4/26/24
Newsletter #590
The Crack of Dawn
Episode #3 of Selznick, the Netflix limited series, will be called, What Script Are We Shooting? and should actually be episode #2 – previous to Clark Gable having George Cukor shitcanned. David O. Selznick wisely hired Sidney Howard, the 48-year-old, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, as well as a successful screenwriter, who had adapted Dodsworth (1936) for my man, William Wyler, from a lengthy Sinclair Lewis book. Sidney Howard took Margaret Mitchell’s 1,037-page book and turned it into something like a 600-page first draft script. This was sufficient for Selznick to start preproduction, even if those weren’t exactly the lines that would be delivered come production time. He could hire good dialogue writers and fix it.
Selznick did hire several other writers to “fix” the dialogue, one of whom was John Van Druten, but there were others, too. Selznick was picking and choosing lines from several drafts. However, in the spring of 1939, as principal photography neared – the movie had a firm Christmas 1939 release date and there was no pushing it back – David Selznick kind of panicked, spent who-knows-how-much money, and hired the biggest writer in town, Ben Hecht (about whom I’ve written previously), winner of the very first Oscar for “Screen Story” in 1927 — who was in the middle of writing, producing and directing a film — to rewrite the first half of GWTW in one week. Hecht delivered, and the first half of that movie is great. Theoretically, Selznick was going to fix the second half while shooting the first half, but he had no time and he didn’t have Ben Hecht, so he brought back Sidney Howard.
The first half of the movie covers a couple of hundred pages of the book. The second half of the movie covers 800 pages of the book. When I watch Gone with the Wind at this point in my life, I’m done at the intermission. Scarlett, covered in dirt, starving, finds a turnip, devours it, then proclaims to the heavens, “As God it my witness, I will never be hungry again!”
Anyway, the movie was made – 140 days of principal photography, which is a lot. There was, of course, Writer’s Guild arbitration, as there often is, and it must be resolved by the time the credits are made, and Sidney Howard got sole credit, which isn’t surprising since he was the original writer hired, who did the most work. I don’t know how much money Ben Hecht got, nobody does, but he was worth it. With the first half of the movie being great, along with the last scene of Rhett finally, finally leaving, and not giving a damn, that was enough. The movie delivered. Yes, there was two whole hours of bullshit, but no one cared – it was spectacular, looked great, and Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh were perfect.
That summer as Gone with the Wind was slowly released across the country and was a bigger and bigger sensation, Sidney Howard returned to his farm in Massachusetts, where he actually farmed. One summer day – August 23, 1939, as a matter of fact – while attempting to start his two-and-a-half-ton tractor, Howard was cranking the engine from in front, when suddenly the engine started and was apparently in gear. At 48 years old, Sidney Howard was crushed between the tractor and the barn wall.
Sidney Howard was posthumously awarded the 1939 Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for Gone with the Wind.
That’s episode #3, which should really be #2.