tween The Squaw Man (1914) andnPorgy and Bess (1959) he produced anlong list of picture shows, some ofnthem pretty good, and one of them.nThe Best Years of Our Lives (1946),nearning him a belated AcademynAward. Goldwyn knew and workedn(and fought) with practically everybodynin the history of Hollywood. (Thenphotographs of them are well chosen,ngreat and good fun.) And allowing fornthe enforced limits of seeing the worldnfrom a single, unheroic point of view,nGoldwyn is a solid history of the movienbusiness and, as well, of this nation thatnsupported that business. There is annodd and interesting inversion there; fornthe movie industry thrived most whennthe nation’s economy was in worstnshape and vice versa. It could be said,nthough it hasn’t been, that our nationalnbest interests and theirs are often contradictory.nIt is probably a good idea toncompare and contrast Berg’s Goldwynnwith more general recent histories,nmost pertinently Neal Gobler’s excellentnAn Empire of Their Own: Hownthe Jews Invented Hollywood. ButnGoldwyn is solid and scholarly andninteresting and easy to read, worthy ofnall the excellent reviews it has beennreceiving; although the very best ofnthese (so far), John Gregory Dunne’sn”Goldwynism,” in The New York Reviewnof Books (May 18, 1989), hasnserious reservations and revisions tonmake.nI, too, would like to make a couplenof minor corrective points.nOne of these has to do with thenclaim made by Berg, in his book and inna number of recent published interviews,nthat he has enjoyed nearly perfectnfreedom in the making of thisnbook. Anybody who has ever done anynbiographical work knows that unlessnthe subject has been dead for severalncenturies, only an unauthorized biography,nbuilt upon materials in the publicndomain and depending in no waynon the resources and good will of thensubject’s estate, can ever be “free.”nBerg tells us that Samuel Goldwyn Jr.nsought him out to write the biographynand that he, Berg, refused the tasknunless he had complete access to allnmaterials and freedom to call it any waynhe saw it. Well, maybe. Just maybe.nBut I kind of doubt it. In the absence ofna published copy of the actual contract,nwe are asked to take this unlikely talenon faith. What Berg really tells us innthe book is: “He [Goldwyn Jr.] assurednme that he would make himself availablento discuss his mother and fathernand that he would exercise no controlnover the contents of the biography.” Itnis virtually unheard of for anybody tonrelinquish all rights of review and revision;nand chip off the old block Sam Jr.ncertainly seems an unlikely candidatento render himself highly vulnerable onnthe basis of some kind of vague authorialnhonor system. The old man probablynnever said, “A verbal contract isn’tnworth the paper it’s written on.” Butnyou can believe he could have.nBerg offers many of the warty detailsnof Goldwyn’s life and career; sonthat, in a relative sense, Goldwyn is farnremoved from your typical puff job.nBut Berg remains uniformly kind tonthe memory of old Sam; and he isnespecially generous to (and unquestioningnof) the life and times of SamuelnGoldwyn Jr. Not that Berg has suppressednanything, or, anyway, anythingnwe can know about; but the context hencreates tends to understate the insatiablengreed, the insufferable arrogance,nthe brutal indifference to the needs ofnothers, including his own family, thenchicanery and manipulation, the lying,nstealing, and cheating that seem tonhave characterized old Goldwyn’s waysnand means from the beginning to thenend.nIt is probable that Goldwyn was ansomewhat better human being thannmost of the other old-timey Hollywoodntycoons, but whether that should benemblazoned in heraldry remains to benseen. It can be and probably should benmentioned that these colorful, freebooting,nclaw-fingered barbarians whontruly created the myth machine, thendream factory of Hollywood, thesenalien pirates of whom Goldwyn maynhave been the best man, are not entirelynblameless in some serious matters ofnour social and cultural history. Sure,nthey fed us a diet of dreams and wenpaid them very well for the pleasure ofnit. But are not some of those dreams,nwhether formed out of ignorance ornshrewd design, almost antithetical tonthe larger (truer?) American dream?nAre not some of those dreams false andncorrupt? Once upon a time there certainlynwas much more to the Americanndream than the ruthless, obsessive, andnnnrapacious pursuit of success, status,nriches, comfort, and celebrity. Therenwere also, from our beginnings, thenideals, especially for the privileged andnthe lucky, of duty, honor, service, andnsacrifice. And for all of us there was thendream of liberty, the hope for brotherhoodnand equality.nBy their highly profitable art and bynthe example of their dedicated if dissolutenlives, the Hollywood dream salesmennhelped to change all that for thenworse. And our generation has lived tonwitness a deadly serious confusion ofnshow business and self-government, anworld in which the distortions of publicitynand contrived perception replacenfacts as, in Frost’s phrase, “the sweetestndream that labor knows.” Though,nsooner or later, all skulls are reduced tonsmiling, Sam Goldwyn’s must be grinningnbroadly.nOne of the most contemptible timesnof the Hollywood old-timers was “thenMcGarthy era.” It was show business,nfrom the beginning, and it was chieflynHollywood that fueled all the sad nonsensenand created and kept the blacklists.nThere are strong hints in thensubtext of Berg’s book that blacklistingnwas an old Hollywood tradition and anuseful weapon in Goldwyn’s armory.nNowadays it is Hollywood that tells us,nrepeatedly, that the whole country wasntainted and sick with “McCarthyism.”nMaybe so; maybe not. But there can bennot the least doubt that Hollywood wasninfected. According to Berg’s book,nSam Goldwyn, true to form and hisnguardian inner spirit, took and held thenmoral middle ground in this matter asnin everything else that matters.nWell then. A lively, at times a fascinatingnstory, a modern fairy tale wherendungy straw is spun into threads ofngold. Yet in a real sense Hollywoodnmovies fail, the way Goldwyn, even atnhis finest, failed, by finally avoiding ornanyway slighting the hard truths, bynignoring the really hard questions andnhard sayings that are the very bloodnand guts of this nation, its people, andntheir aspirations. Blood and guts hencould do without, though he oncenapologized to Thurber for making anstory of his too “blood and thirsty.”n”It turned out just as he hadndreamed,” Dos Passos writes. “He’dnreached America and he’d made hisnfortune. It was what they called freedom.”n<^nAUGUST 1989/29n