Edgar Selwyn on AllMovie

Already an established stage actor/director/playwright by 1911, Edgar Selwyn made his motion-picture bow with the All-Star Feature Film Company. Selwyn went on to star in the cinemadaptations of his own plays Pierre of the Plains (1914) and The Arab (1915, directed by Cecil B. De Mille). He later set up his own production company in partnership with Samuel Goldfish. The partners combined their names for professional purposes, and the result was Goldwyn Pictures (Goldfish later adopted this amalgam as his legal surname). Selwyn divided his time between film production and stage work throughout the 1920s, and in 1929 signed on as a writer/director at MGM. His best-known directorial efforts of the 1930s include the Helen Hayes vehicle The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931) and the fascinating "what if" drama Turn Back the Clock. He returned to producing in the 1940s, turning out, among other projects, a remake of his stage success Pierre of the Plains. Edgar Selwyn was at one time married to actress Margaret Mayo.