By the '40s, Sam Goldwyn is a very serious man. By the '50s, he's the dean of American producers. To the end, he was Hollywood's gray eminence.
There is always a certain leap of faith that editors have made with their nonfiction writers. If the trust is broken, things can get very embarrassing for the writers and the publisher.
I read my first book on Woodrow Wilson at age 15, and I was hooked.
I said, ‘There’s one idea I’ve been carrying in my hip pocket for 35 years. It’s Woodrow Wilson.’
Clark Gable seemed fascinating all his life because there wasn't so much information about him. Today, you're on television all the time.
The successful editor is one who is constantly finding newwriters, nurturing their talents, and publishing them with critical and financial success.
I'm so blessed to have such enlightened parents. It must have been very hard to watch their able-bodied son lock himself up in his old room for most of his 20s.
I am a compulsive worker. But I'm also a compulsive relaxer.
I don't know of a soul who packed more living into 72 years than Charles Lindbergh did.
I think a biography is only as interesting as the lives and times it illuminates.
I developed a mania for Fitzgerald - by the time I'd graduated from high school I'd read everything he'd written. I started with 'The Great Gatsby' and moved on to 'Tender Is the Night,' which just swept me away. Then I read 'This Side of Paradise,' his novel about Princeton - I literally slept with that book under my pillow for two years.
When most people think of Woodrow Wilson, they see a dour minister's son who never cracked a smile, where in fact he was a man of genuine joy and great sadness.
I like my subjects to be American, and not too dead, so I can interview people who knew them.
Author details
A. Scott Berg: Biography and Life Work
A. Scott Berg was a notable Biographer. The story of A. Scott Berg began on December 4, 1949 in Norwalk, Connecticut, U.S..
Andrew Scott Berg (born December 4, 1949) is an American biographer. After graduating from Princeton University in 1971, Berg expanded his senior thesis on editor Maxwell Perkins into a full-length biography, Max Perkins: Editor of Genius (1978), which won a National Book Award . His second book Goldwyn: A Biography was published in 1989.
Legacy and Personal Influence
Academic foundations were established at Palisades Charter High School. Personally, A. Scott Berg was married to Kevin McCormick.
Philosophical Views and Reflections
In 1978, Berg was approached by Samuel Goldwyn Jr. to write a biography of his father, the independent film producer Samuel Goldwyn . Berg initially turned the project down, telling Goldwyn that "he was interested in American culture, not Hollywood," but changed his mind after visiting Goldwyn's archives and discovering gin rummy I.O.U.s, menus from Goldwyn's dinner parties, and "all the quotidian minutiae that are a biographer's dream". He won a 1982 Guggenheim Fellowship , which helped finance his work on the biography. The same year, Berg wrote the story for Making Love , a controversial film that was the first major studio drama to address the subjects of homosexual love, closeted marriages, and coming out . He also narrated Directed by William Wyler , a 1986 documentary about the filmmaker William Wyler for which Berg interviewed Wyler, Bette Davis , Audrey Hepburn , Laurence Olivier , and Barbra Streisand , among others. In 1989, Berg published Goldwyn: A Biography , his second biography.
Berg lives with his partner Kevin Mc Cormick , a film producer, in Los Angeles. His brothers are Jeff Berg, former CEO of International Creative Management , a leading Hollywood talent and literary agency; and music producer and musician Tony Berg . His youngest brother Rick is a partner and manager at the production company Code Entertainment. His niece is Z Berg , a musician of The Like and JJAMZ .
