Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (61 page)

Stephens Mitchell continued to practice law, refusing to sacrifice his career to the business of
Gone With the Wind
. The family firm where he had worked for many years had been disbanded after the deaths of his father and an uncle, and Mitchell now practiced with two younger partners: Thomas Hal Clarke, a fellow member of the Atlanta Historical Society, and Paul Anderson, a friend of Clarke's. Like Mitchell, Clarke and Anderson specialized in real estate law. Mitchell went to great lengths to keep his literary work separate from that of their firm, Mitchell, Clarke & Anderson. He never invited his partners to the estate office and did not discuss
GWTW
affairs with them.
¹⁶
But, Mitchell would not be able to maintain that divide forever.

In April 1967, the lawyer, then seventy-one, suffered serious injuries in a bizarre accident. While walking on a sidewalk in downtown Atlanta, he was struck by a large wooden crate that fell from a passing truck. The crate knocked him into the side of a bus, breaking both of his arms. He continued to work after the accident but was never quite the same. His condition placed added responsibility on Baugh, who was also in poor health. A further blow to the estate occurred when, in December, she passed away at the age of sixty-eight. Although Stephens Mitchell and Baugh had not always shared a common vision for how the literary rights should be handled, she had been an invaluable resource, and he remembered her to the press respectfully as “a right quiet and peaceful little lady.”
¹⁷

Without Baugh, Mitchell was forced to rely on Clarke and Anderson for assistance in managing the estate. Brown and her firm continued to handle much of the day-to-day issues relating to the rights, but looking ahead, Mitchell prepared his partners to oversee the estate after his passing. Although neither of the two lawyers had a personal affiliation with the author—Clarke had met Margaret Mitchell only socially—her brother trusted them to handle matters appropriately. “Steve was very diligent about
Gone With the Wind
's history and business, and kept good records,” Clarke said. “He was very conscious of doing that and would get on us younger fellows to see that we did the same.”
¹⁸

Stephens Mitchell also relied on Cole for support. They had always been on friendly terms, and she kept an eye out for him in the New York publishing world. When Harold Latham died in March 1969, Cole sent flowers on Mitchell's behalf and forwarded him a copy of Latham's obituary from the
New York Times
. Though Cole never publicly voiced any complaints about the editor, she let her guard down with Mitchell. Included with the clipping was a letter that revealed continued resentment for Latham's having taken the credit for
Gone With the Wind
. The
Times
story claimed the publishing executive had “found” Margaret Mitchell and edited the manuscript of
Gone With the Wind
. Cole noted, “I should be old enough to laugh it off, but it still irks me when people take credit for what they didn't do. . . . No one, as you know, edited
GWTW
. . . . But, oh, well, what does it matter?”
¹⁹

Gone With the Wind
remained profitable as it approached its fifth decade. In the United States, Macmillan kept the original hardback edition in print and also trotted out special hardcover editions on occasion, such as for the seventy-fifth anniversary of Mitchell's birth in 1975, when it issued a slipcased volume with a foreword by author James Michener. The publisher had also periodically authorized third parties such as the Limited Editions Club to issue new versions. As for the paperback rights, Macmillan granted a license to Avon Books, which released several new editions. All of these books resulted in an impressive revenue stream for the estate, along with its share of the income earned from the movie, which MGM regularly rereleased.

The story continued to be extraordinarily popular overseas as well, especially in countries that were opening their doors to the West for the first time in decades. Selznick's film was one of the first foreign movies released in China when the Communist Party loosened cultural restrictions. A three-volume paperback was published in East Germany in the late 1970s, and about that same time, the first Burmese translation, which local critics claimed was better than Mitchell's original, won the country's National Literature Award.
²⁰
The first Russian edition of
Gone With the Wind
appeared in the Soviet Union. Not all the editions were authorized, but they continued to introduce Scarlett's story to new audiences.

Brown generally had a free hand managing the rights, but Stephens Mitchell did not hesitate to step in if matters took a turn he did not like. When French publisher Gallimard issued an illustrated edition for young people that contained a running commentary alongside the text, much of it unflattering to Margaret Mitchell and the South, Stephens Mitchell nearly ended the decades-old relationship with the firm. “Never have I heard of a publisher putting notes in a book . . . to show the ignorance, incompetence and prejudice of an author of a novel from which he has derived profits,” the author's brother declared.
²¹
When Gallimard failed to apologize, Mitchell laid out his viewpoint in stark terms, comparing the situation to having a foreign edition of a French patriotic story set in World War II “commented on paragraph by paragraph by Herr Joseph Goebbels.”
²²
When inquiries in France indicated a lawsuit would not be successful, Mitchell reluctantly let the matter drop. However, he insisted the additional material in the book not be used in other countries and instructed Brown to tighten future contracts to ensure publication of his sister's text would be verbatim, with no commentary or notes of any kind.

For the most part though, Stephens Mitchell had mellowed over the years. He still felt loyal to his sister's preferences about how matters should be handled but gradually broadened the scope of what he deemed appropriate. He had spent two decades at the helm of the estate opposing commercial enterprises that tried to take advantage of
Gone With the Wind
. There had been proposals for
GWTW
-themed tourist attractions, property developments, and myriad other projects. He had opposed them all on the grounds that his sister would not have approved. Then, in 1969, he had given up fighting the inevitable and granted permission for Clayton County, Georgia, to designate itself the “Home of
Gone With the Wind
.” So long as matters were handled tastefully, he now saw no harm in capitalizing on Scarlett and Rhett's continued appeal. Perhaps it was due to age, the changing times, or maybe, without Baugh reminding him of what the Marshes would have done, he felt more comfortable relying on his own instincts.

