Margaret Mitchell & John Marsh

by Marianne Walker

  In the evenings, after their supper, John would lie in bed next to her and read letters aloud. Some sweet letters, like the one from Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling, gave her “goosebumps,” and she had John read them over and over. Another one of her favorites was from Hervey Allen, whose famous novel Anthony Adverse was knocked out of first place on the New York Times bestseller list by Gone With the Wind. These letters, and there were so many of them, amazed John as well as Peggy, for he wrote Brickell: “It is one of the unbelievable things of these unbelievable days.”

  Because the Brickells were concerned about Peggy’s health, John wrote Herschel, “You have been extraordinarily thoughtful and understanding throughout this whole situation, and I feel that we have gained a real friend.” Writing as if he and Peggy were suffering through a tragedy rather than a literary triumph, he added: “Please don’t worry about us. We have been through some pretty tough situations and we have come through them all so far. We have had plenty of experience with adversity and we’ll come through.”70 Brickell had warned them to prepare for more assaults on their privacy, for he predicted that sales would continue to soar to 750,000 before dropping down. Doubting that the rush would last, John answered:

  In spite of the events that have tumbled one over another in the six weeks that rocked the Marsh world, I still think your estimate of sales of 750,000 copies is extravagant. (Peggy commented that you didn’t offer to bet on it.) When I wrote in my previous letter that I had known for years that Peggy had written a good book, I hope I didn’t give the impression that I had the faintest inkling of what has happened since June 30. I didn’t. My own notion was that the book would have a limited appeal to a select group of readers, and I would have been quite happy if it had sold 5,000. If Peggy were a professional writer, and not an amateur, she could have a steady income for the rest of her life, if we may judge from the rising demand that she go on with the story of Scarlett and Rhett.

  When Peggy wrote the ending of the novel she had no intention of ever writing a sequel nor even of giving it a “Lady or Tiger” ending. She merely thought the story ended where it ended. But as years passed, each new generation of readers begged her to tell if Scarlett ever gets Rhett back or vice versa. Very few novelists ever know what it is like to have a throng of readers thinking that their characters are real people. To thousands of Gone With the Wind fans Scarlett, Rhett, Melanie, Mammy, Prissy, and the others existed in flesh and blood. The demand for their lives to go on was much like the demand Sir Arthur Conan Doyle experienced when he, tired of his character Sherlock Holmes, “killed” Holmes. Doyle’s vast audience stormed the magazine that published the Holmes stories and angrily protested Holmes’s death and demanded his resurrection. Like Doyle, Peggy and John were unprepared for the ongoing and lively interest in the lives of her characters, particularly Rhett and Scarlett.

  Another surprise was the incredible amount of money the book was earning. It was more money than either of them ever dreamed to have in their lifetimes. Other than permanently securing their future, however, the money did not change their lifestyle. John continued with his job at the Power Company, and they remained very conservative. Although she did buy a full-length dark mink coat and a diamond platinum pin, she still shopped for bargain hats and dresses. The only item John bought for himself was a Rolex watch. Although he always wanted a nice house with a large yard, Peggy never wanted one, nor did she want to travel. The financial rewards of the book did not seem as important to them as the emotional ones, as John pointed out in a letter to Frances.

  For the present, I get my chief pleasure out of small things. Hearing people say that they can’t put the book down, after they have started reading it. And that they wished it had been twice as long. I worried so much about it being too long that remarks of that sort give me a bigger kick than reports of sales passing the 200,000 mark. And I do get pleasure in telling Cadillac and Lincoln salesmen, “No, we’re very well satisfied with the car we’ve got. Yes, it’s a Chevrolet—1929 model.” And such small things.71

  It is interesting to know that their first large purchase, after the big money came in, was an automobile for John’s mother. They also paid for the services of a chauffeur to drive Mrs. Marsh wherever and whenever she wished to go for the rest of her life.72

