David O. Selznick
| David O. Selznick | |
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 David O. Selznick |
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| Born | David Selznick May 10, 1902 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
| Died | June 22, 1965 (aged 63) Hollywood, Los Angeles, California |
| Spouse | Irene Mayer Selznick (1930–1948) Jennifer Jones (1949–1965) |
David O. Selznick, born David Selznick (May 10, 1902 – June 22, 1965), was an American film producer. He is best known for producing Gone with the Wind (1939) which earned him an Oscar for Best Picture.
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Early years
Selznick was born to a Jewish family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of silent movie distributor Lewis J. Selznick and Florence A. (Sachs) Selznick. Selznick added the "O" to his name later on a whim.[1]
He studied at Columbia University and worked as an apprentice for his father until the bankruptcy of his father in 1923. In 1926, Selznick moved to Hollywood, and with the help of his father's connections, got a job as an assistant story editor at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He left MGM for Paramount Pictures in 1928, where he worked until 1931, when he joined RKO as Head of Production. His years at RKO were fruitful, and he worked on many films, including A Bill of Divorcement (1932), What Price Hollywood? (1932), Rockabye (1932), Our Betters (1933), and King Kong (1933). While at RKO, he also gave George Cukor his directing break. In 1933 he returned to MGM to establish a second prestige production unit, parallel to that of Irving Thalberg, who was in poor health. His unit's output included Dinner at Eight (1933), David Copperfield (1935), Anna Karenina (1935) and A Tale of Two Cities (1935).
Selznick International Pictures
Despite his successes at MGM, Paramount Pictures, and RKO Pictures, Selznick longed to be an independent producer with his own studio. In 1935 he realized that goal by forming Selznick International Pictures and distributing his films through United Artists. His successes continued with classics such as The Garden of Allah (1936), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), A Star Is Born (1937), Nothing Sacred (1937), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), The Young in Heart (1938), Made for Each Other (1939), Intermezzo (1939) and Gone with the Wind (1939), which remains one of the all-time highest grossing films (adjusted for inflation). It also won seven additional Oscars and two special awards. Selznick also won the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award that same year.
In 1940, he produced his second Best Picture Oscar winner in a row, Rebecca, the first Hollywood production for British director Alfred Hitchcock. Selznick had brought Hitchcock over from England, launching the director's American career. Rebecca was Hitchcock's only film to win Best Picture.
Later productions
After Rebecca, Selznick closed Selznick International Pictures and took some time off. His business activities included the loan of his contracted artists to other studios, including Alfred Hitchcock, Ingrid Bergman, Vivien Leigh and Joan Fontaine. He also developed film projects and sold the packages to other producers. Among the movies that he developed but then sold were almost all of Hitchcock's films through to 1947, except for two that he released through Selznick International Pictures or Selznick Releasing Organization, Spellbound and The Paradine Case. In 1944 he returned to producing pictures with the huge success Since You Went Away, which he wrote. He followed that with Spellbound (1945), as well as Portrait of Jennie (1948), a vehicle for Jennifer Jones. In 1949, he co-produced the Carol Reed picture The Third Man with Alexander Korda.
Gone with the Wind overshadowed the rest of Selznick's career. The closest he came to matching it was with Duel in the Sun (1946) featuring future wife Jennifer Jones in the role of the primary character Pearl. With a huge budget, the film is known for causing moral upheaval because of the then risqué script written by Selznick. And though it was a troublesome shoot with a number of directors, the film would turn out to be a major success. The film was the second highest grossing film of 1947 and turned out to be the first movie that Martin Scorsese would see, inspiring the director's career.
"I stopped making films in 1948 because I was tired", Selznick later wrote. "I had been producing, at the time, for twenty years . . . . Additionally it was crystal clear that the motion-picture business was in for a terrible beating from television and other new forms of entertainment, and I thought it a good time to take stock and to study objectively the obviously changing public tastes . . . . Certainly I had no intention of staying away from production for nine years."[2] Selznick spent most of the 1950s nurturing the career of his second wife, Jennifer Jones. His last film, the big budget production A Farewell to Arms (1957) starring Jones and Rock Hudson, was ill received. But in 1954, he ventured into television, producing a two hour extravaganza called Light's Diamond Jubilee, which, in true Selznick fashion, made TV history by being telecast simultaneously on all four TV networks: CBS, NBC, ABC, and DuMont.
