Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (46 page)

With no sequel in the works, Selznick turned his attention to other ideas for bringing Scarlett and Rhett to the public. That fall, he announced plans to mount a radio production of
Gone With the Wind
. He had acquired those rights as part of the movie deal, so Mitchell's permission was not required. Even so, he managed to cause the author no end of trouble when advance publicity for the show claimed that Mitchell had agreed to participate in the program to “give everything a proper Tara flavor.” She had never been invited to join the program and would have said no in any case. To her great annoyance, Mitchell began receiving letters, telegrams, and telephone calls from people wanting her to help them land a role in the production. Radio producers from other programs contacted her complaining that she was participating in this program after having declined their offers.

Although the author did not blame Selznick for the false report of her involvement, she held him accountable for letting it happen on his watch and demanded that he set matters straight. She wrote him a seven-page letter declaring, “I think you
owe
me prompt and effective action in this situation. I have
earned
the right to ask it of you.” She had, after all, “written the book which gave you the opportunity to score your greatest success, artistically and financially.”
²⁶
According to notations in Mitchell's file, she never mailed the diatribe; Stephens Mitchell sent a more measured statement instead. Fortunately for Selznick, the matter blew over when plans for the radio production fizzled due to problems with the sponsor.

Despite the dustup, he remained confident in Mitchell's goodwill and asked Brown to approach the author about letting him acquire the stage rights to
Gone With the Wind
. Selznick knew the movie would be a tough act to follow but wanted to try. He had visions of an elaborate, five-hour theatrical production with a dinner intermission. Brown approached the author saying that, this time around, Selznick would be willing to give Mitchell script approval.
²⁷
Mitchell was open to selling the rights, but chances of a deal coming together fell through when the author and Hollywood became embroiled in yet another publicity conflict, this one related to the movie's second release.

Hoping to re-create the magic of the original unveiling, Loew's scheduled a “second premiere” at the Grand Theatre in Atlanta for December 12, 1940. The distributor promoted the event as a benefit for the Atlanta branch of the British War Relief fund. From the beginning, the wellintentioned plan seemed cursed. Loew's publicity department announced that, as an added attraction, Leigh and McDaniel would reenact the movie's famous corset-lacing scene onstage before the film was shown. The re-creation would feature a replica of the movie set, along with lights, cameras, and other equipment to capture the feel of a Hollywood sound stage. However, the promoters forgot to ask for permission from Mitchell, who retained the dramatic rights to her story. When news of the plans broke in the local papers, Mitchell was tempted to “sue the hell out of them.” After numerous letters, telegrams, and phone calls between Atlanta, New York, and Hollywood, the author reluctantly agreed to allow the reenactment but only out of esteem for Brown and the charity and on the condition that the scene be copyrighted in her name. After weeks of nailing down the details, McDaniel announced she had a scheduling conflict and was unable to attend. The scene was canceled.

In the end, Mitchell was not prepared to let the studio people walk away scot-free after having wasted so much of her energy on the project. She wrote to Selznick and Nicholas Schenck, president of Loew's, detailing the “great deal of work, worry, trouble, annoyance and expense” she had been forced to undergo. She demanded five thousand dollars as compensation for her time and trouble.
²⁸
It is a testament to Mitchell's growing reputation for tenacity that they agreed to make the payment with little fuss. However, when the check arrived, Mitchell was unhappy to see that Selznick had paid the bill rather than Loew's. Stephens Mitchell threatened to return the payment; the Marshes considered Selznick an “innocent partner” in the affair and suggested Loew's should be held solely accountable. Selznick's attorney assured them it was simply a bookkeeping issue and that Loew's, through its subsidiary Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), would bear its fair share. Appeased, Stephens Mitchell accepted the check, noting, “With the whole world at war, we would be happy to have peace at home.”
²⁹

