Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (44 page)

* McDaniel would have been allowed to appear on the stage of Loew's Grand Theatre as a performer but could not sit in the audience or use the restrooms. Mitchell's longtime housekeeper, Bessie Jordan, was unable to see the film until it opened at a “colored” theater in Atlanta in late April 1940.

13
Toting the Weary Load

E
ven after all the celebrities left town that weekend, the excitement was not quite over for the Marshes. The Monday after the premiere, as they prepared to leave on a much-needed vacation, a fire broke out in their apartment building. John Marsh rushed to protect the
Gone With the Wind
business papers, which were the first things he carried out of the building with the help of Margaret Baugh and Bessie Jordan. The blaze was extinguished just before reaching their unit, getting close enough to blister the paint on the baseboards. The couple lost some of their personal effects that had been stored in the basement of the building, but the
GWTW
documents were safe. “If I had lost the four-year record of my work as Peggy's business manager, it would have been catastrophic,” Marsh said.
¹

Four days after the Atlanta premiere,
Gone With the Wind
opened in New York at two Broadway theaters, with gala festivities broadcast live on a newfangled product called television. Reviews of the film were glowing, and David O. Selznick returned home in triumph for a star-studded Los Angeles premiere on December 28, 1939, just under the wire for consideration for that year's Academy Awards. In January 1940, the film began opening in major cities nationwide, and
Gone With the Wind
became the first movie ever to gross one million dollars in a single week. Unfortunately for Margaret Mitchell, she did not earn a penny of this money. As was standard at the time, she had sold the movie rights to Selznick for a flat fee and, therefore, was not entitled to a percentage of the box-office proceeds. But that is not to say she did not profit from the movie's success. In the week after the film opened in Atlanta, sales of licensed
GWTW
products totaled $636,250. And the earnings climbed as the film's release expanded.
²
Thanks to her agreement with Loew's, Mitchell earned a small percentage of every dollar made on the merchandising.

The motion picture edition was also a hit, and as George Brett predicted, it proved impossible to keep the cat in the bag. Word about the edition's popularity spread, and booksellers across the United States wanted copies to sell right away, expressing little concern for Selznick's desire that the volume not be sold across the country in advance of the movie. When Macmillan refused to fill the orders, many bookstores purchased copies from retailers and distributors in cities where the movie was already playing. A Chicago wholesaler reported to Macmillan that the book was on sale throughout the Midwest although the movie had not yet reached there.

Brett approached Selznick and pleaded for an immediate nationwide distribution of the edition. Selznick was amenable but at a price. Under the terms of the original deal, he had let Macmillan use the movie stills without extracting a royalty; Selznick now wanted a five-cents-per-copy share of the profits.
³
Brett thought this ridiculous. As he fumed to Marsh, Selznick seemed to be forgetting that Mitchell and Macmillan were the ones who made the movie possible in the first place.
⁴
The staggered release had caused so much trouble and expense that Brett refused to give a cent to Selznick.
⁵
Faced with Brett's recalcitrance, the producer dropped the royalty demand and offered a compromise. He recognized that the motion picture edition offered valuable advertising for the film and proposed allowing Macmillan to distribute the books two weeks before the movie's release in each city. Brett reluctantly accepted.

With the expanded distribution, the first printing sold out quickly, and the publisher ordered a second run of 350,000. This printing, perhaps reflecting reader concerns that the 391-page book had been shortened, added a line to the cover proclaiming, “Complete and Unabridged.” That run sold out as well, and in February, Macmillan optimistically went back to press with a third printing of 350,000 copies. The book climbed to the top of
Publishers Weekly
's reprint bestseller list, where it stayed for several months.
⁶

In March, Brett boasted to Mitchell of having supplied the public with more than seven hundred thousand additional copies of her remarkable novel: “What a history it is writing in the annals of American publishing!”
⁷
Lois Cole concurred that history was in the making. Macmillan had a document retention policy that called for the editorial department's records to be destroyed after seven years, and Cole wondered if an exception should be made in the case of
Gone With the Wind
. She suggested to Latham that Macmillan's correspondence relating to Mitchell's book be segregated so there was no risk of it being discarded. She predicted that, in the coming decades, the letters would prove interesting and valuable and that “perhaps, our descendants might be much annoyed at our departed spirits for having destroyed [them].”
⁸
Latham apparently agreed. The files were retained and later were donated to the New York Public Library, where most remain to this day.

