Producer who encouraged independent film-makers and achieved Oscar success with Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
The film producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr, who has died aged 88, shared with his father a name and a career in Hollywood, but he struck out on his own in favouring cerebral subjects, encouraging independent film-making and backing new directors, such as Ang Lee and Anthony Minghella.
He was born in Los Angeles, the son of the man originally known as Szmuel Gelbfisz and his second wife, Frances (nee Howard). Sam Sr was, in many ways, the man who invented Hollywood: with his brother-in-law, Jesse L Lasky, he had made the first film produced there, The Squaw Man (1913), and used his own money to make such box-office hits as Guys and Dolls (1955).
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