WWTBAM Bored

Samuel Goldwyn Jr., the son of a fiercely independent-minded Hollywood mogul and the producer of many independent films in his own right including “Mystic Pizza” and studio hits including “Master and Commander,” died Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 88. His son John Goldwyn told the New York Times he died of congestive heart failure.

Goldwyn Jr. received his final credit as a producer, together with son John and others, on Fox’s long-gestating remake of the Goldwyn Sr.-produced classic “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” starring and directed by Ben Stiller and released in December 2013.

The courtly and soft-spoken scion was known for shepherding independent and foreign films and got his start in documentary filmmaking, in contrast to his brash father, who made his way from a youth of poverty in Poland to a partner in MGM.