Selznick International Pictures


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Selznick International Pictures was a Hollywood motion picture studio. It was founded in 1935 by producer David O. Selznick and investor John Hay "Jock" Whitney after Selznick left Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and leased a section of the RKO Pictures lot in Culver City, California. The studio itself had been built for Pathé Pictures in 1919.

Selznick raised the initial funding of US$400,000 in Los Angeles, with half of that amount coming from his brother Myron Selznick, a Hollywood agent, and the other half from MGM production chief Irving Thalberg and his wife actress Norma Shearer.[1] He raised an additional $300,000 from "small" investors in New York, and then the final $2.4 million from Jock Whitney and his family. Whitney himself became chairman of the board, and Selznick president, of the new company.

Because Whitney and his cousin Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney also owned Pioneer Pictures, an independent studio they formed in 1933, that company was informally merged with Selznick International Pictures in 1936, which assumed Pioneer's contract to make at least six pictures in the new full-color Technicolor process, of which the Whitneys owned a 15 percent share.[2]

Contents

A brief tradition of quality

Selznick intended to produce a few features each year, a plan which he hoped would allow him to be as picky and careful as he liked and to create the best films possible. He said to his company's board in 1935, "There are only two kinds of merchandise that can be made profitably in this business, either the very cheap pictures or the very expensive pictures." Selznick believed, "there is no alternative open to us but to attempt to compete with the very best."[3]

Although Selznick foresaw a production schedule of six to eight features per year, the studio in fact made only two or three per year, due to Selznick's meticulous attention to detail and protracted writing and editing processes. But in its short life, Selznick International Pictures produced two winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture: Gone with the Wind (1939) and Rebecca (1940), and two nominees, A Star Is Born (1937) and Spellbound (1945).

By 1940, Selznick International Pictures was the top-grossing film studio in Hollywood, but without a major studio set-up in which to re-invest his profits, Selznick faced enormous tax problems. That year, to draw down their profits as capital gains, he and the other owners made an agreement with the Internal Revenue Service to liquidate Selznick International within three years, which they did by dividing and selling to each other the company's assets. Jock Whitney and his sister Joan Whitney Payson acquired Gone with the Wind, which they resold at a substantial profit to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1944.[4] At the time of the final dissolution in 1943, three features were in production or pre-production, although they were released in 1944 and 1945.

To complete his obligation to deliver two more pictures to United Artists, Selznick formed David O. Selznick Productions in 1940 at the same studio location. The new company also took over the old company's contracts with individual directors and actors.[5]

Vanguard Films and Selznick Releasing Organization

After the dissolution of Selznick International, Selznick established Vanguard Films, Inc. in 1943 and Selznick Releasing Organization in 1946.[6] Vanguard was created to continue his productions, while Selznick Releasing was made to distribute output by Vanguard. Previously, Vanguard released through United Artists, of which Vanguard owned one-third of its stock. As with Selznick International, Vanguard was located at the RKO studio.

Film library

The rights to the Selznick library have been scattered, as noted in the following timeline.

  • 1943: Jock Whitney sold to Film Classics, Inc. the rights to A Star Is Born and Nothing Sacred (both of which were actually owned by Pioneer Pictures), and the Selznick International productions Little Lord Fauntleroy, Made for Each Other, and The Young in Heart.[7]
  • 1949: Cinecolor Corp. resold the company to Film Classics' officers.[9]
  • 1951: When Eagle Lion Classics collapsed, United Artists acquired its assets.[11]

David O. Selznick retained ownership of The Garden of Allah, The Prisoner of Zenda, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Intermezzo, and Rebecca after the liquidation of Selznick International Pictures.[12] The copyrights to A Star Is Born, Nothing Sacred, and Made for Each Other are now in the public domain, while most of the rest are now owned by ABC (via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, with the DVD rights currently licensed to MGM). The notable exception is Gone with the Wind, which Jock Whitney and his sister sold to MGM in 1944, and was subsequently acquired by Warner Bros. (via its Turner Entertainment division).

Papers and other artifacts of the studio are now part of the David O. Selznick Collection in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin.

Filmography

References

  1. ^ Memo, p. 103.
  2. ^ Because of its length, Gone with the Wind was considered two Technicolor pictures for the purpose of the contract.
  3. ^ Schatz, Thomas (1996). The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era, Owl Books. pp.178. ISBN 0-8050-4666-6. 
  4. ^ Selznick, David O. (2000). Memo from David O. Selznick, Modern Library. pp.321–322. ISBN 0-3757-5531-4. 
  5. ^ "Old Selznick Company Now Just Gone With the Wind", The Washington Post, August 24, 1940, p. 3.
  6. ^ "Screen News Here and in Hollywood", The New York Times, May 20, 1943, p. 27. "Selznick Quits United Artists, Forms New Unit", The Washington Post, Dec. 14, 1946, p. 12.
  7. ^ "Gets 7 Picture Rights", The New York Times, July 19, 1943, p. 21. Whitney also sold Pioneer Pictures' Becky Sharp and Dancing Pirate to Film Classics.
  8. ^ "Cinecolor in Film Deal", The New York Times, Oct. 15, 1947, p. 34.
  9. ^ "Van Johnson Gets Metro Film Lead", The New York Times, June 15, 1949, p. 39.
  10. ^ "Two Movie Concerns Announce Merger", The New York Times, May 22, 1950, p. 29.
  11. ^ "Eagle Lion Is Sold to U.A. Film Firm", The New York Times, April 12, 1951, p. 40.
  12. ^ "Eagle-Lion to Sell Selznick Reissues", The New York Times, Dec. 3, 1948, p. 33. "Selznick Sells 9 Films to Video", The New York Times, Dec. 14, 1955, p. 79.

Further reading

  • Haver, Ronald. (1987). David O. Selznick's Hollywood. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-517-47665-7.
  • Selznick, David O. (2000). Memo from David O. Selznick. New York: Modern Library. ISBN 0-375-75531-4.

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