Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (45 page)

When word got out about the ploy, Macmillan looked imprudent for having priced its book so low. The publisher also faced a problem with Selznick. The producer had granted Macmillan the exclusive right to distribute the movie images in the motion picture edition. The unnamed third parties had no legal authority to distribute those photographs. The publisher failed to pinpoint any law prohibiting the rebinding but took an aggressive stance and began sending threatening telegrams to anyone it thought might be involved. On February 24, 1940, Macmillan took out a full-page advertisement in
Publishers Weekly
putting the trade on notice that, while individuals were free to rebind their personal copies, the company felt mass rebindings for resale were a violation of its rights. The publisher announced it would do everything within its power to prevent further tampering with the motion picture edition.
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The hardball routine worked. Three weeks later, a small article in the trade journal reported that the responsible parties had accepted Macmillan's claims and had withdrawn the unauthorized rebindings from the market.
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Although Macmillan never publicly revealed who the guilty parties were, its files indicate that one was its price-war nemesis, Macy's. When Macmillan raised a stink, the store insisted on its right to rebind the text but agreed to remove the movie photos. The store replaced the cover image of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable with an illustrated map showing the route Scarlett took to Tara after she fled Atlanta. Presumably embarrassed over the situation, Macmillan did not advise Mitchell of what had transpired. She found out by accident months later when she ran across a copy of the Macy's edition. She was not enamored of the book's production quality and noticed it had two typographical errors on the map: General Stephen D. Lee was referred to as “Lea,” and Rough and Ready, a small community in Clayton County, was listed as “Rough and Readys.”
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Assuming Macmillan had authorized the new edition, Mitchell asked Latham to make sure the mistakes were corrected in future printings. Only then did he come forward and explain what had happened.
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Macmillan faced further difficulties with the motion picture edition that summer when Loew's announced that it planned to withdraw the film from the market for several months and rerelease it in early 1941. In six months, more than twenty-eight million people—one out of every five Americans—had seen the movie, breaking box-office records that would stand for decades. By pulling the movie from theaters, the distributor hoped to let the excitement settle and build fresh demand the following year. This was disastrous news for Macmillan, which had more than three hundred thousand unsold copies of the motion picture edition on its hands. As the film's first run began to wind down, so did sales of the movie edition. In June, less than seventy-five copies of the volume were sold. Left holding almost the entire third printing, this represented a loss to Macmillan of close to sixty thousand dollars. Brett admitted to Mitchell it had been a terrible error in judgment to order the final run, noting that trying to predict reader demand was always a gamble.
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When faced with large quantities of leftover books, publishers often sell them at a cut rate, a process called remaindering. Brett faced an agonizing decision. Should he cut the firm's losses and dump the books now or hold them until the film's rerelease? After riding so high on the glory of
Gone With the Wind
, it would be embarrassing to have the motion picture edition hawked at bargain-basement prices. He decided on remaindering but with a twist. Rather than having the now famous paperback edition stacked on shelves as evidence of his failure, Brett approved selling the books at a discount to a retailer who would reissue them in a new, hardcover binding when the movie began its second run.

Brett had to go hat in hand to Selznick, admit defeat, and ask for his permission to authorize the sale. Selznick was not happy about letting yet another third party take advantage of the movie images, nor was he interested in doing Brett any favors. Nevertheless, out of respect for Mitchell, he agreed. Brett also had to ask the author to accept yet another reduction in royalties. To make the deal worth Macmillan's while, she would have to take a payment of only a penny per book. Accepting Macmillan's judgment that it was time to cut bait, Mitchell agreed. With everyone on board, Macmillan sold the inventory to discount publisher Grosset & Dunlap for ten cents a copy.

As part of the deal with Grosset, Macmillan had to agree that it would not issue another cheap edition of
Gone With the Wind
for the next two years. This left Macmillan with only the standard three-dollar edition on the market, a book that appeared to have run its course for the time being. Hoping to recoup some of the company's losses, Brett gave the green light to sell the book's serial rights. Here was a way to eke out another few dollars to help balance the books in 1940. The firm's serial department combed through its records and sent an invitation to bid to all of the newspapers and syndicates that had ever expressed an interest in those rights. But it quickly became apparent that the publisher had made a mistake in waiting so long. Most of the companies did not bother to respond, and of the few that did, most said they were no longer interested now that the movie had come and gone. Only King Features Syndicate made an offer, and it was for just one thousand dollars, with a fifty-fifty split of the proceeds.

Reluctant to go that low, Macmillan wrote to several additional newspapers. When only one expressed mild interest, Brett decided to take the bird in the hand and go with King Features. Macmillan presented the offer to Mitchell, and she agreed. Alas, the publisher had more humiliation in store. King Features backed out when it realized Macmillan expected the syndicate to run an unabridged version of the story. King claimed there were few people in the United States interested in reading a full-length version of
Gone With the Wind
who had not already done so. Brett had to go back to Mitchell and tell her the deal was off. The best they could hope for was trying to sell the story to individual newspapers, for one hundred or two hundred dollars each. She gave her assent to this as well, but apparently there were no takers. To this day, no serial version of Mitchell's book has appeared in the United States.

