Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (60 page)

The lawyer seized on the situation as a way of redeeming himself for not better protecting his sister's interests in the 1936 movie negotiations. If MGM wanted him to renew the copyright, it would have to renegotiate its contract with the estate. This time around, Stephens Mitchell went to the table with Brown on his side. His faith in the agent was justified when, in 1963, the estate and MGM signed a contract that, in exchange for the estate renewing the copyright, gave Mitchell a lump sum payment of five hundred thousand dollars, plus 10 percent of MGM's domestic box-office gross from the film above five million dollars. Additional payments were tied to other income streams, including the film's worldwide box-office receipts and earnings from television broadcasts. At long last, Margaret Mitchell—through her estate—would receive a share of the profits Hollywood made on the story of Scarlett and Rhett. MGM also expressed interest in acquiring rights to produce a sequel, but Stephens Mitchell refused. He inserted a clause into the contract stating that “Metro shall have no right to produce any motion picture or other production with the plot or the story of the characters of the Novel, in which the lives of the characters therein shall be carried beyond the time of the ending of the Novel.”
⁸

Stephens Mitchell also attempted to use the copyright renewal to obtain additional compensation from Macmillan. Brown estimated the book rights were worth $280,000 and suggested the estate request a bonus from Macmillan for extending the copyright and an adjustment in royalties from 15 percent to 20 percent.
⁹
The estate signed a new contract with Macmillan, but the details were not made public.

While Brown managed most of the estate's business affairs, Stephens Mitchell and Baugh labored over his still-unfinished memoir. After sorting through assorted drafts, Lois Cole convinced the estate to bring in an outside writer to turn the manuscript into a publishable book. Frank Lloyd Wright biographer Finis Farr was selected and became the first outsider granted access to the
GWTW
files. He was not given a free hand, though. Mitchell, Baugh, and Cole vetted every word of Farr's manuscript, parsing details large and small, from whether Mitchell had freckles to how Adrian Stok, the Dutch publisher, should be portrayed. Stephens Mitchell also took pains to ensure Cole would receive long-overdue credit for her role in discovering the
GWTW
manuscript.
¹⁰

Farr was close to completing his work when, on March 12, 1965, Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons announced that a former journalist named Jacob Mogelever was trying to sell the movie rights to a book he was writing titled “That Mitchell Girl.” Mogelever claimed his story presented a version of Margaret Mitchell's life that was more exciting than the stories she had written about in
Gone With the Wind
. He promised readers juicy details on “Atlanta's most scintillating flapper” and the inside story of her book, including his theory that Rhett Butler was based on Mitchell's first husband, “Red” Upshaw, whom Mogelever claimed she still loved after their “sensational” divorce. It was exactly the sort of project the estate had been hoping to preempt, and Stephens Mitchell moved with alacrity to make sure Mogelever did not land a production deal.

The estate contacted Parsons and asked her to get word out to the industry that Mogelever had not had access to the author's papers and, therefore, could not be relied upon to offer an accurate depiction of Margaret Mitchell's life. Cole issued a press release touting Farr's book as the only authorized and complete story. Baugh compiled a list of movie production companies and sent them notices about Mogelever's status as an unauthorized biographer. Whether the estate was responsible for killing the project is not known, but the journalist did not sell the movie rights to his story. He died a few years later, never having finished the manuscript.
¹¹

Farr's book,
Margaret Mitchell of Atlanta
, was released later that year. It did not offer a full exposition of the author's life but provided a timeline of the major events and insights into
Gone With the Wind
that had never before been made public. With the story told, Stephens Mitchell finally resolved what would become of his sister's papers. Researchers still sought access, but he was not prepared to throw open the files. At the same time, he did not agree with his sister that they should be destroyed. He reached a compromise and donated the bulk of the documents to his alma mater, the University of Georgia. Among eleven three-drawer file cabinets shipped to Athens were Civil War–era letters between her grandparents, three short stories the author had written as a girl, thousands of fan letters and carbon copies of Mitchell's replies, and much of the voluminous business records associated with management of the
GWTW
literary rights. In tacit acknowledgment that his decision contradicted the author's instructions, he imposed tight restrictions on the ability of researchers to copy and quote from the papers. Mitchell was not comfortable opening his sister's life for public consumption but at least had ensured the materials would be preserved for the sake of posterity.*

Selznick died in 1965 without having realized his dream of bringing
Gone
With the Wind
to the stage. Although there had been periodic rumors of impending productions, he never managed to finance his extravaganza. When all was said and done, he ended up paying the estate more than one hundred thousand dollars for options on a production that never happened. But Selznick's death did not signal the end of Scarlett and Rhett's theatrical aspirations; rather, it freed the estate to pursue other opportunities.

