336 “breastwork situation”: Behlmer, Memo from David O. Selznick; also Selznick Archive. Why Selznick thought that day of Alice Faye remains a mystery for the ages. As Faye herself once sang, “You’ll never know.”
337 “Footage wasted”: Sidney Howard to his wife, April 5, 1939, Sidney Howard Papers, University of California, Berkeley.
337 “what the word ‘tired’ means”: Letter to Mrs. Howard, April 18, 1939, Howard Papers.
337 “Remember, this is a hot summer day”: Hall, “On the Sets.”
337 “If and when you get”: Selznick Archive.
338 “Whatever I do”: Kobe to Edward Hartman.
338 “is so near the breaking point”: Ibid.
338 “Vic told me”: Myrick, White Columns in Hollywood.
339 “was so real”: Alexander’s letter is in Vickers, Vivien Leigh.
339 Rhett’s mourning of Melanie: Haver, David O. Selznick’s Hollywood. Haver puts equal emphasis on Gable’s “intransigence” and Leigh’s rebelliousness as direct motivations for Fleming’s walkout. His rendering of the event derives partly from Mahin’s eyewitness account collected in McGilligan’s interview book Backstory, though Haver provides a more plausible description of the shooting day (Mahin has Gable balking at saying, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”).
340 “Confusion redoubled”: Letter to Mrs. Howard, April 27, 1939, Howard Papers.
340 “takes things a little less hard”: Graham, College of One.
340 “What do you take me for, a chump?”: Crowther’s notes, Crowther Papers. In The Lion’s Share, Crowther changed that to “What do you think I am, a chump?” In 1961, speaking to Charles Samuels, Selznick—ever the showman—either recovered some memory or enhanced what Fleming said: “Do you think I’m a damn fool, David? This picture is going to be the biggest white elephant of all time.” Sometimes, that quotation is distorted to begin with “Don’t be a damn fool, David.”
340 “feigned”: Lambert, GWTW.
341 suspected Fleming of faking his illness: Rabwin, Yes, Mr. Selznick.
341 “the Wood unit”: Selznick Archive.
341 But Gable didn’t warm to Wood: The most accurate estimate of Wood’s contribution is Lambert’s in GWTW—15 percent of the completed film—and Lambert’s outline of Wood’s participation suggests how crucial Fleming’s presence was to Gable’s performance. For example, Wood shot “Scarlett going to Atlanta in search of Rhett, excluding the scene with Rhett,” and “the first half (up to Rhett’s entrance) of the sequence in which Scarlett, Melanie and the others wait for Ashley and Kennedy to return from the raid on Shanty Town.”
341 The producer’s memos: Selznick Archive.
341 “direct everything”: Ibid.
341 congratulating her: Hall, “On the Sets.”
342 “was amazed at the difference”: Canutt, Stunt Man.
342 “got a warm greeting”: Bakewell, Hollywood Be Thy Name.
343 “All the way back to town”: Robyns, Light of a Star.
344 “Clark crept to his bungalow”: Hall, “On the Sets.”
344 “lining the tracks”: Mitchell, Gone With the Wind.
344 “Get off those dummies,” “Slower, dear”: Los Angeles Times (witnessed by Philip Scheuer), May 28, 1939.
344 “The camera swings”: Harrison Carroll column, June 13, 1939.
344 “Is her name really Fiddle-de-dee?”: Los Angeles Times, Jan. 19, 1986.
344 “no desire to produce”: Behlmer, Memo from David O. Selznick.
345 “Massa’s in de Cole, Cole Ground”: Annie Kurtz, Atlanta Constitution, May 14, 1939. Kurtz, the wife of the technical adviser Wilbur Kurtz, was, like Hall and Myrick, an on-set diarist; her reporting emphasized the Southern connections of cast and crew, such as the Southern Negro cook at the Gable household.
345 “confused ideological view”: Cripps, Slow Fade to Black.
345 “Had anybody else”: Myrick, White Columns in Hollywood.
345 “I hate listening”: Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 1988.
346 “I didn’t want to eat the watermelon”: The New York Times, Jan. 29, 1989.
346 “Everyone was wonderful”: Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 1988.
