Edmund Goulding | |
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![]() Goulding helping position actors for a kiss while making a film with the motion picture class at Columbia University in 1927 | |
Born | |
Died | 24 December 1959 68) | (aged
Occupation(s) | Film director, writer |
Years active | 1916–1958 |
Spouse | Marjorie Moss (m. 1931;died 1935) |
Edmund Goulding (20 March 1891 – 24 December 1959) was a British screenwriter and film director. As an actor early in his career he was one of the 'Ghosts' in the 1922 silent film Three Live Ghosts alongside Norman Kerry and Cyril Chadwick. Also in the early 1920s he wrote several screenplays for star Mae Murray for films directed by her then husband Robert Z. Leonard. Goulding is best remembered for directing cultured dramas such as Love (1927), Grand Hotel (1932) with Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford, Dark Victory (1939) with Bette Davis, The Constant Nymph (1943) with Joan Fontaine, and The Razor's Edge (1946) with Gene Tierney and Tyrone Power. He also directed the classic film noir Nightmare Alley (1947) with Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell, and the action drama The Dawn Patrol . He was also a successful songwriter, composer, and producer.
Before moving to films, Goulding was an actor, playwright and director on the London stage. [1]
Interviewed about his Goulding biography Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory (2009), film historian Matthew Kennedy stated:
He not only directed many types of films, but he took on multiple functions on each set. Though he didn't usually take credit, he co-wrote many scripts, composed incidental music, produced, even consulted on makeup, costumes, and hair styling. His one blind spot in production seems to be the camera...When shooting a scene, Eddie was intent on capturing performers at their best and most truthful, but he left the mechanics of filming to his cameramen...he seemed adept at just about everything — comedy (Everybody Does It, We're Not Married!), ensemble dramas (Grand Hotel), family relations (White Banners, Claudia), war (The Dawn Patrol, We Are Not Alone), psychiatry (The Flame Within), show business (Blondie of the Follies), male-female relationships (The Devil's Holiday, Riptide), and even existentialism (The Razor's Edge) and the dark arts of spiritism (Nightmare Alley). [2]
Together with Jack Conway, Goulding holds the distinction of having directed the most Best Picture-nominated films without ever receiving a nomination for Best Director, with three ( Grand Hotel , which won the award; Dark Victory ; and The Razor's Edge ).
Goulding died during heart surgery at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles, California. He was buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. [3]
Grand Hotel is a 1932 American pre-Code drama film directed by Edmund Goulding and produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The screenplay by William A. Drake is based on the 1930 play by Drake, who had adapted it from the 1929 novel Menschen im Hotel by Vicki Baum. To date, it is the only film to have won the Academy Award for Best Picture without being nominated in any other category.
Thomas Geoffrey Wilkinson was an English actor. Known for his roles on stage and screen, he received numerous accolades including a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award as well as nominations for two Academy Awards and two Laurence Olivier Awards. In 2005, he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).
Long Day's Journey into Night is a play in four acts written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1939–1941 and first published posthumously in 1956. It is widely regarded as his magnum opus and one of the great American plays of the 20th century. It premiered in Sweden in February 1956 and then opened on Broadway in November 1956, winning the Tony Award for Best Play. O'Neill received the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Drama posthumously for Long Day's Journey into Night. The work is openly autobiographical in nature. The "long day" in the title refers to the setting of the play, which takes place during one day.
Tyrone Edmund Power III was an American actor. From the 1930s to the 1950s, Power appeared in dozens of films, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads. His better-known films include Jesse James, The Mark of Zorro, Marie Antoinette, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan, Prince of Foxes, Witness for the Prosecution, The Black Rose, and Captain from Castile. Power's own favorite film among those in which he starred was Nightmare Alley.