Mitchell did not share Macmillan's dismay at
Gone With the Wind
's seemingly dwindling fortunes. She had waited a long time for the hoopla to die down and had high hopes her life would return to a saner pace once the movie had run its course. But, once again, she underestimated Scarlett and Rhett. While
Gone With the Wind
may not have been selling many books, it had become such a part of American culture and consciousness that, four years after the book's release, rarely a week went by without some new problem arising out of unauthorized use of the author's work or some new scheme from somebody wanting to profit from it.

That summer, producer Mike Todd—a future Mr. Elizabeth Taylor—created a musical called
Gay New Orleans
for the New York World's Fair. The production included characters named Scarlett O'Hara, Rhett Butler, Belle Watling, and Mammy. The lyrics to one of the songs included the phrase “Gone with the wind are the cares I bore, gone with the wind to return no more.” It was Billy Rose all over again. This time, Mitchell wasted no time debating what to do. As soon as she learned of Todd's plans, she brought in the able services of Howard Reinheimer, her attorney in the Rose case. The New York lawyer convinced the producer of the error of his ways and elicited an apology. Shortly thereafter, Mitchell prepared for battle again when word circulated that a stripper in New York named Renee Villon was performing a dance routine called “Gone With the Wind” in which an electric fan blew off her clothes. Although Villon folded up her tent before lawyers got involved, the press had a good time at Mitchell's expense. Even the loyal
Atlanta Constitution
got in on the act, noting it would take a “very large, forceful fan” to blow off the “multitudinous petticoats and pantalets of Scarlett O'Hara's day.”
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The sequel issue also reared its head again. With Gable and Leigh now emblazoned in people's minds as Rhett and Scarlett, fans felt the story called, nay screamed, for further development. Rumors ran rampant that Mitchell had changed her mind and was working on a continuation. Friends teased the author about a report that she was writing a sequel called “Back With the Breeze,” “a highly moral tract in which everyone, including Belle Watling, undergoes a change of heart and character and reeks with sanctimonious dullness.” Mitchell quipped, “I am happy to announce that I have written no such book and still happier that such a book lies outside my feeble capabilities.”
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Despite her immediate and repeated denials, the rumor continued to spread and stirred up a fresh round of correspondence from readers. A pair of thirteen-year-old girls from Vicksburg, Mississippi, were so enthralled with the idea of a follow-up that they sent the author two detailed plot lines they thought would work for a new book. In one, Scarlett develops amnesia; in the other, Rhett is similarly stricken. The teens told Mitchell she was free to use either plot, subject to acknowledgment and compensation. Mitchell politely thanked the girls for their letter, complimented them on their writing skills, and informed them that she had no plans to write a sequel.
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Mitchell was further irritated when Hollywood fan magazine
Screen
Guide
ran a contest for its readers to see who could write the most interesting continuation of Scarlett and Rhett's love story. A sailor on the U.S.S.
Portland
, Arnold Manning, won the top prize of ten dollars. The magazine published an illustrated version of Manning's story in its September 1940 issue: Scarlett had Rhett kidnapped and brought to their home, where they shared a night of passion. Furious at her treachery, Rhett stormed out of the house and headed to his boat in Charleston. Scarlett stowed away and presented herself to him as a changed woman—“proud, yet mutely appealing, promising surrender.” They reunited and returned to Tara. The editors of
Screen Guide
took the liberty of announcing that Manning's conclusion was thoroughly consistent with Mitchell's characters; if she had chosen to end her story more definitely, the magazine said, the final chapters might well have looked like his.

In the four years she had been dealing with fan fiction, Mitchell had become increasingly less tolerant. She accepted that fans might write sequels for their own amusement but did not think it fair for them or publishers to profit from their efforts. If someone wanted to publish a Civil War–era story set in Georgia, that was fine, but let them spend their own time developing characters, settings, and scenes. Moreover, the quality of sequels such as Manning's left much to be desired. She feared having outlandish ones in print would harm her book's reputation, in which she had a vested financial interest. Stephens Mitchell wrote a stern letter of complaint to
Screen Guide
, charging it with unauthorized use of Mitchell's “title, characters, plot, color and atmosphere.”
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Although it was by no means clear under copyright law at that time that Mitchell controlled those characters exclusively, the magazine did not put up a fight. In its December issue, the publication ran a fullpage apology, declaring that Mitchell owned the exclusive right to “sequelize” her story. She won that battle, but the war continued, especially overseas, where plenty of people had their own ideas of what happened to her famous couple. Although her legal footing was even less clear abroad than in the United States, Mitchell maintained she owned the rights to her characters the world over as a matter of common sense and decency. If she heard of anyone trying to publish a sequel, she fought it as a matter of principle.

Fans were not the only ones interested in sequels. With the movie an unparalleled success, Selznick renewed his push for Mitchell to sell him the sequel rights. He envisioned Selznick International Pictures producing a follow-up or perhaps selling the rights to another producer in a package deal with the services of Leigh, who was under contract to Selznick. He wrote to Brown and Jock Whitney, encouraging them to get moving on a sequel, which he predicted would be worth a fortune greater than what they could earn on all the other pictures they had in mind combined. When the studio approached Mitchell, she turned it down without hesitation. On her behalf, Marsh explained that resolution of
Gone With the Wind
's open ending would undermine her original story's integrity. Moreover, she did not have the time to write a sequel herself, nor would she allow a third party to create one for her. Mitchell's refusal did not end matters though.
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Selznick was determined to obtain the rights and would, despite her repeated denials, revisit the issue with the author on many occasions over the coming years.