I'm reading Garson Kanin's memoir, “Hollywood,” which is fast becoming one of my favorite insider memoirs of the movie business, and the first chapter is all about how Kanin came west in the late 1930s at the behest of producer Samuel Goldwyn, and how Kanin kept pushing to become a director even though Goldwyn didn't want him to become one. It became a big battle between the two. It raged. Everything about Goldwyn raged. He was a major asshole but with personality.

Eventually Kanin freed himself from Goldwyn's contract and his clutches to direct “A Man to Remember,” a B picture for RKO that did well at the box office. Shortly thereafter, Kanin ran into Goldwyn at a party, and the great man was enthusiastic. He called him a double-crossing little SOB, but then asked, quietly and sincerely, “Why didn't you ever tell me you wanted to be a director?” It's a laugh-out-loud moment.

Later, Kanin has a conversation with director William Wyler about it. “How do you explain it?” Kanin asked. Wyler replied:

Well, I’ll tell you. He believes with all his heart that you spent a year at his studio and never mentioned the subject of directing. He believes it because he has to. He’s convinced himself that’s the truth, because—don’t you see?—if he admits to anybody or to himself that there you were, under contract to him, begging him every minute for a chance to direct, with him turning you down, then you go out and become a successful director for another studio, he’s made a blunder. He’s used bad judgment, so rather than admit this, he convinces himself you never mentioned it. That's his mentality. I think it may be one of the main reasons for his success. To himself, he's never wrong.

See also: Donald Rumsfeld; Dick Cheney.

I did a few of these “How to Get Ahead” posts in the past, but let them lapse. No more. They're a good antidote to the All-American, FOX-News notion that if you just work hard enough you'll be a millionaire; and that if you're not a millionaire you just didn't work hard enough.

Other paths to success?

• Dick Cavett: Jutzpah
• Marcus Loew: Ravenousness
• Billy Martin: I guess you'd call this team building

Goldwyn: never wrong.