Personal life
Selznick married Irene Gladys Mayer, daughter of MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer, in 1930. They separated in 1945 and divorced in 1948.[3] They had two sons, Daniel Selznick and Jeffrey Selznick. He became interested in actress Jennifer Jones, who was then married to actor Robert Walker. They married in 1949. They had one daughter, Mary Jennifer Selznick, who committed suicide in 1976.
Selznick died in 1965 following several heart attacks, and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. Until his death in 1944, Myron Selznick, Selznick's brother, was one of the most powerful agents in Hollywood.
Legacy
Selznick had a keen instinct for new talent and brought Fred Astaire, Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Vivien Leigh, Louis Jourdan, and Alfred Hitchcock into the American film industry.
One example of his tendency to meddle is revealed in the book Memo From David O. Selznick, concerning the 1940 Hitchcock film Rebecca. Reading the screenplay submitted for his approval, Selznick was shocked to discover that director Alfred Hitchcock had allowed Daphne du Maurier's original novel to be changed so that it was virtually unrecognizable, even to the point of introducing unnecessarily comic scenes not in the book. The furious Selznick wrote Hitchcock a blistering memo, and forced Hitchcock to remain faithful to the novel. However, Hitchcock and the other screenplay writers rewrote the script in a way so Selznick would struggle when it was time to edit the film. Alfred Hitchcock's later film Spellbound was edited on Selznick's insistence, and the director grew resentful of his nature. Selznick also battled with Carol Reed during the production of The Third Man and re-edited the film for its American release. Perhaps the best known example of his interference was during the production of Powell and Pressburger's Gone to Earth starring his wife Jennifer Jones. After production, Selznick disliked the film and removed almost an entire third of it for its American release, under the title The Wild Heart with new material directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Selznick lost a court case with Powell & Pressburger to control all versions of the film but he retained control of the American release so he proceeded to cut and change various sections back in Hollywood.
Selznick may not have invented the "casting couch" but he tried to seduce every starlet that attracted him. He also used amphetamines constantly and smoked five packs of cigarettes a day. His incessant meddling in films which drove up their cost enormously may have been the result of the former habit (David Thomson Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick).
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, David O. Selznick has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7000 Hollywood Blvd., in front of the historic Hollywood Roosevelt hotel.
Film library
After Selznick's death, his estate sold the rights to a majority of his post-1935 films to ABC (now part of The Walt Disney Company), although MGM bought in 1944 the rights to Gone with the Wind and, at some point, the 1937 version of The Prisoner of Zenda for its 1952 remake (all today part of the Turner Entertainment library owned by Time Warner), and 20th Century Fox still holds rights to the remake of A Farewell to Arms.
Academy Awards and nominations
| Year | Award | Result | Film |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1934 | Outstanding Production | Nominated | Viva Villa! |
| 1935 | Outstanding Production | Nominated | David Copperfield |
| 1936 | Outstanding Production | Nominated | A Tale of Two Cities |
| 1937 | Outstanding Production | Nominated | A Star Is Born |
| 1939 | Outstanding Production | Won | Gone with the Wind |
| 1938 | Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award | Nominated | |
| 1939 | Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award | Won | |
| 1940 | Outstanding Production | Won | Rebecca |
| 1944 | Best Motion Picture | Nominated | Since You Went Away |
| 1945 | Best Motion Picture | Nominated | Spellbound |
See also
- Selznick International Pictures
References
- Thomson, David. Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick. New York: Knopf, 1992. ISBN 0-394-56833-8
Further reading
- Selznick, David O. (2000 reprint) [original publication 1972 by Viking Press]. Behlmer, Rudy. ed. Memo from David O. Selznick. New York: Modern Library. ISBN 0-375-75531-4. (Free preview at Amazon.com)
External links
- David O. Selznick at the Internet Movie Database
- David O. Selznick at Allmovie
- David O. Selznick at the TCM Movie Database
- David O. Selznick at Find a Grave
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