  After nearly ten days of bed rest in the darkened room, Peggy had done much thinking about how drastically her life had changed and was grateful for her success. One afternoon, while her watchdog Bessie was grocery shopping and Miss Baugh was out on an errand, Peggy slipped the bandages off her eyes and wrote to Latham, greeting him for the first time by his first name: (“Have I called you Harold since you invited me to do so?) At any rate, I call you Harold even though I feel exactly as though I had referred to God Almighty familiarly as ‘GA.’” She asked him innocently:

  How did you know six months ago that Gone With the Wind would be a success? You remember when you were last in Atlanta you told me that just this thing would happen and I laughed, of course, thinking you were just being very kind. I do not see how you anticipated the enormous sales which have been so unexpected and so bewildering to me . . . God knows I never expected it go over at all. A sale of five thousand was the height of my expectations. I know whom to thank for my good fortune, and I do thank you from the bottom of my heart.73

  However, within a few days, her attitude toward Latham would change. But that day, she was feeling especially good about herself and about him, crediting him as the chief source of her success. When John came home, he asked her what mischief she had been up to that afternoon. As he stood reading through the mail and scolding her for not keeping the bandages on her eyes, she announced that she had a surprise for him. Turning on a phonograph record, she said she had been practicing a “fan” dance for him. She brought out the beautiful, flamingo-colored feather fan with a hand-painted ivory handle that Norma Brickell had given her during her visit with the Brickells. In her decidedly comic manner, she began fandanc-ing, fluttering the fan around her face, tossing her head haughtily, circling and rubbing up against him in a seductive fashion. John teased Peggy later about her fan dance when he described the performance to Gordon, Francesca, Henry, and Mary Hunter, who staged a reunion in Atlanta in early October for the Kentucky-Georgia Tech football game. What was so notable about that dance, John said, was that it was the first time in a long time that Peggy had gone “into one of her acts” and made him laugh.74 The laughter that once came so easily to them had been conspicuously absent in the last year.

  9

  In July 1936, George Brett, Sr., retired and his son George Brett, Jr., became the president of Macmillan. It was he who responded later in August to John’s letter questioning some of the terms of the movie contract, which had already been signed. In his response, Brett stated emphatically that Macmillan was not and never had been Peggy’s agent; Annie Laurie was her agent. Macmillan had acted only as Peggy’s “broker” in the negotiation stage and Annie Laurie had substituted for them in that capacity in the later stages. Brett pointed out that Peggy was represented by her own attorney at that meeting in New York on July 30; the Macmillan attorneys were representing the Macmillan firm only and were not there to protect her interests. About John’s concern with the foreign copyrights, Brett stunned the Marshes when he informed them that the responsibility of protecting and overseeing the foreign copyrights was not Macmillan’s but Peggy’s, and therefore he was offering to return the foreign rights to Peggy.75

  John was furious with Brett’s response, and with Stephens’s help he drafted another long letter, this one typed on the Mitchell law firm’s stationery. The letter, which bore Stephens’s signature, included quoted passages from Latham’s telegrams and letters proving that Latham had never informed Peggy that Macmillan had hired an agent for her and that Macmillan had employed Annie Laurie without Peggy’s knowledge, much less permission.

  Unable to shrug this business off, Peggy, disabled by her eye condition, dicta
ted a letter to Latham: “I found this [Brett’s letter] most upsetting and distressing. It was especially so, coming as it did when my eyes were in such condition that I could not read or write and I was laid up in bed with my eyes bandaged.” She felt she was in a most embarrassing position because the Selznick company had changed its mind about not needing Peggy’s assistance and had recently requested through Annie Laurie that Peggy come to Hollywood and assist with the filmmaking. “She is not my agent and has never been. . . . I don’t want to have to write her again and tell her she isn’t my agent, but then I don’t want any unauthorized person seeming to be my agent. As you know I was besieged with requests from people wanting to be my agent, Miss Williams among them. I refused them all and would never have had any agent had you not offered the services of Macmillan. I am so very upset and distressed about it.”76