Even with the stage scene shelved, MGM and Loew's remained optimistic the so-called “re-premiere” would be a success. They scrambled to find a substitute attraction and arranged for Leigh to bring with her fellow Brits Laurence Olivier, whom she had married in August, and director Alfred Hitchcock. MGM also invited the Duke of Windsor and his American wife, Wallis Simpson. But plenty of hitches lay in store. King George VI declined on behalf of his older brother, causing the
Atlanta Constitution
to lament, “Gone Are the Wind-sors for
Gone With Wind
Revival.”
³⁰
The movie people suffered further embarrassment when, at a luncheon before the movie showing, the press discovered that the small American and British flags on each table were labeled “Made in Japan.” Given the tenuous state of American-Japanese relations at the time, it was just one more joke in a comedy of errors. As the final act, the plane carrying Leigh, Olivier, and Hitchcock encountered bad weather, and the trio did not arrive in Atlanta until the day after the rescreening. Mitchell was forced to pinch-hit at several events.

Although not nearly the grand event Loew's originally envisioned, the gala served the purpose of again drawing attention to the movie
Gone With
the Wind
as it was released for a second run in theaters across the country. The film drew large crowds, which meant good news for Grosset & Dunlap's revamped motion picture edition. The publisher sold the book, now encased in a hardcover and dust jacket, for fifty cents. The volume proved so popular it made the
Publishers Weekly
reprint bestseller list. As if any doubt remained about whether Mitchell's novel had found a distinct place in American culture, the Associated Press ran a story about a mother in Little Rock, Arkansas, who gave birth that December to triplets whom she named Gone, With, and Wind.
³¹

Amidst all the travails on the home front, an increasingly weary Mitchell also faced difficulty managing the
GWTW
literary rights abroad. In April 1940, Mitchell was in the midst of a royalty dispute with her Danish publisher when the Nazis invaded Denmark. All communication was cut off. In May, Mitchell's Dutch lawyer, J. A. Fruin, was preparing the piracy case for trial when Germany invaded the Netherlands. The Luftwaffe destroyed the commercial district of Rotterdam, including the building that housed Fruin's firm. Showing a true fighting spirit, he managed to get word to the author in June that the courts were operating, and he would do his best to move the case along.
³²
Many months passed before she heard from him again.

Then there was Poland, which had been torn asunder by Germany and the Soviet Union the previous fall. The Marshes had heard nothing from the publisher Wydawnictwo J. Przeworski and assumed he had been killed. Marion Saunders contacted an “Aryan” publishing firm she knew of, Gebethner & Wolff, to see if it would take over Przeworski's stock. As she explained to Marsh, “No money can come out of Poland, but this house is extremely reliable and I would rather see them sell the books than have the copies thrown into a dung-heap.”
³³
Gebethner & Wolff accepted the stock and promised the rights would revert to Przeworski if he resurfaced.

Even in nonoccupied countries, communication was problematic. Letters sent overseas were censored and often detained. International mail was typically transported by sea, an uncertain method at best given Nazi U-boat patrols in the North Atlantic. In the fall of 1940, the Marshes got wind of an Arabic piracy about to be released in Cairo. Saunders sent a letter to the American Embassy there but warned the Marshes she had no idea how long it would take to reach Egypt. It was “in the lap of the gods,” she said.
³⁴
They heard back from the American vice consul a year later that the publisher was willing to sign a contract and pay royalties. However, by that point, hostilities had escalated in North Africa, and Marsh had no way to close the deal. When, in May 1941, Mitchell received a copy of the Bulgarian edition, it scarcely seemed possible to her that a book could make it safely around the world in the middle of a war and find a quiet resting place on her shelf. She valued it greatly even though she could not read a word of the text.

