STACK #121 Nov 2015

EXTRAS

FEATURE

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Gone With the Wind (1939) Directed by Victor Fleming

“F orget it, Louis. No Civil War movie ever made a nickel”. During a meeting with Louis B. Mayer in early 1936, MGM’s production chief Irving Thalberg had listened to the synopsis of a soon to be published Civil War novel. Thalberg’s comment prompted Mayer not to buy the movie rights. Six months later, the 37-year-old Thalberg was dead and the Civil War novel he convinced Mayer to reject was a publishing phenomenon – the fastest selling book in history (it would also win a Pulitzer Prize and go on to sell over 30 million copies). Louis B. Mayer’s son-in-law, David O. Selznick, was an independent film producer working out of RKO studios, and like his father-in- law, had initially expressed no interest in buying the novel’s film rights. But Selznick-International Pictures New York-based story editor Kay Brown urged her boss to think again; she excitedly told him that this could be the greatest motion picture ever made. Selznick still had doubts about the commercial success of a film based on the Civil War. However, he trusted Kay Brown implicitly. After sleeping on it, the next morning he wired her to close the deal with Macmillan Publishing. She did so for $50,000; at that time the highest price ever paid for the film rights of a first novel by an unknown author. Atlanta-born Margaret Mitchell had always toyed with the idea of writing a Civil War story after having been weaned as a child on family stories of Sherman’s siege and the burning of Atlanta. Her book Gone with the Wind had taken ten years to write and tells the story of pampered and spoilt Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara, her loves, marriages and upheavals during the war between the States. The novel’s title reflects the departure of a way of life that existed in the antebellum American South before being overturned and swept away by the Civil War. For some readers the book was a racial

lightning rod, while for others, especially those suffering through the Great Depression of the 1930s, it proved a model for survival. Mitchell summarised her novel thus: “If my book has a theme, it is that of survival. What makes some

people come through a catastrophe and others, just as able, strong and brave, go under? I only know that survivors call that quality gumption. So I wrote about people who had gumption, and people who didn’t”. Selznick was now faced with the monumental task of turning the 1037-page novel into a workable film script. He gave the job to leading playwright Sidney Howard, who having already read the book described it to Selznick as “a sentimental piece of tripe about a bitch and a bastard”. While Howard struggled with the adaptation, Selznick began casting his production; in particular the “bitch” and the “bastard” roles.  The male protagonist of the story was the rakish blockade runner and speculator, Captain Rhett Butler. And as far as the moviegoing public was concerned, only one actor could portray the role – the king of Hollywood himself, Clark Gable. But Gable was under contract at MGM, and Selznick had no intention of asking his father-in-law to borrow the studio’s top male star because he could guess what it would cost him. Actors such as Ronald Colman, Gary Cooper, Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn were considered by Selznick for the part of Butler, but for one reason or another, were all declined. The public and media clamour for Clark Gable to be cast had now reached fever pitch, leaving Selznick no other option but to go cap in hand to Mayer

False smiles as Louis B. Mayer signs the contract for Clark Gable’s services on Gone with the Wind , watched by Gable and David O. Selznick.

for the services of the actor. The MGM mogul drove a brutal bargain for contributing Gable to the production, which included 50 per cent of the profits, 15 per cent of the gross to distribute the picture, and Selznick to pay Gable’s salary for the 12 weeks the actor was required – plus a $16,666 bonus. Selznick almost balked at the deal, but Gable was indispensable; he reluctantly accepted Mayer’s terms. With false smiles all round for the publicity photo, Selznick watched Mayer and Gable sign the contract. The legal agreement presented Selznick with a major contractual issue. MGM demanded exclusive distribution rights for Gone with the Wind . Selznick already had a contract with United Artists to release his films through to the end of 1938, which meant he couldn’t start filming GWTW until early 1939. He knew he needed to maintain the public and media interest in his movie until its theatrical release, but what could he do? Selznick’s solution to his problem was pure genius. As he still needed to cast an actress to play the fiery Scarlett O’Hara, he announced to the media that he would launch a nationwide search by hiring a hundred talent scouts to scour the country for an unknown female to play the

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