When the Marshes returned from their postpremiere vacation, they found more than a thousand pieces of fan mail had arrived in their two-week absence.
⁹
Mitchell, with Baugh's help, worked through the pile one by one. To some correspondents seeking a memento of the premiere, they sent pieces of fabric trimmed from the hem of a velvet coat Mitchell had worn that special evening.
¹⁰
An elderly woman in Georgia who had the foresight to ask for a souvenir before the premiere received special attention. She had sent a piece of green taffeta for Mitchell to carry in her purse that night. Mitchell obliged and asked Baugh to return the fabric as requested, along with a camellia from the corsage the author wore to the premiere.
¹¹

Mitchell's ban on book signing remained in place. The author declined all requests to sign copies of the motion picture edition, even saying no when Kay Brown wrote asking for one on Selznick's behalf.
¹²
The author struggled with denying people such a simple favor when they seemed so interested in her work and, in some cases, offered small concessions. When Vivien Leigh asked Mitchell to sign a copy of the commemorative DavisonPaxon edition the author had sent to the actress's Atlanta hotel room as a gift, Mitchell instead sent Leigh a small sheet of paper on which she had written a few lines of a poem and her signature. Presumably, the author intended “Scarlett” to paste the memento inside her copy of the book.
¹³

In the early days of 1940, the Marshes managed to keep a low profile. In mid-January, Mitchell had abdominal surgery that she had been putting off, and then Marsh, who was battling a persistent fever, found himself in the hospital as well. But, by the end of February, Mitchell was propelled back into the spotlight. At the Academy Awards ceremony on the 29th,
Gone With the Wind
won eight of the thirteen awards for which it had been nominated, including the Best Actress Oscar for Leigh, the Best Supporting Actress award for Hattie McDaniel—the first Academy Award ever won by an African American—and the Best Picture Oscar for Selznick. Two days later, the producer wired Mitchell that he wanted her to have his gold statuette and planned to send it to her as soon as he could have it engraved with an appropriate inscription. She appreciated the gesture but knew allowing him to give her such a gift would cause a stir in the press and forever link her name with Selznick's honor. “You are amazingly generous in offering to send me the trophy but I could not think of accepting it,” Mitchell responded. “The award was not for novel-writing but for movie making so the trophy's proper place is with you.”
¹⁴
*

Mitchell's efforts to distance herself from the Oscar were foiled when word leaked about Selznick's offer, and the story circulated like wildfire. The truth got lost along the way, and the press reported that Selznick wanted to give her the trophy and a cash bonus—or, as famed radio commentator and gossip columnist Walter Winchell called it, “a bunch of lettuce.” When rumors circulated that Selznick had sent her fifty thousand dollars, Mitchell was incensed. She found herself inundated with letters from people congratulating her on the windfall and offering suggestions for how to use the money. She worried that the Bureau of Internal Revenue would believe the story and start asking questions about her tax returns.

Matters escalated when another false story sprang up purporting that, back in 1936, Mitchell had received a higher offer for the movie rights from another producer but had rejected it, preferring to have Selznick tell her story. Now she was concerned Selznick might think she started the rumor and was “encouraging the newspaper furor” in an effort to guilt him into paying her a bonus. This struck a nerve with the Marshes, who were still sensitive about the movie deal and the speculation that she had been foolish to sell so early and for so little. Although they maintained they were happy with the selling price and had been lucky to get it, the Marshes must have had twinges of regret now that the movie was raking in millions and she was not entitled to any of the profits. Mitchell never let on that she was anything less than pleased with the deal, and the idea Selznick might suspect her of hinting around for more money mortified her.

Mitchell denied the rumors and insisted she had nothing to do with starting them. When the producer failed to issue similar denials, the Marshes wondered if the studio had been orchestrating the press coverage all along as a publicity stunt. The couple was not pleased and sent Selznick a telegram letting him know it. The producer went through the roof at the accusation. He responded with a strongly worded five-page telegram denying that he had started the rumors and detailing the extraordinary efforts he had gone to over the previous years to protect Mitchell's privacy; he suggested she develop a thicker skin. Chastened, Marsh replied with an eight-page letter, ensuring Selznick they were not challenging him personally but rather the studio's publicity team. As often seemed to be the case, Marsh's bark was worse than his bite. He ended the letter assuring Selznick that they still held him in high esteem and hoped they could rebuild the “mutual understanding between us.”
¹⁵
The relationship was back on an even keel—for now.

As had happened with the book's original release, the movie's success brought out opportunists looking to capitalize on Scarlett and Rhett's popularity. A handful of speculators found an easy target in the bargain-priced motion picture edition. They bought bulk quantities of the paperbacks and made a quick profit by rebinding them in hardback and reselling them at a marked-up price. The books had all the appearances of a legitimate edition—the clever culprits even cut the images from the discarded paper covers and glued them onto the new cloth-covered boards. The only sign that something was amiss was that Macmillan's name did not appear on the cover of the volumes.