David O. Selznick | |
|---|---|
 Selznick, c. 1934 | |
| Born | David Selznick (1902-05-10)May 10, 1902 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | June 22, 1965(1965-06-22) (aged 63) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Resting place | Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California |
| Other names | Oliver Jeffries[1] |
| Occupations |
|
| Years active | 1923–1957 |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 3 |
| Parent(s) | Lewis J. Selznick Florence Sachs |
| Relatives | Myron Selznick (brother) |
David O. Selznick (bornDavid Selznick; May 10, 1902 – June 22, 1965) was an Americanfilm producer,screenwriter and film studio executive[2] who producedGone with the Wind (1939) andRebecca (1940), both of which earned him anAcademy Award for Best Picture. He also won theIrving Thalberg Award at the12th Academy Awards, Hollywood's top honor for a producer, in recognition of his shepherdingGone with the Wind through a long and troubled production and into a record-breakingblockbuster.
The son and son-in-law of movie mogulsLewis J. Selznick andLouis B. Mayer, Selznick served as head of production atR.K.O. Radio Pictures and went on to become one of the first independent movie producers. His first wife was Mayer's daughterIrene Selznick, who became a highly successfulBroadway producer after their divorce, and his second wife was Oscar-winning actressJennifer Jones.
Selznick was born inPittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Florence Anna (née Sachs) andLewis J. Selznick, asilent film producer and distributor ofJewish origin.[3] His father was born in theRussian Empire in 1870.[4]
David had three siblings, including his brotherMyron, also a film producer and later atalent agent. David Selznick added the "O" to distinguish himself from an uncle with the same name, and because he thought it had flair.[5] The "O" stands for nothing, and he never had hisname legally changed to incorporate it.[6]
He studied atColumbia University inNew York City and started training as an apprentice for his father[7] until the elder's bankruptcy in 1923. In 1926, Selznick moved toHollywood,[7] and with the help of his father's connections, he gained a job as an assistant story editor atMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He left MGM forParamount Pictures in 1928, where he worked until 1931. While at Paramount he marriedIrene Gladys Mayer, daughter of MGM mogulLouis B. Mayer.
David Sarnoff, head ofRKO, hired Selznick as Head of Production in October 1931.[8] In addition to implementing rigorous cost-control measures, Selznick championed the unit production system, which gave theproducers of individual movies much greater independence than they had under the prevailing central producer system. "Under the factory system of production you rob the director of his individualism", said Selznick, "and this being a creative industry that is harmful to the quality of the product made."[9] Instituting unit production, he predicted, would also result in cost savings of 30–40 percent.[9]
To make films under the new system, Selznick recruited prize behind-the-camera personnel, such asdirectorGeorge Cukor and producer/directorMerian C. Cooper, and gave producerPandro S. Berman, aged twenty-six, increasingly important projects.[10] Selznick discovered and signed a young actress who was quickly counted as one of the studio's big stars,Katharine Hepburn.John Barrymore was also enlisted for a few memorable performances.[11]
Selznick spent a mere fifteen months as RKO production chief, resigning over a dispute with new corporate president Merlin Aylesworth concerning creative control.[12] One of his last acts at RKO was to approve ascreen test for a thirty-three-year-old, baldingBroadway song-and-dance man namedFred Astaire.[13] In a memo, Selznick wrote, "I feel, in spite of his enormous ears and bad chin line, that his charm is ... tremendous".[14]
Selznick's tenure was widely considered masterful: In 1931, before he arrived, the studio had produced forty-two features for $16 million in total budgets. In 1932, under Selznick, forty-one features were made for $10.2 million, with clear improvement in quality and popularity.[15] He backed several major successes, includingA Bill of Divorcement (1932), with Cukor directing Hepburn's debut, and the monumentalKing Kong (1933)—largely Merian Cooper's brainchild, brought to life by the astonishingspecial effects work ofWillis H. O'Brien.[16]
In 1933, he returned to MGM where his father-in-law,Louis B. Mayer, was studio CEO. Mayer established a second prestige production unit for Selznick, parallel to that ofIrving Thalberg, who was in poor health. Selznick's unit output included the all-star cast movieDinner at Eight (1933),David Copperfield (1935),Anna Karenina (1935), andA Tale of Two Cities (1935).
