(2 of 3)
Undisputed king of Hollywood at the time was Louis B. Mayer, who was convinced that "those Selznick boys will come to no good." Proving him wrong, David left MGM, became a $104,000-a-year boss at Paramount—and married the crown princess herself, L. B. Mayer's daughter Irene. L.B. imperiously refused to greet Selznick at the wedding, though when David at 30 returned to the M-G-M fold, wags quipped, "The son-in-law also rises." It was a canard that was not buried until Mayer's 1957 will, in which L.B. noted that Son-in-Law Selznick, unlike other members of the Mayer clan, "had never requested my assistance."
Finest Hours. In fact, assistance was something that Selznick always felt he could dispense with. "Your ideas may be right," he once explained to Director George Cukor while in the process of firing him, "but if I'm going to fall on my face, it is going to be entirely my own mistake." What Selznick did be lieve in was quality, talent and free-spending, and it turned out to be a formula that gave Hollywood some of its finest hours. Selznick's Bill of Divorcement introduced Katharine Hepburn to films; Freddy Bartholomew was discovered for David Copperfield; Alfred Hitchcock was imported to direct Rebecca.
In Hollywood, Joseph Gotten, Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, Carole Lombard, Joan Fontaine and Myrna Loy advanced with Selznick's help. From abroad came Ingrid Bergman. But far and away, Selznick's most-discussed discovery was actually not his but his brother Myron's. In 1938 G.W.T.W. had gone into production with the hunt for an actress to play Scarlett O'Hara still in full cry.* While the old sets on Selznick's 40-acre lot in Culver City, Calif., were being fired and thus providing the climactic scene of the burning of Atlanta, Myron emerged through the smoke with a pert English brunette in tow. "I want you to meet Scarlett O'Hara," Myron announced dramatically. David Selznick agreed, signed up Vivien Leigh to play Scarlett.
"The Industry Needs You." Jennifer Jones, an Oscar winner for her role in Song of Bernadette, was a young actress that Selznick found. He starred her in Since You Went Away, Duel in the Sun and Portrait of Jenny. In 1948 Selznick divorced Irene Mayer, in 1949 married Jennifer. After the marriage, Selznick virtually retired from film making, produced only one more picture—Farewell to Arms (1958) with Jennifer Jones. But semiretirement did little to modify his compulsive ways. For Farewell, he wore out three secretaries while dictating a total of 10,000 memos, ranging from single sentences to one 30 pages in length, all initialed DOS. He had worn out writers (16 for G.W.T.W., including briefly F. Scott Fitzgerald) and directors at the same pace. One director he approached, Nunnally Johnson, declined, saying, "My understanding is that an assignment from you consists of three months' work and six months of recuperation."