Bernard H Hyman (1897-1942) was a Yale graduate working as a film exchange manager when he started to dabble in screenwriting. In 1922, three of his story ideas were bought by Universal.
Hyman became an assistant to Universal’s studio manager, Irving Thalberg, and subsequently moved with him to Louis B Mayer Productions, and then into the merged Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He eventually became one of the group of line supervisors working with Thalberg on the production aspects of the studio’s schedule.
Hyman was received an onscreen credit as associate producer for The Barbarian (1933), then had to wait until Stamboul Quest (1934) for a producer credit, when the studio moved away from Thalberg’s anonymous central producer system (“Credit you give yourself is not worth having”).
Three MGM musicals were produced by Hyman: The Cat and the Fiddle and The Great Waltz (uncredited) and San Francisco.
Like his mentor, Bernard Hyman died young
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