  Latham answered that he was glad she was still writing him so frankly about things on her mind and that he would be disturbed to think that she did not feel entirely free to do so. However, he did not really respond to Peggy’s complaints. Instead, he implied that Peggy was being overly legalistic and petty and was failing to appreciate all of Macmillan’s efforts on her behalf. He pointed out that he could not remember Macmillan ever having had to deal with an author through the author’s attorney, as it had done with Peggy. He described how everyone at Macmillan was wildly enthusiastic about Gone With the Wind and anxious to put the book over and see the author receive recognition. “If I can say so without appearing to brag, I think that we have done a job of publishing for you which could not have been done by any other publisher in America. . . . I cannot express to you the sense of hurt that I saw and felt on the part of my associates when I came in this morning.” He closed by saying that it was probably not proper for him to write her in such a personal way. However, he hoped that his “frank” letter would open the way for a resumption of their old cordial relationship.77

  Disappointed with Latham’s reply, the Marshes felt as if he were sidestepping the fact that Macmillan had failed to provide clear information about Annie Laurie’s role in the movie deal. John and Peggy did not see that the issue of Annie Laurie’s involvement was a rather small point, since she had actually performed a service for both Macmillan and Peggy. They could not let go of the fact that they had been misinformed, and from this point on, John resolved to pay better attention to everything and never to be so trusting again.

  False reports about the price Selznick paid for the film contract appeared in gossip columns everywhere. Some said he paid too little; others said he paid too much. Annie Laurie felt hurt, defensive, and caught in the crossfire between the Marshes and Macmillan. After all, she had gotten for them the highest price ever paid for any book, and she could not understand why they were not all happy and appreciative. She wrote Latham telling him that it was not true that Selznick had since been offered three times the amount he paid for the film rights. Just in case Peggy read such false reports, Annie Laurie wanted him to have copies of letters proving that she had gotten the highest price ever paid for a story. She enclosed copies of letters that she had received from various film companies while she had been trying to sell the film rights.78 She always understood that she was working for the Macmillan Company and not for Margaret Mitchell, and she never made any claims otherwise. All of this furor over Annie Laurie appears to have been a huge, unnecessary misunderstanding that should have been avoided earlier on. Also, it is unfortunate that the Marshes never knew the truth about Annie Laurie’s arrangement with Macmillan, for they surely would have been more appreciative and sympathetic toward her.

  However, their annoyance about the film business paled beside the copyright issue. In order to protect her copyright to Gone With the Wind, Peggy would have to renew the copyright at regular intervals, and by no stretch of his imagination could John see how Peggy could be held responsible for renewing all copyrights according to the various laws governing such matters in all parts of the world.79 He asked Brett how a housewife living in a little apartment in Atlanta could be expected to know how to keep up with the changing copyright laws all over the world. Entreating Brett, he asked,

  Couldn’t we make an agreement that Macmillan will relieve her of the clerical and legal worries involved in this obligation? Peggy is in no position to do this, but Macmillan is. You do such things as a matter of routine. You have your bookkeeping systems to keep track of the time when copyrights should be renewed in this and foreign countries. You have your legal staff who know the intricacies of existing copyright laws and who make it their business to keep up with the revisions of copyright laws in all countries. My understandings from Mr. Stephens Mitchell is that Macmillan has already given its verbal assent on these points, and in view of the fact that Macmillan was Peggy’s agent in negotiating the Selznick contract, it seems obvious that these provisions are agreeable to you. But in order to bring this job to a workmanlike conclusion and also to relieve Peggy’s mind of the worry of vague responsibilities hanging over her, we would appreciate a statement in writing from the Macmillan Company covering these points.80

  Jim Putnam, writing for Brett, answered no; their copyright department was not equipped to manage the protection of Peggy’s international copyrights. Putnam said Macmillan would do whatever it could to assist the Marshes, but it would not assume the responsibility for protecting her copyrights. The Marshes themselves would have to deal with such matters as Selznick’s concern that some other producer could obtain from some foreign country a pirated edition of Gone With the Wind. At this point, the already strained Marsh-Macmillan relationship broke.