Greta Garbo's contract with MGM supposedly provided that only Selznick or Thalberg could produce her pictures for the studio. When Selznick later announced his departure from MGM, Garbo asked him to stay, offering to allow him the exclusive right to produce her films.[17] Selznick declined the offer.
Selznick longed to be an independent producer with his own studio. In 1935, he realized that goal by leasingRKO'sCulver City studios and back lot, formingSelznick International Pictures, and distributing his films throughUnited Artists. His successes continued with classics such asThe Garden of Allah (1936),The Prisoner of Zenda (1937),A Star Is Born (1937),Nothing Sacred (1937),The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938),The Young in Heart (1938),Made for Each Other (1939),Intermezzo (1939) andGone with the Wind (1939), which remains the highest-grossing film of all time (adjusted for inflation).[7]Gone with the Wind won eightOscars and two special awards. Selznick also won theIrving G. Thalberg Memorial Award that same year.
The following year, he produced his second-Best Picture Oscar winner,Rebecca (1940), the first Hollywood production of British directorAlfred Hitchcock. Selznick had brought Hitchcock over from England, launching the director's American career.Rebecca was Hitchcock's only film to win Best Picture.
AfterRebecca, Selznick closed Selznick International Pictures and took some time off. His business activities included the loan of his contracted artists to other studios, includingAlfred Hitchcock,Ingrid Bergman,Vivien Leigh andJoan Fontaine. He formed The Selznick Studio and returned to producing pictures withSince You Went Away (1944), which he also wrote. He followed that with the Hitchcock filmsSpellbound (1945) andThe Paradine Case (1947), as well asPortrait of Jennie (1948) withJennifer Jones.
He also developed film projects and sold the packages to other producers. Among the movies that he developed but then sold was Hitchcock'sNotorious (1946). In 1949, he co-produced theCarol Reed pictureThe Third Man withAlexander Korda.
Gone with the Wind overshadowed the rest of Selznick's career. Later, he was convinced that he had wasted his life trying to outdo it. A major effort to wasDuel in the Sun (1946), which featured future wife Jennifer Jones in the role of the primary character Pearl. With a huge budget, the film is known for causing moral upheaval[citation needed] because of the then risqué script written by Selznick. And though it was a troublesome shoot with a number of directors, the film would be a major success. The film was the second highest-grossing film of 1947 and was the first movie thatMartin Scorsese saw, inspiring Scorsese's own directorial career.[citation needed]
"I stopped making films in 1948 because I was tired," Selznick later wrote. "I had been producing, at the time, for twenty years....Additionally it was crystal clear that the motion-picture business was in for a terrible beating from television and other new forms of entertainment, and I thought it a good time to take stock and to study objectively the obviously changing public tastes....Certainly I had no intention of staying away from production for nine years."[18] Selznick spent most of the 1950s nurturing the career of his second wife,Jennifer Jones. His last film, the big budget productionA Farewell to Arms (1957) starring Jones andRock Hudson, was ill-received. But in 1954, he ventured into television, producing a two-hour extravaganza calledLight's Diamond Jubilee, which, in true Selznick fashion, made TV history by being telecast simultaneously[19] on all four TV networks:CBS,NBC,ABC, andDuMont.
In 1928, Selznick began an on-again off-again affair withJean Arthur,[20] one of the actresses under contract at Paramount while he was an executive there. Simultaneously he was datingIrene Gladys Mayer, daughter of MGM mogulLouis B. Mayer.