Edge of Darkness is a British television drama serial produced by BBC Television in association with Lionheart Television International and originally broadcast in six 50 to 55-minute episodes in late 1985. A mixture of crime drama and political thriller, it revolves around the efforts of widowed policeman Ronald Craven to unravel the truth behind the murder of his daughter Emma. Craven's investigations soon lead him into a murky world of government and corporate cover-ups and nuclear espionage, pitting him against dark forces that threaten the future of life on Earth.
Nightmare Alley is a 1947 American film noir directed by Edmund Goulding from a screenplay by Jules Furthman. Based on William Lindsay Gresham's 1946 novel of the same name, it stars Tyrone Power, with Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray, and Helen Walker in supporting roles. Power, wishing to expand beyond the romantic and swashbuckler roles that brought him to fame, requested 20th Century Fox's studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck to buy the rights to the novel so he could star as the unsavory lead "The Great Stanton", a scheming carnival barker.
The Razor's Edge is a 1946 American drama film based on W. Somerset Maugham's 1944 novel of the same name. It stars Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney, John Payne, Anne Baxter, Clifton Webb, and Herbert Marshall, with a supporting cast including Lucile Watson, Frank Latimore, and Elsa Lanchester. Marshall plays Somerset Maugham. The film was directed by Edmund Goulding.
Philip MacDonald was a British-born writer of fiction and screenplays, best known for thrillers.
The Dawn Patrol is a 1938 American war film, a remake of the pre-Code 1930 film of the same title. Both were based on the short story "The Flight Commander" by John Monk Saunders, an American writer said to have been haunted by his inability to get into combat as a flyer with the U.S. Air Service.
Rafaela Ottiano was an Italian-American actress. She was best known for her role as Suzette in Grand Hotel (1932) and as Russian Rita in She Done Him Wrong (1933).
The Constant Nymph is a 1943 romantic drama film starring Charles Boyer, Joan Fontaine, Alexis Smith, Brenda Marshall, Charles Coburn, May Whitty, and Peter Lorre with a famous score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. It was adapted by Kathryn Scola from the 1924 novel of the same name by Margaret Kennedy and the 1926 play by Kennedy and Basil Dean and directed by Edmund Goulding.
Matthew Kennedy is an American writer, film historian, and anthropologist.
Women Love Diamonds is a 1927 American black and white silent melodrama directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Pauline Starke, Owen Moore, and Lionel Barrymore.
The Dangerous Paradise is a 1920 American silent comedy drama film directed by William P. S. Earle and starring Louise Huff, Harry Benham, and Ida Darling.
A Man of Stone is a 1921 American silent drama film directed by George Archainbaud and starring Conway Tearle, Betty Howe, and Martha Mansfield.
The Seventh Day is a 1922 American silent drama film directed by Henry King and starring Richard Barthelmess, Louise Huff, Frank Losee and Anne Cornwall. A group of high society New Yorkers on a yachting vacation put into a small New England fishing village for repairs. While there they strike up relationships with locals that threaten the harmony of their party.
The Dancers is a 1925 American silent drama film directed by Emmett J. Flynn and starring George O'Brien, Alma Rubens, and Madge Bellamy. It is an adaptation of the 1923 play The Dancers by Viola Tree and Gerald du Maurier. It was remade by Fox Film five years later as a sound film The Dancers.
The Scarlet Honeymoon is a 1925 American silent drama film directed by Alan Hale and starring Shirley Mason, Pierre Gendron, and Allan Sears.
The Grand Parade is a 1930 American drama film directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and starring Helen Twelvetrees, Fred Scott and Richard Carle. It is now considered to be a lost film.
Nightmare Alley is a 2021 neo-noir psychological thriller film co-written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, and based on the 1946 novel of the same name by William Lindsay Gresham. It is the second feature film adaptation of Gresham's novel, following the 1947 film. A co-production between Searchlight Pictures, TSG Entertainment, and Double Dare You Productions, the film stars Bradley Cooper as a charming and ambitious carnival worker with a mysterious past who takes big risks to boost his career. Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Rooney Mara, Ron Perlman, Mary Steenburgen, and David Strathairn also star.