Toho Company, Ltd., a Japanese firm, purchased the theatrical rights from the estate and produced a lavish production that divided Mitchell's story into two separate shows. On November 3, 1966, the first installment, covering events from the Twelve Oaks barbecue to Scarlett and Melanie's return to Tara after the fall of Atlanta, made its debut at Tokyo's Imperial Theater, with members of the Japanese royal family in attendance. The production ran from 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., with a one-hour dinner break. Stephens Mitchell flew to Japan for the opening. After the premiere, he was “swarmed” for his autograph, “just like a movie star!” reported his wife.
¹²
Although originally scheduled for a two-month run, the producers extended the show until April 1967, by which point it had been seen by more than 380,000 people.
¹³
Tokyo Scarlett was a hit. The following summer, the second part of the story ran a mere four hours. It played to large crowds for four months, after which the two stage versions were combined into a single six-hour production that had another successful run in the consolidated format.

Encouraged by the reception, the Japanese producers obtained permission from the estate in 1968 to mount a musical version of the story. The Japanese-language musical
Scarlett
, with a score by American composer Harold Rome, opened in Tokyo in January 1970. Two years later, an Englishlanguage version opened on London's West End, where it ran for almost a year—397 performances—featuring such numbers as “Two of a Kind,” a Rhett and Scarlett duet, and “Bonnie Gone,” a spiritual-like dirge mourning the young girl who was killed when thrown from her pony. While popular with tourists, the critics were not impressed. British playwright Noe¨l Coward, who attended opening night when an onstage horse relieved itself during a key scene, found the young actress who played Bonnie especially irritating. Afterward, the famous wit supposedly commented that the producers could have taken care of two problems in one fell swoop if they had shoved the girl's head “up the horse's arse.”

When the show made its way across the pond, American audiences proved hard to please. A revamped production featuring Lesley Ann Warren as Scarlett and Pernell Roberts as Rhett played short runs in Los Angeles and San Francisco. A traveling show with different leads made brief stops in Dallas, Kansas City, and Atlanta. Neither production was a success. Scarlett and Rhett returned to Japan, where the country's famous all-female Takarazuka Revue produced several versions of the story over the next several decades. Perhaps because of their experience as an occupied nation after World War II, the Japanese seemed to identify with Scarlett and her promise of a brighter tomorrow.

Regardless of how American audiences felt about a musical
Gone With
the Wind
, the estate continued to prove a profitable venture. From 1960 through 1967, it earned nearly $750,000. But there was more to come. MGM again released the film in U.S. theaters in October 1967, this time touting that the movie could be viewed in the “splendor of widescreen.” (Actually, technicians rescanned the original film and cut off the top and bottom of many scenes to make the picture more rectangular.) To go along with the new format, MGM issued updated movie poster artwork with an extra dash of sex appeal: Clark Gable, his white shirt open to the waist, holds Leigh, her red gown cut low, against a backdrop of garish orange flames. After another opening in Atlanta, the film traveled across the country. Moviegoers flocked to theaters; in some cities, the film played for months. By the end of 1968, Selznick's
Gone With the Wind
had grossed another thirty million dollars in the United States alone, making it one of the top boxoffice attractions of the year. Thanks to the 1963 agreement with MGM, the estate shared in the riches. At the same time, Pocket Books issued a new paperback edition of the novel featuring the provocative movie artwork on its cover. Margaret Mitchell would have been horrified to see her Pulitzer Prize–winning novel so adorned. Yet, with its more contemporary look, the book earned new fans—and more royalties.

Throughout the 1960s, with Brown still handling the business details, Stephens Mitchell and Baugh managed the estate's assets and served as the public face of
Gone With the Wind
. Baugh continued to work alone from the estate office, which was now located in a separate building from Mitchell's law firm. She enjoyed a public reputation as a leading authority on Margaret Mitchell's book and took pride in overseeing matters in a manner consistent with the author's wishes.
Gone With the Wind
had become her main purpose and focus in life. She and Stephens Mitchell had never developed a friendly relationship—she remained devoutly loyal to the way Margaret Mitchell had handled things, while he took a more practical approach—and it appears she viewed herself as the true keeper of the Mitchell flame. Even after suffering a serious case of throat cancer that left her dependent on a mechanical device for speech, she continued in her role as the self-dubbed “nursemaid to the prodigy.”
¹⁴
In a 1966 letter to Cole, Baugh reflected on how little some aspects of her work had changed despite the passage of so many years. Although the volume of correspondence had dropped off, the same issues that existed “in Peggy's day” still popped up—everything from inquiries about new foreign editions to requests from students for help with articles and term papers. Fans still traveled from “Massachusetts or Japan or Timbuctoo” to find the real Tara or Aunt Pittypat's house and were often disappointed to find instead “40-story buildings all over the place and the roar of traffic and the sound of riveting and welding.”
¹⁵