Family Tree Tuesday – Tony Goldwyn

Tony Goldwyn

Anthony Howard “Tony” Goldwyn is an American actor and director. He stars in the ABC drama Scandal, as Fitzgerald Grant III, President of the United States. He played the role of Carl Bruner in Ghost, Colonel  Bagley in The Last Samurai, and the voice of the title character of the Disney animated Tarzan. He is also known for his role of Kendall Dobbs on the comedy series, Designing Women. Goldwyn had a recurring role on the drama series Law & Order: Criminal Intent as Frank Goren. He has appeared twice in Off-Broadway shows, one of them being Theresa Rebeck’s Spike Heels alongside Kevin Bacon and Julie White.

Goldwyn was born on May 20, 1960 in Los Angeles, California to actress Jennifer Howard and film producer Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. His maternal grandparents were Sidney Coe Howard and Clare Eames. Sidney Howard was an American playwright and screenwriter. Howard had a proficiency in foreign languages and had translated a number of literary works from French, Spanish, Hungarian and German. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1925 for the play They Knew What They Wanted and a posthumous Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay in 1939 for Gone with the Wind. He was the only one honored for the Academy Award, despite the fact that his script was revised by several other writers. Clare Eames was an influential Broadway actress and stage director. After World War I, she was considered one of the leading new female lights of the Broadway stage performing in many classic roles including Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Show.

Samuel Goldwyn

His paternal grandparents were American film producer Samuel Goldwyn and actress Frances Howard.  Samuel Goldwyn was born Shmuel Gelbfitz in Warsaw, Poland. He left Warsaw at an early age penniless, making his way to Birmingham, England where he stayed with relatives for a few years using the name Samuel Goldfish. He emigrated to the United States in 1898, but fearing refusal of entry, he got off the boat in Nova Scotia, Canada, before moving to New York in 1899. In 1913, Goldwyn along with his brother-in-law (by his first marriage to Blanche Lasky) Jesse L. Lasky , Cecil B. DeMille, and Arthur Friend formed a partnership, The Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, to produce feature length motion pictures. The Company later merged with Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players Company becoming The Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. Eventually the Corporation became a part of Paramount Pictures Corporation, one of Hollywood’s major studios. In 1916, Goldwyn partnered with Broadway producers Edgar and Archibald Selwyn, using a combination of both names to call their movie-making enterprise Goldwyn Pictures. This was when Samuel Gelbfisz legally changed his name to Samuel Goldwyn. The organization is most famous for their “Leo the Lion” trademark. In 1924, Marcus Leow acquired Goldwyn Pictures and merged it into his Metro Pictures Corporation becoming Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. For 35 years, Samuel Goldwyn built a reputation in film-making and an eye for finding the talent for making films.

Tony Goldwyn’s brother is American film producer John Howard Goldwyn. John has served as an executive producer for the Showtime drama series Dexter for five seasons.

Did you know Tony’s paternal grandmother Frances Howard was reportedly worried that Hitler was going to invade the United States? She made plans to fake the drowning of her son, set up a false identity, and escape to Mexico where she had money waiting.

Check out Tony Goldwyn’s family tree and see how you maybe related!