In 1975, Stephens Mitchell took steps down another path his sister never wanted traveled: he considered authorizing a sequel to
Gone With the
Wind
. Over the years, the estate had regularly received inquiries from writers interested in continuing Scarlett and Rhett's story. Most of these correspondents went to great lengths to assure the author's brother they were uniquely qualified to take on such an important task. He thought these writers should put their talents to good use and create their own characters and story lines, and often told them so. To all offers and suggestions for a continuation, Mitchell had stood firm, repeating his sister's oft-used argument that the story ended where it ended and there was no need to go further: “Mrs. Marsh always said emphatically no. When I inherited the rights, we were offered $500,000 for sequelization rights, and we said no. We shall always say no.”
²³

What made him change his mind? The renewed copyright on the novel was scheduled to expire in seventeen years, at which point he suspected there would be multiple unauthorized sequels rushing to reunite Scarlett and Rhett. Concerned about the quality of such books and how they might affect the reputation of
Gone With the Wind
, he felt it prudent to authorize a continuation of the story while it was still under copyright. Not only would he ensure the story was handled respectfully, but also the estate would reap the benefits of Scarlett and Rhett's future adventures and hopefully dampen the market for unauthorized sequels. “I am 80 years old,” he explained, “and do not have the ability to police the publishing world, the motion picture world, and the dramatic world to catch up with infringements. I have done this for 40 years, and am weary.”
²⁴

Mitchell turned to Brown, now working for International Creative Management, to lead the way. She encouraged him to develop a film sequel, predicting it would generate higher revenues than a book version.
²⁵
With Mitchell's go-ahead, she approached independent film producers David Brown and Richard Zanuck, who were riding high after their recent boxoffice successes
The Sting
and
Jaws
. As David Brown later said, it did not take much convincing. They thought about the offer for “a microsecond” before saying they wanted to work out a deal with the Mitchell estate.
²⁶

But they were not the only interested party. When MGM heard a sequel deal was in the works, it elbowed its way to the table by virtue of its earlier contractual relationships with Margaret Mitchell and the estate. Stephens Mitchell did not necessarily agree that MGM had a say in the matter but did not want to jeopardize the project by having the studio file a lawsuit. He allowed MGM to be part of the negotiations with Zanuck/Brown Productions. On June 8, 1976, Mitchell signed a contract with Universal Pictures, the studio with which Zanuck/Brown Productions was affiliated. In exchange for a three-year option on a film sequel to be produced jointly by Universal and MGM, Universal would pay five hundred thousand dollars to the Mitchell family. Universal also obtained the option to purchase a one-year extension for an additional one hundred thousand dollars. Upon commencement of principal photography, Mitchell and his sons would receive another five hundred thousand dollars and, once the film was made, 10 percent of the movie's profits. As part of the deal, Zanuck and Brown would hire an author to write a “novelization” of their sequel, to be released in paperback when the movie opened, or up to a year before.

News of a sequel to the most successful film in Hollywood history made front-page headlines. It seemed everyone wanted to know: Would the lovers reunite? Who would play Scarlett and Rhett?
New York Times
arts critic Ralph Tyler surveyed literary VIPs such as Isaac Asimov, James Dickey, and John Updike for their story line suggestions. Their clever replies ran the gamut, from Rhett founding
New South
magazine and hiring Belle Watling as a gossip columnist to Scarlett running a Colonel Sanders fried chicken franchise restaurant. Edward Albee suggested the producers ought to ask Margaret Mitchell to write the script and, if she were not available, perhaps William Makepeace Thackeray. If neither could do it, he suggested the project be scrapped because it was just a moneymaking scheme anyway.
²⁷

While the general public seemed eager to see what Hollywood would do with the story, a cadre of die-hard
GWTW
fans agreed with Albee that the project was ill advised. Aware of Margaret Mitchell's opposition to a sequel, some saw her brother's actions as a betrayal. A man in West Virginia who operated a
Gone With the Wind
fan club wrote to the estate, cautioning that, if the views of his club members were any indication, the project would fail. Calling the movie sequel an “obvious attempt to gain a financial windfall,” he added that a continuation would probably harm the great esteem in which so many held the original book and film. Evidencing some sympathy for the estate's situation, though, the man described it as a “damned if they do, damned if they don't” scenario: the public always wanted a sequel but would likely not admire the result.
²⁸

Stephens Mitchell did not disagree with this assessment. He suspected the sequel might not have popular appeal, and for that reason wanted no say in the casting of the film, the selection of an author to write the sequel, or the plot—“unless,” the ever-watchful guardian said, “it contains indecent or illegal matter.” In his estimation, his sister's book ended at the right place: “where the woman who had a good man (and did not know it) finds out that he is the man for her, and also finds out that it is too late to do anything about it.”
²⁹
Yet, he explained to the man from West Virginia, he felt he had no choice but to go down this road. He summed up what his life had been like since his sister's death:

After you realize the enormous number of people who have written sequels, and the trouble of fighting them off, and realize that your copyright will not last forever, and realize that you are getting old, and that no one else is going to devote his life to the everlasting task of preventing abridgments, variations, sequels, etc. you can come to the conclusion that (1) It is just as well to let the public see what a sequel would be like. (2) You might as well quit spending the continuing large sums of money, which it has taken and still takes, to prevent such a thing.