In 1930, Selznick married Mayer and after living in a series of rented houses they moved into an estate inBeverly Hills, California. It was purchased for them by Mayer's father and designed by architectRoland Coate in 1933–1934.[21] They separated in 1945 and divorced in 1948.[22] They had two sons, Jeffrey Selznick (1932–1997) and Daniel Selznick (1936–2024). Daniel, who died in August 2024, would serve as an executive at Universal Pictures for four years and also produced the television mini-seriesBlood Feud andHoover vs. The Kennedys, among others, and theatrical productions suchThe Man with the Perfect Wife.[23]
In 1949, he married actressJennifer Jones, whom he had discovered early in her career and mentored. They had one daughter, Mary Jennifer Selznick (1954–1976), who died by suicide by jumping from a 22nd-floor window in Los Angeles on May 11, 1976.[24]
Selznick was anamphetamine user, and often dictated long, rambling memos to his directors, writers, investors, staff and stars.[25] The documentaryShadowing The Third Man relates that Selznick introducedThe Third Man directorCarol Reed to the use of amphetamines, which allowed Reed to bring the picture in below budget and on schedule by filming nearly 22 hours at a time.
Selznick was aRepublican. On October 18, 1944, the Hollywood Committee, led by Selznick andCecil B. DeMille, held the Hollywood for Dewey Rally in the Los Angeles Coliseum in support of theDewey-Bricker ticket, as well as GovernorEarl Warren of California, who was Dewey's running mate in 1948.[26] The gathering drew 93,000, withLionel Barrymore as the master of ceremonies and short speeches byHedda Hopper andWalt Disney.
Selznick International Pictures employeeAnita Colby warnedShirley Temple to be careful if she "found Selznick in stockings". Temple wrote in her autobiographyChild Star that this gave her "the impression that casual sex could be a condition of employment" with Selznick. When she was 17, he locked Temple in his office and unsuccessfully attempted to rape her. About the incident Temple wrote:
Coming around my side of the desk, he reached and took my hand in his. Glancing down, I saw the telltale stocking feet. Pulling free, I turned for the door, but even more quickly he reached back over the edge of his desk and flicked a switch I had learned from Colby was a remote door-locking device. I was trapped. Like the cartoon of wolf and piglet, once again we circled and reversed directions around his furniture. Blessed with the agility of a young dancer and confronted by an amorous but overweight producer, I had little difficulty avoiding passionate clumsiness.
Jonathan Shields, the lead character in the 1952 filmThe Bad and the Beautiful, was loosely based on Selznick, to the point that Selznick contemplated suing the makers of the film for defamation.[27]
Tony Curtis plays Selznick in the 1980TV movieThe Scarlett O'Hara War.
Ron Berglas appears as Selznick in theTV movieRKO 281 (1999).[28]Toby Leonard Moore plays Selznick in the 2020 filmMank.[29] Both films are dramatizations of the events surrounding the making ofCitizen Kane.
Selznick appears as a character in the second season of the anthology seriesFeud,Capote vs. The Swans.[30] He is portrayed by actor Scott Zimmerman.
Selznick died on June 22, 1965, at age 63 following several heart attacks, and was interred in theForest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. There he joined his older brotherMyron Selznick (who had died in 1944) in the family crypt.
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, David O. Selznick has a star on theHollywood Walk of Fame at 7000 Hollywood Blvd in front of the historic Hollywood Roosevelt hotel.
| Year | Award | Title of work | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1934 | Outstanding Production | Viva Villa! | Nominated |
| 1935 | Outstanding Production | David Copperfield | Nominated |
| 1936 | Outstanding Production | A Tale of Two Cities | Nominated |
| 1937 | Outstanding Production | A Star Is Born | Nominated |
| 1938 | Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award | Nominated | |
| 1939 | Outstanding Production | Gone with the Wind | Won |
| 1939 | Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award | Won | |
| 1940 | Outstanding Production | Rebecca | Won |
| 1944 | Best Motion Picture | Since You Went Away | Nominated |
| 1945 | Best Motion Picture | Spellbound | Nominated |
Media related toDavid O. Selznick at Wikimedia Commons