346 “better to earn $1,250”: Different versions of McDaniel’s remarks have been written over the years; this one, with dollar figures attached, is what Butterfly McQueen told Greg Giese in 1979.
346 “I never thought”: Keyes, Scarlett O’Hara’s Younger Sister.
346 “quit behaving like a temperamental actor”: Canutt, Stunt Man.
347 superbly caring in his direction of children: Patrick Curtis, who played the newborn Beau, was the baby of Daniel Curtis, the comptroller of Republic Pictures. His mother, Helen, was a friend of Cukor’s—that’s how she knew about the role. His father was a motorcyclist like Fleming—and that may be why he got the part and kept it, he says, jokingly. He’s on-screen “for about as little time as anyone can be in the movies. I’m on there for those few seconds in which Olivia de Havilland is holding me, and she’s saying, ‘Ashley is coming home!’ ” But Sam Wood was the one who directed his scene.
348 memos flew: Selznick Archive.
348 “You do whatever these Jews want”: Haver, David O. Selznick’s Hollywood.
348 anti-Semitic: An Oral History with Sam Jaffe. Interviewed by Barbara Hall. Beverly Hills, Calif: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 1992. Margaret Herrick Library.
349 his “damn”: Coghlan, They Still Call Me Junior.
349 “essential and required”: Gone With the Wind file, Production Code Administration Collection, Margaret Herrick Library.
350 “selfish egotism”: Motion Picture, Feb. 1940, quoted in Walker, Vivien.
350 “I never liked Scarlett”: Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1968.
350 “At least there is some doubt”: Macdonald, Dwight Macdonald on Movies.
350 “to detract from the brilliant job”: Behlmer, Memo from David O. Selznick.
351 “Doug has taken his last leap”: Los Angeles Times, Dec. 13, 1939.
351 “Fairbanks was outstandingly”: Los Angeles Times, Dec. 14, 1939.
352 “The stars of today are lazy”: Ed Sullivan column, Dec. 14, 1939.
352 “Can you smell the wisteria?”: Herb Bridges, Gone With the Wind: The Three-Day Premiere in Atlanta, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1999.
352 “C’mon chillun—let’s dance,” “as a Southerner”: From the recording of the NBC broadcast, Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress.
352 “The Gone With the Wind festivities”: Adair also recorded that his daughter Roline attended the costume ball with one Jimmie Newton, who “had on an old Confederate uniform he bought at a rummage sale on Decatur Street.”
354 “pandemonium broke loose”: Los Angeles Evening Herald (and other papers), Dec. 29, 1939.
354 the industry’s night of nights: It also was the first time Bob Hope played master of ceremonies on Oscar night. “I think it’s a fine thing, this benefit for David Selznick,” he cracked as Gone With the Wind neared the end of its awards sweep. It also was the night Hope first trotted out a joke he would recycle in years ahead: “But I like it here in Hollywood. In fact, Hollywood is the only place you can let your hair down—and then put it back in the box.”
354 “I wish you’d call Victor”: Selznick Archive.
23 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
356 yet he proposed: Simmonds, John Steinbeck.
357 spoke of taking court action: Benson, Short Novels of John Steinbeck.
357 first long-term contract: MGM’s legal files demonstrate the studio’s determination to sign him to an exclusive deal. Mannix proposed one for three years in October 1935 and another for seven years in October 1938 and got nowhere. The contracts department made roughly a dozen requests for Fleming to sign an agreement. Fleming finally agreed to a five-year contract drafted November 13, 1939, to start Jan. 1, 1940, with an expiration date of December 31, 1944. The No
v. 13 contract dropped the morality and insurance clauses and enabled him to direct radio or theater not connected to MGM.
357 “putting up in tourist camps”: Hedda Hopper column, July 11, 1940.
357 “We should prepare immediately”: Mannix to Fleming, Aug. 8, 1940, MGM legal files.
358 “I like directing women, too”: Sheilah Graham column, Jan. 18, 1940.
