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Lot 132
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Gone With The Wind final shooting script, attributed to cast member
Gone With The Wind final shooting script, attributed to cast member
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Description:

Mitchell Margaret 1900 - 1949 Gone With The Wind final shooting script, attributed to cast member

Mimeographed Manuscript, with front wrapper noting "Selznick International / presents / Gone With The Wind ..." , along with "Final shooting script / January 24, 1939". Screenplay by Sidney Howard, 256 pages, 8.5" x 11". Tightly bound with outer black vinyl wrapper with lower punch hole with small tear. With an 8" x 10" black and white photo of Victor Fleming, overall faded. Accompanied by 2 pages of autographed notes in an unknown hand with the character of "Aunt Pittypat" scripted along the top margin. Manuscript front wrap is present, lacking the rear wrapper. Internal pages near fine with light overall toning.


A fantastic piece of Gone With The Wind memorabilia, this well preserved, large manuscript still maintains the original front wrap, consisting of not only the entire script but additional film and screenplay notations including the expected mannerisms of the actors, their gestures, the camera angles, fade ins and outs and the whereabouts and shots of the camera and crew. This scarce manuscript is lightly annotated with pencil check marks and small handwritten notes indicating the scene numbers. Likely owned by the character of Aunt Pittypat, as the manuscript includes a sheet of handwritten notes, with the scripted character name of "Aunt Pittypat", along the top margin. Aunt Pittypat was played by Laura Hope Crews as the older maiden aunt of Scarlett's first husband, Charles. She was also the aunt of Melanie Hamilton, Scarlett's friend and romantic competitor for the affections of Ashley. The notes include a later accounting of Life Magazine from the year of 1951.

Gone With the Wind, written in 1936 had an interesting film debut. While in publication the screenplay was put out to bid for the purchase of the film rights. One would have thought it would have been grabbed up by Hollywood executives, but in fact it met with mixed interest and fumbled quite a bit before it settled to the purchase by Selznick after rejection by numerous leading executive. Before publication of the novel, several Hollywood executives and studios declined to create a film based on it, including Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalbery at MGM (Metro-Goldwyn Mayer), Pandro Berman at RKO Pictures, and David Selznick of Selznick International Pictures (the company who ultimately purchased the film rights) . Jack Warner liked the story, but Warner Bros's biggest star Bette Davis was uninterested, and 20th Century-Fox did not offer enough money. Selznick changed his mind after his story editor Kay Brown and business partner John Hay Whitney urged him to buy the film rights. In July 1936_ÑÓa month after it was published_ÑÓSelznick bought the rights for $50,000.

The casting of the two lead roles then became equally a complex, two-year endeavor. For the role of Rhett Butler, Selznick wanted Clark Gable from the start, but Gable was under contract to MGM, who never loaned him to other studios. Gary Cooperwas considered, but Samuel Goldwyn_ÑÓto whom Cooper was under contract_ÑÓrefused to loan him out Warner offered a package of Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, and Olivia de Havilland for lead roles in return for the distribution rights. By this time, Selznick was determined to get Gable and eventually struck a deal with MGM. Selznick's father-in-law, MGM chief Louis B. Mayer, offered in August 1938 to provide Gable and $1,250,000 for half of the film's budget but for a high price: Selznick would have to pay Gable's weekly salary, and half the profits would go to MGM while Loew's, Inc_ÑÓMGM's parent company_ÑÓwould release the film.

The complexity of the number of companies it took, and the arrangement to release through MGM meant delaying the start of production until the end of 1938, when Selznick's distribution deal with United Artists concluded. However Selznick's sophisticated business savvy used the delay to continue to revise the script and, more importantly, build publicity for the film by searching for the role of Scarlett and making it a nationwide casting call that interviewed 1,400 unknowns. The effort cost $100,000 and was useless for the film, but created "priceless" publicity.

And that was only the beginning ....

Reducing the intricacies of Gone with the Wind's epic dimensions was a herculean task ... and Howard's first submission was far too long, and would have required at least six hours of film. Fleming, the film's director. was dissatisfied with the script, so Selznick brought in famed writer Ben Hecht to rewrite the entire screenplay within five days. Selznick undertook rewriting the second half himself but fell behind schedule, so Howard returned to work on the script for one week, reworking several key scenes in part two

Elaborate sets were built with much of the on location scenes being photographed in California, mostly in Los Angeles or neighboring Ventura. Tara, the fictional Southern plantation house, existed only as a plywood and papier-mÕ¢chÕ© facade built on the Selznick studio lot. For the burning of Atlanta, new false facades were built in front of the Selznick backlot's many old abandoned sets, and Selznick himself operated the controls for the explosives that burned them down. Sources at the time put the estimated production costs at $3.85 million, making it the second most expensive film made up to that point!

However we all know this ended up being an epic film, released in 1939, again in 1942, 1947, 1954, and 1967. In addition, the film received its world television premiere on the HBO cable network on June 11, 1976, and played on the channel for a total of fourteen times throughout the rest of the month. It made its network television debut in November later that year: NBC paid $5 million for a one-off airing, and it was broadcast in two parts on successive evenings. It became at that time the highest-rated television program ever presented on a single network, watched by 47.5 percent of the households sampled in America, and 65 percent of television viewers, still the record for the highest rated film to ever air on television. In 1978, CBS signed a deal worth $35 million to broadcast the film twenty times over as many years.

One of the most significant screenplays in history. This important , scarce, "Final shooting Script " dated "January 24, 1939" is accompanied by a wonderful black and white photo of the film's director, Victor Fleming. A perfect pairing and a fantastic piece of Gone With the Wind memorabilia.

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