Word: selznicks
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...returned to Hollywood and to immediate offers from Warner, Lester Cowan, M.G.M. and David 0. Selznick. But Selznick alone met her terms-willing as she was to swap careers at a discount. He agreed to pay her $250 a week for the first six months, $350 (her present salary) for the second, plus an expense account which includes her clothes, a titanic item,* and everything else that has anything remotely to do with business...
...care & feeding of females - in this case Selznick actresses - is one of Colby's most important functions. Joan Fontaine, for instance, has long felt that Selznick has exploited her. Colby, if she does not cajole Miss Fontaine into coming to terms about a new contract, will at least set up the very best possible arrangement for her boss. Selznick meanwhile will know exactly what is going on in Miss Fontaine's mind (unless Miss Fontaine is mighty careful) by virtue of sitting in vicariously on the kind of female conversations which generally take place in the powder room...
...explains Colby, "to make these gals catch on fast, and to save them the grief and uncertainty." With poised, older stars like Bergman and Fontaine the problem is the same in essence but different in approach. With Jennifer Jones the problem is more immediate and pressing. Selznick has tied up an awful lot of money in her. Colby is his one-woman finishing school; she tutors Selznick stars and stock players as if she were a combination of Hattie Carnegie, Elizabeth Arden, Emily Post, John Powers and the Warden at Vassar...
Colby does the preliminary planning on clothes for every picture, making sketches which give the designer the gist of what Selznick is looking for. ( She had five years of art study; Bud Counihan is still convinced her real talent lies in art.) She has well in mind, before she starts, what each star can wear: "Bergman is something so beautiful you must play it down. You cannot overpower Ingrid with clothes." "Make Fontaine smart, feminine and refined." "Keep Shirley looking sweet sixteen with soft hair, pigtails and girlish pinafores...
...with her beauty and renown she does not go back to acting, she declares: "I'm perfectly happy now. I know everybody and I'm recognized in the business world. I don't have to pose for cheesecake and I don't"-unless David O. Selznick, or Hollywood itself, be taken for one-"have to sit on elephants...