Word: selznick
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...lore about how some films' most indelible scenes -- say, the final words of A Star Is Born ("Mrs. Norman Maine") or Casablanca ("Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship") -- were the last-minute inspirations of uncredited writers or producers. Or about how David O. Selznick, in the middle of making Gone With the Wind, closed down production and asked writer Ben Hecht to save the picture. Hecht cobbled a few scenes, urged Selznick to adhere more closely to Sidney Howard's original screenplay and departed with $10,000 for a week's work...
BOOKS A great biography of Hollywood's David O. Selznick...
...producer, Thomson's book never wears down the reader either. Partly that's because Thomson is a writer of rare grace as well as a shrewd, knowledgeable and critically astute observer of high Hollywood's golden years. Partly it is because, despite many exasperating sins and shortcomings, David O. Selznick was a curiously likable...
...soft klutz who never exercised anything but his ego, Selznick was the son of one of the industry's pioneer pirates, a high roller who was quickly rolled over by better organized competitors. Thomson hints at a streak of madness in the Selznick line (one brother, Myron, a legendary Hollywood agent, died of alcoholism; another was institutionalized for many years). But in David's case it looked at first like genius. He was head of production at RKO at 30, had his own unit at MGM a year later, his own company four years after that. And he oversaw some...
...notorious failure had a more than usual need to succeed. It is possible that the son-in-law of the mighty head of mighty MGM had one or two things to prove to his tough, smart, neurotic wife, not to mention ever cynical Hollywood. But as Thomson shows, Selznick cannot be pickled in conventional psychological wisdom...