Chrysti the Wordsmith > Radio Scripts

The film baron Samuel Goldwyn, born in Warsaw, Poland in 1882, emigrated to the States at age thirteen with twenty dollars in his pocket. He died in 1974, a multi-millionaire and respected producer of some seventy American cinema classics, including Wuthering Heights and Porgy and Bess.

Samuel Goldwyn was not only a trailblazer in the film industry, he was also something of a linguistic oddball, the author of countless malapropisms. With a twinkle in his eye and English as his second language, Goldwyn mangled America's mother tongue just enough to keep the public chuckling. His 1937 assessment of Hollywood directors was "...they're always biting the hand that lays the golden egg."

When Goldwyn resigned from the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America in 1933, he quipped, "Gentlemen, include me out!" Discussing the quality of his films in 1969, he said, "Our comedies are not to be laughed at." Of psychotherapy, the rage of Hollywood, Goldwyn opined "anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined."

Because Goldwyn fractured the language with such frequency, he was often called Mr. Malaprop, after the comic character Mrs. Malaprop, the verbicidal aunt in the 18th century English play The Rivals. Goldwyn, a shameless self-promoter, didn't seem to mind his reputation. He is said to have gleefully quipped, "Let's have some new cliches!"

Radio Script > Goldwynisms