The stress took a toll on Mitchell and her husband, and the couple came to regret having accepted the foreign rights from Macmillan. As Marsh described his feelings to Brett, “Briefly and poignantly, our dominant idea about the foreign rights in general is that they are a pain in the neck.” The Marshes had been forced to spend a tremendous amount of money protecting those rights and, now, because of the war, the translations were bringing in little income. “We have done a good job with the foreign rights—in every respect but making money. . . . For whatever it is worth, we have the satisfaction of a job well done, but that is all.”
³⁵

Mitchell discussed the situation with Cole, who told her about another author struggling to get royalties out of Europe. The writer, whose name Cole did not disclose, had appealed directly to Adolph Hitler for assistance.
³⁶
Three weeks after sending the German dictator an airmail letter, the money had been wired to the woman's bank account in U.S. dollars. She accepted the payment and donated 10 percent of the funds to British War Relief. Cole wondered if Mitchell should pursue a similar route. The author's name might have carried some weight with the Fu¨hrer—rumor had it that the Nazis approved of
Gone With the Wind
because it was critical of the “Yankee” government in Washington. Principles mattered to Mitchell more than money; she refused to consider asking Hitler for a favor. Mitchell told Cole she had abandoned hope of ever recouping the lost income.*

Even in the far corners of the globe where business continued relatively unaffected, successes were few and far between for Mitchell those days. In late 1940, when a South African publisher expressed interest in translating
Gone With the Wind
into Afrikaans, the couple was enthusiastic. Negotiations stalled though when the publisher indicated he wanted to have the story rewritten with a South African setting, transferring the city scenes from Atlanta to Cape Town or Johannesburg. Marsh thought the idea “highly offensive” given that the flavor of the book was “so directly a part of the original setting as Peggy created it.” Saunders tried to convince the publisher to leave the geography intact, but he refused, and a contract never materialized.
³⁷
In South America, Marsh panicked upon hearing that the assets of the Chilean publisher Ercilla were being liquidated. The firm owed Mitchell more than $3,500. Having no experience with Chilean bankruptcy law, he was at a loss as to how to protect their rights. Upon realizing Macmillan was also a creditor, he turned to Brett for guidance. The publisher managed to calm Marsh by explaining that Ercilla was reorganizing because of a “screwy” Chilean labor law, which provided that corporations had to increase employee salaries by a certain percent every year.
³⁸
Apparently, to get around the requirement, companies routinely went out of business every few years and then started from scratch. The Marshes were relieved but described the experience as “something out of
Alice in Wonderland
.”
³⁹

The Atlantans also continued to struggle with unauthorized translations. Fighting the pirates was draining, but Marsh did not feel they could let the thefts go unattended even when the law was not on their side. For instance, Cuba required foreign copyrights be registered in Havana within one year of original publication.
Gone With the Wind
had not been registered within that time frame, so a Cuban newspaper took advantage of the situation and ran a serialized version of Mitchell's story. When Saunders learned about it, she demanded payment of a royalty and publication of the Macmillan copyright notice in future installments. The newspaper replied in what Mitchell described as a “saucy” manner. “In fact, they practically told me to go to hell and that they would not pay me or acknowledge my rights,” she informed the Department of State's Wallace McClure.
⁴⁰
The Cuban publisher insisted he had the authority to publish the serial without permission and stated that if the author wanted Macmillan's copyright notice printed, she should pay the newspaper to run an advertisement for the New York publisher.

Marsh appreciated that a lawsuit would be futile but stood his ground, hoping to convince the paper to at least include the copyright notice. To everyone's surprise, the publisher eventually made an about-face and agreed to pay one hundred dollars in royalties. Mitchell's camp speculated that the hostilities in Europe had the publisher concerned about relations with the United States. In a comical coda, the newspaper sent the one-hundreddollar check to Macmillan, instead of to the Marshes. To keep things simple, Marsh asked Richard Brett to accept the check and credit the proceeds to Mitchell's account. The younger Brett, a by-the-book numbers man, refused and told Marsh that the proper procedure was to ask the Cuban publisher for a new check. Marsh prevailed upon George Brett to cash the check, explaining that when you have “dealings with pirates and when they finally capitulate and pay money over to you it is not very wise to send the money back to them just because of a technicality.”
⁴¹