358 His meticulously publicized romances: Bowman was a busy man-about-town in the 1930s. In print, he also was linked to Joy Hodges (in 1938, she announced she was going to marry him), the Broadway actress Virginia Peine (Lady in the Dark), the ballerina Irina Baronova, the ice-skater Sonja Henie (who reportedly advised him to get fitted for a toupee), and Wendy Barrie, with whom Bowman had a lengthy affair.
359 “looked as if”: Garnett, Light Your Torches and Pull Up Your Tights.
359 hex on Bessie’s private life: The story of her grandmother’s death was in the Charleston Post and Courier, Nov. 10, 1912. The fireplace accident is a family story. Her first husband, Dr. Thomas T. Fauntleroy of Staunton, Virginia, was a young dentist from one of the area’s most prominent families. Her second husband, Luther Lee Bowman, also was from a Staunton family who owned a department store and hotel. Luther Bowman, who was active in harness racing, started a local department store himself in 1912 before moving Bessie and his sons to Cincinnati in 1914 to start the brewery. He died in the mid-1920s. Bessie Clyde died in 1967, age eighty-four.
359 when it failed: Cincinnati Enquirer, May 10, 1916.
359 the Bowman hex: It would continue with Lee. He died on Christmas Day 1979, just before his sixty-fifth birthday. While cleaning up his kitchen at his home in Brentwood, California, late on Christmas Eve, he fell backward into a glass door. A shard pierced an artery in his back, and he bled to death. His family, however, announced that he had died of a heart attack.
360 “Don’t do that”: King Vidor recorded interview, June 17, 1971, Department of Special Collections, UCLA Library.
360 “fly a first-line American director”: The New York Times, March 11, 1940.
360 planned a London production: The New York Times, May 13, 1940.
362 “loved this girl”: Bergman and Burgess, My Story.
363 “Although I’d known”: Ibid.
363 “that role is so deep”: Turner, Lana.
364 “Toland did such wonderful things”: Selznick to Fleming and Ruttenberg, Jan. 22, 1941, Selznick Archive.
364 “He got things out of me”: Times (London), Jan. 13, 1971.
364 In Mamoulian’s version: Mamoulian’s script has his penciled-in striptease for Miriam Hopkins. Rouben Mamoulian Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
365 “most mornings to perfect her accent”: Saville, Evergreen.
366 “You know, I’m scared of my part, too”: Ingrid Bergman, “My Favorite Film,” National Enquirer, Feb. 17, 1974.
367 “Mr. Mayer thought”: Davidson, Spencer Tracy.
367 “I even suggested”: Chicago Tribune, Feb. 22, 1941.
367 “hydizations”: Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, ed. Fredson Bowers (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980). Nabokov told his students to “ignore the fact that ham actors under the direction of pork packers have acted in a parody of the book, which parody was then photographed on a film and showed in places called theatres; it seems to me that to call a moviehouse a theatre is the same as to call an undertaker a mortician.” But even Nabokov recognized the weakness of the author’s portrayal of Jekyll’s whispered-about pleasures and Hyde’s “monstrous exaggerations” of them—and that weakness is one reason all the major movie versions, heretical though it may sound, are dramatically far sturdier than the more poetic story.
368 “I’ve got an idea”: Kress told this story a number of times. This version is in Lobrutto, Selected Takes.
369 “Victor was not only well informed”: Saville, Evergreen.
370 “Robert Louis Stevenson”: Ibid.
370 “these two base passions”: Falzon, Philosophy Goes to the Movies.
370 “delete all scenes,” “unduly exposed breasts”: Breen to Mayer, June 3, 1941, Production Code Administration Files, Margaret Herrick Library.
370 “If you could see me now”: Mamoulian added the first “Free” in this: “Free, free at last! Free to dare and to do! (Then, with a sudden change of mood) Mad, Twaddle, eh, Lanyon? Eh, Carew? Hypocrites! Deniers of life! (He mimics Carew) You must wait, my dear fellow. Wait! Slaves! Slaves! If you could see me now, what would you think, eh?” Mamoulian’s note to himself for March’s appearance after his transformation is written in Russian: “Shy and frightened on the floor,” then Hyde “glancing back” at the “change of room.” (Translation by Olga Golosinskaya, Library of Congress.)
