Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (21 page)

Stephens Mitchell took seriously the responsibility of protecting his sister's interests and wanted to judge for himself what the movie rights were worth. The following morning, he called on several movie production offices to get a sense of what other deals might be out there. He quickly realized he was in over his head. None of the people he visited knew who he was, and he had difficulty getting their attention. He did not elicit any offers more than fifty thousand dollars. One company said it was absurd to think the rights were worth that much and offered him thirty-five thousand.
⁶⁰

Unsure how to proceed, the Mitchells telephoned home for guidance. Marsh, with the benefit of physical distance, saw things in clear terms: if his wife was not happy with the deal, they should come home. But it was not so simple for the siblings, being in the thick of the discussions. They worried that rejecting the contract would make Macmillan look bad and hurt sales of the book. Also, fifty thousand dollars was a lot of money, more than they ever dreamed possible.
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Stephens Mitchell later described their mind-set: “The panic was on and had hardly let up.”
⁶²

The two returned to the negotiating table and, as Cole had suggested, asked to keep the dramatic and radio rights. When Selznick's representatives countered that she could keep the stage rights, the Atlantans agreed to close the deal despite the problems with the document. The author knew that, if she left New York without signing, the move rights would be a constant source of irritation in the future. She also accepted that the studio did not want her involved with the movie's production and grudgingly had come to see this as a positive: it would be one less problem for her to handle. According to her brother, “She did not want the worries which Hollywood could bring to her. So she would not bother them, and they should not bother her. They had the movie rights; she had the $50,000 less commissions; and we were all happy.”
⁶³
Putting a bright spin on the situation, Marsh wrote that day to Brickell and Granberry: “Peggy went to New York . . . to take the Selznick scalp and has taken it.”
⁶⁴

* To Cole's husband, Mitchell's former deskmate at the
Atlanta Journal
, the author added, “To Allan Taylor, who fought by my side in the major engagements of the younger generation.”

7
That Book About the Wind

C
onsistent with Margaret Mitchell's wishes, Macmillan refused to release the sales price for the movie rights. But it did proclaim with obvious pride that Mitchell had earned the highest amount paid for a book by a first-time author. In the wake of the movie deal announcement,
Gone
With the Wind
became the most talked-about subject in America. According to journalist Frank Luther Mott, the interest reached such a level that anyone who admitted to not having read the book was left out of conversations, missed the point of jokes, and was treated as “an illiterate outsider.” In selfdefense, the uninitiated hurried to the nearest bookstore.
¹

Demand for the book grew frenzied. People clamored for copies of
Gone With the Wind
, although in some cases they struggled to remember its exact title. Bookstore clerks received requests for “Wind in the Night,” “One Windy Night,” “The Wind Blows,” or “that book about the wind.”
²
The early concerns about the three-dollar price were for naught. People who could not afford the book either swamped libraries, where waiting lists stretched for weeks, or pooled their money to buy copies to share. Mitchell's novel also became the fashionable gift du jour. A woman about to embark on a trip to Europe received nine copies before she set sail on an ocean liner.
³
And she was not the only one enjoying her trip with Scarlett and Rhett as company. Macmillan estimated that, on a single day in July, close to one thousand copies had been purchased by or for passengers on transatlantic ships departing from New York.
⁴

Macmillan Canada, likewise, experienced unparalleled demand for
Gone With the Wind
. The company quickly sold out its first order of a thousand copies and rushed to import more sheets. Given that the average book in Canada sold 250 to 350 copies in that era, it was a remarkable achievement. After producing more than seventeen thousand copies of its own edition that summer and fall, Macmillan Canada gave up and began importing copies of the American edition.
⁵

Macmillan felt certain publishing sales records were being broken. Popular wisdom held that the bestselling novel in the United States up to that point was
Anthony Adverse
, by Hervey Allen. Its publisher had received advance orders of fifteen thousand copies and sold up to two thousand copies a day for a total of 235,000 in six months.
⁶
Gone With the Wind
already had more than two hundred thousand copies in print four weeks after its release, and there were no signs of the pace slowing. Macmillan publicly claimed victory, implicitly challenging other publishers to come forth and identify a book that had sold more quickly in the United States. None raised its hand.

Being in uncharted territory, there were no rules for Macmillan to follow on how to manage or sustain this level of intensity. The sales team had to think on its feet and figure things out as it went along. The first order of business was making sure Macmillan had enough books to satisfy the demand. Even though it churned out copies around the clock, the firm could not keep up with the orders. Not willing to risk any going unfulfilled, the firm contracted with an additional printer and bindery to handle the overload.
⁷

Some publishers might have worried that
Gone With the Wind
was close to reaching its saturation point, but Macmillan continued to market the book with verve.
⁸
One stunt of which Alec Blanton's sales team would be proud for years to come was hiring an airplane on Labor Day weekend to fly over beaches from New Jersey to Connecticut, pulling a trailer of sixteen-foot-high kites urging sunbathers to read
Gone With the Wind
. As the publisher turned out each new printing, it issued press releases and print ads announcing the latest astounding figures. The firm also updated the front of the book's dust jacket by adding the
New York Times
quote about the book's readability and a tally line along the bottom—such as “Eight Printings . . . 201,000 Copies”—to track the ever-increasing totals.* On the back of the jacket, Macmillan replaced the list of its other spring novels with enthusiastic reviews for
Gone With the Wind
.

