart failure was the second generation of a true Hollywood dynasty. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association nominated him in 2004 for a golden globe for co-producing Peter Weir’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World together with Weir and Duncan Henderson, Goldwyn Jr. also shared that film’s Oscar nomination for best picture. (The film received a total of 10 nominations and won two Oscars.)
He did not win the Globe, but his father, Samuel Goldwyn did, four times: In 1947, for the post Second World War drama, The Best Years of Our Live, followed by two musicals: Guys and Dolls (1956) and Porgy and Bess (1960). In 1973 the HFPA  bestowed on Goldwyn its highest honor, the Cecil B. deMille award.
 
Goldwyn Jr. was born in 1926 to movie pioneer and mogul Samuel Goldwyn, who rose to Hollywood prominence from a childhood of poverty in Poland, becoming a founder of Paramount Studios and later an independent producer and a partner in MGM (he was the G in the middle). His mother was actress Frances Howard. With such a pedigree, Goldwyn grew up a self-proclaimed ‘Hollywood brat’, spending time on sets and studio lots, attending his first Oscar ceremony when he was 11 years old. But Goldwyn Jr. did not step into his father’s business- he emulated him, by becoming a fiercely independent producer in his own right. He got his start producing documentary films, while in the military in the early 1950s and for television in New York. Returning to Hollywood, Goldwyn Jr. launched his production company and produced his first film: the Robert Mitchum Western Man With the Gun. He then founded his own studio, The Samuel Goldwyn Company and later Samuel Goldwyn Films.
He was known for producing and distributing independent, foreign and smaller budget films, such as Outback, Stella, and The Preacher’s Wife. He also was not afraid to bet on less known talent, and was credited for giving  a newcomer named Julia Roberts her big break in his 1988’s Mystic Pizza. In the 1980s and 1990s Goldwyn was in the forefront of the independent film wave, distributing such films as David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise, Bill Forsyth’s Gregory’s Girl, Stephen Frears’ Prick Up Your Ears, John Sayles’ City of Hope, Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet and Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing.
In the late 1980s he twice produced the Academy Awards show, winning an Emmy in 1988. He was also very active in his family’s charity work, which is seen all over town: The annual Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards, the Samuel Goldwyn Children’s Center, the Academy of Motion Pictures theater and the Hollywood Public Library in memory of his mother, Frances Howard Goldwyn.
 
Goldwyn Jr.’s last credit as a producer was for Fox’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, starring and directed by Ben Stiller and released in December 2013. It was the perfect final act for a prince of Hollywood: The original version of The Secret Life was produced by his father, Samuel Sr., in 1939, and he shared producing credits on the remake with his own son, John Goldwyn, the third generation.
 
 “I love (the movie business). If you don’t love this business, don’t go near it. Don’t go near it to get rich,” Goldwyn told Britain’s the Independent in 2004. “And just remember, if you’re right 51 per cent of the time in this business, you’re a genius.”
Yoram Kahana