Humorous

H.I.F.

The humorous Taki Theodoracopulos offers a biographical snippet of Sam Goldwyn, including these malapropisms:

When his wife suggested a friend should seek psychiatric help he interrupted with, “Anybody who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined.” His most famous Goldwynism was “Include me out,” which he sprang on his board that included Averell Harriman, a lifelong friend. Charlie Chaplin and countless others including Douglas Fairbanks claimed that they were present at the creation, such was the beauty of that particular malapropism. When a director complained about the lighting, Goldwyn told him, “You gotta take the sour with the bitter.” He admonished his banker, who was complaining about overruns in the budget, that “We are dealing in facts, not realities.” When absent from his office he told his secretary that “I've been laid up with intentional flu,” and when some eager beaver producers tried to hustle him in financing a project, he resisted by telling them, no, “I would be sticking my head in a moose.” He was also the author of the all-time favorite, “A verbal agreement is not worth the paper it's written on.” Early on in his career he warned his director that “This whole damned picture will go right out at the sewer,” and much later, when the grand Bill Paley took him shooting in his Long Island estate and told Sam, “Look at the gulls,” Sam answered, “How do you know they're not boys?”

When he gathered all the musical talent in Hollywood, including Leopold Stokowski, George and Ira Gershwin and others, he told them “All this modern music you like is so old-fashioned . . .