To reach rural consumers not exposed to the major urban newspapers, Macmillan began advertising in popular weekly magazines such as
Time
and a monthly journal issued by the Elks Club, a fraternal organization with chapters all over the country.
⁹
Not only would subscribers see the ads, but so would people flipping through these publications in libraries, waiting rooms, beauty parlors, and barber shops. Macmillan also expanded its reach into the regional newspapers in cities such as Baltimore, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Richmond. The publisher urged local booksellers to keep the book in stock and feature it prominently in window and counter displays. Macmillan promised strong sales would be rewarded with additional advertising dollars; no outlet was too small to benefit from “the golden windfall” of
Gone With the Wind
.
¹⁰

Booksellers in Southern cities needed little encouragement. They jumped on the Mitchell bandwagon, creating eye-catching window displays featuring Confederate flags and memorabilia. They developed promotional gimmicks to bring book buyers into the stores. In Texas, for example, retailers vied for customers by offering live
Gone With the Wind
reviews. Sanger Brothers Department Store in Dallas sponsored a presentation by a recent attendee of Columbia University. A rival store, Titche-Goettinger Company, set a record for local literary events when a woman named Evelyn Oppenheimer spoke about her impressions of
Gone With the Wind
to a standing-room-only crowd. More than two thousand people filled the aisles, stage, and doorways of the store's auditorium. Hundreds more were turned away. The program proved so popular that the store scheduled four encore performances.
¹¹

Northern stores reportedly did not get quite so carried away. One Macmillan representative in the Northeast suggested to Lois Cole that she “get a corner on Stars and Bars bunting” to send around to retailers to perk things up. But even without the frippery, Northern stores had little difficulty finding buyers. Macmillan's reputation and the enthusiastic press reviews were enough to sway even skeptical Yankees. A bookseller in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, reported that a customer browsing a
Gone With the Wind
display commented that she did not know anything about the author, but “Maximillian's” always published good books.
¹²
When Cole heard the tale, she pondered, “Do you think the lady in Lancaster was confusing our august house with the late demented emperor?”
¹³

Sales of Mitchell's book were so remarkable in all sections of the country that John Marsh wondered if
Gone With the Wind
might “prove to be the new industry that will help to pull the nation out of the depression.”
¹⁴
He was not far off, at least regarding the publishing world. The stock market crash of 1929 had devastated the book business. The industry's saving grace had been bestsellers such as
Anthony Adverse
that helped generate traffic in struggling stores. Customers came in to buy a bestseller and often walked away with another book as well. These blockbusters are sometimes referred to as vitamins of the publishing industry. Using that analogy,
Gone With the
Wind
was an extra-strength multivitamin.

Bookstores were not the only ones looking for an energy boost. One side effect of the bestseller phenomenon was that nonbook retailers, such as drugstores and department stores, often used a popular book's success to pull customers into their stores. An old industry yarn tells the story of a flapper looking to buy lipstick who walked into a bookstore and excused herself when she realized that she had made a mistake: “I'm sorry, I thought this was a drugstore, I saw books in the window.”
¹⁵
In the case of
Gone With the
Wind
, a variety of retailers bought vast quantities of the book hoping to lure customers.
Publishers Weekly
reported that book sales at Macy's department store in New York that summer were the highest since 1928. The book buyer at Gimbel's reported that its book business had been going up since June, July was “exceptionally good,” and August was better than any year since 1928. She predicted steady book sales that fall and a merry Christmas for Gimbel's.
¹⁶

As
Gone With the Wind
's popularity continued to build steam that fall, department stores and drugstores began slashing the price on Mitchell's novel. They did not care if they made a profit on the book as long as they could use the title to draw customers into their establishments. In October, one of Mitchell's roommates from her Smith College days, Ginny Morris, wrote saying that Macy's was in the midst of “an exciting price war” over the book. The store kept changing the price every few hours to make sure it could advertise the best deal in New York. She reported the markdown had gone as low as eighty-nine cents, and gamblers were issuing wagers on what the price would be at any given hour as a way to relieve the monotony of wagering on “football pools and election odds.”
¹⁷
Reports circulated in the press that copies were being sold for as low as sixty-nine cents in some cities.
¹⁸

The price cutting became so aggressive that it posed a serious problem for traditional book retailers who could not afford to be so liberal with their pricing. One bookseller in North Carolina complained to
Publishers Weekly
that
Gone With the Wind
had sold well for her until a nearby drugstore priced the book at $1.98. She had fought all through the Depression to maintain high standards in her inventory, never carrying cheap books or office supplies to defray her losses. Now, she wondered, whether she should offer specials on vegetable shortening and coffee to get people in the door.
¹⁹
Mom-and-pop bookstores demanded action from Macmillan, insisting that the firm force its vendors to accept a minimum price below which the book could not be sold.

Although sympathetic to their plight, Macmillan did not have much incentive to take action. The price wars were a much-followed story in the media, all to the greater good of bringing publicity to the book. In any event, there was not much the company could do to prevent price cutting given that most states allowed the practice. Some had enacted anti-pricecutting laws in recent years, but in many instances, the statutes had been challenged on constitutional grounds. Litigation was pending, and until those cases were resolved, Macmillan's hands were tied. The company tried to assuage complaints by running an announcement in
Publishers Weekly
asserting that the situation was temporary and should not have an undue effect on traditional booksellers. Macmillan put a bright spin on things, claiming most people preferred to purchase books at full price from a reputable bookstore, where they could have the volumes wrapped and shipped as presents, a service many discount retailers did not provide.
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