Samuel Goldwyn Jr. grew up with Hollywood royalty.

Charlie Chaplin, Katharine Hepburn, Clark Gable and George Cukor were among the luminaries who would come to his parents' palatial home for parties or tennis.

But even as a boy, Sam Jr. knew that the house was sitting on precarious financial ground. His legendary father, one of the movie business' original moguls, would regularly mortgage it to make his prestigious films.

When Sam Jr. started his own independent film company, which became a major force in 1980s and '90s Hollywood, he took on modestly budgeted movies that didn't risk the house but often scored with critics and audiences - the Julia Roberts breakout film "Mystic Pizza" (1988); "Longtime Companion" (1989), which took up the topic of AIDS; and "The Madness of King George" (1994), to name a few.

Mr. Goldwyn, 88, died Jan. 9 at a hospital in Los Angeles. The cause was congestive heart failure, said his son Peter Goldwyn.

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