371 “Wh-which one”: Kanin, Remembering Mr. Maugham.
372 “to race up the stairs,” “Big and strong”: Bergman and Burgess, My Story.
372 “To double Tracy”: Mank, Hollywood Cauldron.
372 “differences of opinion”: Lion’s Roar, Jan. 1944.
372 “I was in a happy mood”: Turner, Lana.
373 “I just couldn’t do it”: Bergman and Burgess, My Story.
373 “Fleming was very mean to me”: Bergman, “My Favorite Film.”
373 “Shall I ever be happier”: Bergman and Burgess, My Story.
374 “enormously exciting”: Selznick to Fleming, March 6, 1941, Selznick Archive.
374 “By the time the film was over”: Bergman and Burgess, My Story.
374 “I am certainly only human enough”: Night letter, Saville to Fleming, sent to Meadowlark Ranch, also retyped and sent by messenger to 1050 Moraga Drive, June 26, 1941. MGM Collection, USC Cinema and Television Library.
374 “To tell the truth”: Saville, Evergreen.
24 The Yearling That Wasn’t
375 “I got them to buy it”: McGilligan, Backstory. Mahin’s story of locking horns with Sidney Franklin is one of the highlights of this interview, and, indeed, the whole anthology.
376 “By the time The Yearling”: Fleming to Rawlings, Feb. 9, 1940, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Papers, University of Florida, Gainesville.
377 “It seems every other kid”: Grady, Irish Peacock.
377 “skinny and weak-looking”: Eckman eventually grew to a height of six feet and enjoys perfect health.
378 “2 sick fawns in crate”: Marchant to Charles J. Chic, June 16, 1940. MGM legal files.
378 “All fawn arrived”: Marchant to Richard Gerstell, June 19, 1940. MGM legal files.
378 “Central Florida had become”: Worsley, From Oz to E.T.
379 Sidney Franklin sent his brother: Franklin’s account of the filming is in his unpublished memoir, “We Laughed and We Cried.”
379 “He wanted more finesse”: Clark to George Lofgren, May 13, 1941. MGM legal files.
380 “many a smart Hollywood station wagon”: The New York Times, May 25, 1941. MGM legal files.
381 “he was goddamned”: Marquand’s biographer Millicent Bell (Marquand: An American Life) wrote that he told a colorful version of The Yearling debacle in a speech he gave that December, quoting Tracy excoriating Eckman, the heat and the corniness of it all. Anne Revere later told Selden West, “I would be the first to say I was not ready [to play Ma Baxter in the movie], but I was not the cause of this debacle.”
381 “JUST SAT DOWN”: Hay, MGM.
381 “nervous, hen-pecking manner”: Weddle, “If They Move . . . Kill ’Em!”
381 “made a lot of trouble”: Rawlings to Bee McNeil, June 24, 1941, Rawlings Papers.
382 “When the boys get home”: Lawrence to Rawlings, May 22, 1941, Rawlings Papers.
382 “We didn’t agree”: Louella Parsons column, May 29, 1941.
382 “Fleming doesn’t like producers”: The New York Times, June 8, 1941.
382 “I was only on the set twice”: Rawlings to Bee McNeil, June 24, 1941, Rawlings Papers.
383 “How can I mak
e”: Kazan, Life.
383 “What ails the works”: Mitchell to Rawlings, June 27, 1941, Rawlings Papers.
383 “Victor Fleming, one of the greatest”: Interview in Focus on Film (Winter 1975).
384 “Our minds are not”: Lion’s Roar, Jan. 1944.
25 Bonhomie in Bel-Air and Tortilla Flat
385 shot a letter: Aug. 27, 1941. Having finally persuaded Fleming to sign a long-term deal with the studio, MGM’s contracts department wasn’t going to tolerate any contrary publicity about the director’s independence or availability: “We desire to notify you that Mr. Fleming is under contract to us under the provisions of which contract we are entitled to his exclusive services during the term thereof, which is not scheduled to expire prior to . . . several years from this date. This letter is written to advise you that we are insisting and will insist upon the full protection of our rights under said contract.” MGM legal files.
Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master (Screen Classics) Page 72