  As a courtesy, Putnam had earlier put John in contact with Marion Saunders, an agent handling foreign copyrights. After Macmillan conveyed all foreign translation rights to Peggy, including the right to publish the book serially in foreign languages in other countries, but not in the United States, John sent Stephens to New York to work out an agreement with Saunders. Whatever chances the Marshes may have had to return to a relatively simple, quiet life vanished completely in July 1936 when Peggy signed the film and the foreign copyright agreements.

  On October 9, 1936, three days past his forty-first birthday, John wrote Putnam:

  Your letter of Oct. 6 has been read with much interest by Mrs. Marsh and myself. You and the Macmillan Company are certainly taking a very generous attitude in your offer to give back to Mrs. Marsh the rights for all foreign translations of her book. Just what we will do with them when we get them, I don’t know.81

  What they—John, Peggy, Stephens, and Margaret Baugh—ended up doing was operating from the Marshes’ small apartment a worldwide business specializing in foreign copyrights. Motivated to protect their own interests and self-taught, they became experts in foreign copyright matters.

  CHAPTER

  11

  1936-1937

  REAPING THE WHIRLWIND

  Did I tell you that I already have a title for Peggy’s next book—the story of the young couple who sowed a “Gone With the Wind” and were “Reaping the Whirlwind.”

  —John Marsh to Frances Marsh,

  1 August 1936

  1

  ALTHOUGH PEGGY WAS FRAZZLED AND EXHAUSTED by all the baggage—both good and bad—that went along with her sudden explosion of fame, John initially enjoyed her success, not only because he did not have to carry the burdens that went along with fame but also because he simply refused to concern himself with the kinds of petty worries that inflamed Peggy’s emotions.1 Among these worries were the false and malicious rumors circulated about them. Just as John and Peggy were unprepared for the glorious praise and acclaim, so they were also unprepared for the sinister envy and malice that emerged.

  With all the publicity about selling the film rights, rumors about the Marshes reached a new status. Some rumors made Peggy and John look like eccentrics or unsophisticated southerners—country bumpkins, yelping in a goofy fashion about all the money they were either making or not making. One tale, wh
ich even disturbed her publisher, claimed that she was so countrified that Macmillan had swindled her out of her royalties.2 Some rumors were started by women who impersonated her. “I get pretty damned tired of these people who pass themselves off as me,” she fumed to Herschel Brickell about the dozens of women who were going all over the country posing as Margaret Mitchell. “If I can just catch one and fry her ears in deep fat, it will give me great pleasure…. I wonder why people do this. God knows, it’s no fun really being Margaret Mitchell so what possible fun could there be in pretending to be Margaret Mitchell?”3

  Peggy inadvertently started some of the troublesome rumors herself, although she never admitted that. In all the hundreds of letters that she wrote, in 1936 alone, not just to family and friends but to complete strangers, she mentioned her deteriorating health. She wrote about her weight loss, her disabling eye trouble; she told about having to lie still in a darkened room with her eyes bandaged for twelve hours a day; she described her general state of near exhaustion; she refused to make any kind of public appearance or to accept invitations; she refused interviews; and she refused to write articles or stories for magazines, always saying that she was too ill. As a result, many people jumped to the conclusion that something terrible was happening to her. Some even whispered that she, consumed by her sudden success, had gone stark raving mad. It should have been no surprise to her when she heard that she was terminally ill, or the victim of a debilitating disease that had left her a helpless, blind invalid. Yet, when she heard these rumors she said she got angry enough “to buckle on her six-shooter.”4