Alfred J. Goulding
American film director (1885–1972)
Alfred John "Alf" Goulding (January 26, 1885 – April 25, 1972) was an Australian-born vaudevillian, who became an American film director and screenwriter. He directed more than 180 films between 1917 and 1959 and is credited with having Harold Lloyd wear his trademark glasses.
Biography
He was born on January 26, 1885, in Melbourne, Australia to Francis Thomas Goulding (1860–1940) and Margaret Davies Walsh. He was the youngest brother of the opera singer Elsa Goulding.
As children, he and his brother and sister performed with Pollard’s Lilliputian Opera Company, a popular Australian juvenile opera company that travelled Australasia, the Orient and North America extensively. By 1900 he was regularly singled out in reviews as one of the company’s most entertaining performers: "Master Alf. Goulding came in for a lion's share of applause, and he certainly won it fairly in his comic pieces." By 1907, Goulding was stage managing for the company. He arrived with the Pollard troupe in the US in 1908. According to Brent Walker, Goulding then travelled to Britain where he worked on stage with Stan Laurel, for several years, after which he returned to the US. By 1911 he was performing on stage in North America and directing his own stage shows, sometimes in collaboration with former Pollard performers Daphne Pollard and Harry "Snub" Pollard.
In 1912, he broke into movies, acting and then after 1916, directing two reel comedies for Fox.
“Alfred J. Goulding” enters the record as american film director (1885–1972). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Alfred, Goulding and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2835202. VIAF identifies the subject as 74058354. The Library of Congress control number is no92009106. 6 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1885, 1972, 1917 and 1959.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alfred J. Goulding” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.