Background
Goldenson was born to a Jewish family in Pennsylvania in 1905. He grew up in the town of Scottdale, Pennsylvania and graduated from Scottdale High School.
Motion picture and broadcasting executive
Goldenson was born to a Jewish family in Pennsylvania in 1905. He grew up in the town of Scottdale, Pennsylvania and graduated from Scottdale High School.
He was educated at Harvard, and entered the entertainment industry in 1933 as an attorney for Paramount Pictures after graduating from Harvard Business School.
Goldenson was hired to help reorganize United Paramount Theatres, Paramount"s theater chain, which at the time was nearing bankruptcy. So skillful was his work at this assignment that Paramount"s chief executive officer, Barney Balaban, hired Goldenson to manage the entire chain. Goldenson orchestrated the merger of United Paramount Theatres with American Broadcasting Company in 1953 (after Paramount was ordered to spin it off in the wake of United States v Paramount Pictures, Incorporated, a 1948 decree of the United States Supreme Court).
American Broadcasting Company was originally formed in 1943 in the wake of an earlier Supreme Court decree effectively ordering the spinoff of the largely secondary-status Blue Network from its then-parent, National Broadcasting Company. Its buyer, industrialist Edward J. Noble, tried valiantly to build American Broadcasting Company into an innovative and competitive broadcaster, but by 1951 was rumored to be on the verge of selling the nearly bankrupt operation to Columbia Broadcasting System, who apparently wanted American Broadcasting Company"s critically important owned-and-operated television stations.
The modern American Broadcasting Company dates its history from the effective date of the Goldenson transaction, and not the Blue Network spinoff.
Although he focused chiefly on American Broadcasting Company Television, Goldenson oversaw all areas of American Broadcasting Company-Paramount"s entertainment/media operations for over thirty years, from 1951 to 1986, including the creation of the AmPar Record Corporation in 1955 and the "rebadging" of the American Broadcasting Company-Paramount group as the American Broadcasting Company in 1968. Goldenson also was instrumental in the sale of American Broadcasting Company to Capital Cities Communications in 1986. Very early on in his tenure, Goldenson also hired the first African-American staff announcer in network television and radio history, Sid McCoy.
Co-founder, past president, director United Cerebral Palsy Association, Inc., 1949-1953, chairman board, since 1954. Vice chairman board directors United Cerebral Palsy Research and Educational Foundation. Trustee Children's Cancer Research Foundation of Children's Medical Center, Boston, Will Rogers Memorial Hospital, Saranac Lake, New York, Temple Emanu-El, New York City.
Board directors Daughters of Jacob Geriatric Center, World Rehabilitation Fund. Founding member Hollywood Museum. Member National Citizen's Advisory Committee on Vocational Rehabilitation.
Advisory council White House Conference on Handicapped Individuals. Member Motion Picture Pioneers, National Academy television Arts and Sciences, International Radio and television Society Clubs: Harvard (New York City).
Married Isabelle Weinstein, October 10, 1939. Children– Loreen Arbus, Maxine.
