Tom Barnes's Blog: Tom's 'RocktheTower' Blog - Posts Tagged "david"

Let’s go to the Movies
Part Five
The Making of Gone With the Wind
During that same time period a fight was brewing between David Selznick and Jack Warner. A screenplay about the Civil War had been floating around Hollywood for some time prior to the purchase of Gone With the Wind by Selznick International but had not sold.
However soon after Selznick announced his intention to make Gone With the Wind, the earlier screenplay found a home at Warner Brothers. The aptly named Jezebel was announced by Warner Brothers to star Betty Davis and Selznick was furious.
Hollywood is known for copycat films made in order to capitalize on some aspect of an earlier successful film. This time it was before the cameras rolled on GWTW although the sky-high book sales might have prompted Warner’s actions.
The Jezebel film shadowed some GWTW scenes, but one in particular was egregious in Selznick’s mind and he wrote to set Warner straight. ‘This scene is lifted practically bodily out of Gone With the Wind in which it is an important story point leading to Rhett Butler’s entire behavior during the war.’
In the final version of Jezebel there remained several scenes that almost mirrored scenes out of Gone With the Wind. However, the one dealing with Rhett Butler’s character had been removed.
Following the flap over Jezebel’s and GWTW look-alike scene Selznick got back to work on his script. To give you an idea about Selznick’s approach to converting a popular book into a movie, here’s an exchange captured in some of his earlier memo’s between Selznick and Alfred Hitchcock.
Hitchcock’s film writing abilities had preceded his arrival in America and Selznick asked him to work up a treatment on Daphne du Maurier’s book Rebecca.
Hitchcock turned in a story line that had little to do with book, and not at all what Selznick wanted to do with the film. He told Hitchcock in no uncertain terms that he wanted his film to reflect the story line laid out in the book otherwise thousands of avid Rebecca readers would not look kindly on the film.
Selznick and Hitchcock eventually worked out their differences, apparently to everyone’s satisfaction, because Hitchcock came to America and not only worked on the screenplay but directed the film.
The first line in Variety’s review of Rebecca sums it up. ‘Picture is noteworthy for its literal translation of Daphne du Maurier’s novel to the screen, presenting all of its somberness and tragedy of the book.’
(To be continued)

Another part of ‘The Story Behind Gone With The Wind’
By Sally Trippett Rains author of ‘The Making of a Classic.’
Creative Book Publishers International
In a time when women run for both president and vice-president of the United States it is no surprise when a woman does something exemplary, but in the 1930's for Selznick to rely on Kay Brown's advice so heavily was a rarity. Selznick was a genius though, and he kept several strong women in his employ. He also put stock in a young female author who had worked in a newspaper and then written a novel about the Civil War. His most important employee though, was his executive assistant Marcella Rabwin. She was involved in every aspect of Gone With The Wind. She was with Selznick when he got to work and she did not go home until he left the office, which sometimes was in the wee hours of the morning.
In order to produce the length of film that would keep the audience’s attention Selznick knew he was going to have to take some of the people and events out of the book. He felt if he kept as much to Margaret Mitchell’s dialog viewers would forgive him for the omissions. He went through several writers and directors, but Marcella Rabwin was the constant and was there through it all. As his executive assistant, at the office Rabwin entertained Louis B. Mayer and other top movie executives who came to see Selznick. She provided coffee to drink or a shot of bourbon, whichever was necessary at the time. She was a sounding board to the boss, and had a shoulder for those to cry on who were frustrated with him. She served as counselor to his wife, Irene; a part-time nanny to his children; a traveling companion to Selznick and necessary part of the studio’s daily life. “People turned to her,” said Ann Rutherford, the actress who played Careen O’Hara. “ David (Selznick) valued her judgment.”
“Gone With The Wind was the finest motion picture, the most complete and perfect motion picture ever made,” said Marcella Rabwin, in a speech. “But it was utter chaos putting it together.” “I was very close to Mr. Selznick,” Marcella Rabwin said. “People always said, ‘what did you do?’ and I say, ‘anything he didn’t have time for.’ I was involved in every phase of the production of his films from the beginning when you bought the thing to the time when it was finished and you could breathe again.” (Continued next week)
Writers Notebook:
The latest Trill on tne internet is called Twitter.
Twitter is a social network that is based on brevity, you communicate in a series of short blogs each 140 characters in length.
Subjects are wide ranging and of all the reading about Twitter I’ve done, so far, I have yet to find a non geek that can explain how it all works, or how when it’s perfected it will work.
I suspect the kinks will get worked out soon and if you have a mind to Twitter you also need to think in a kind of shorthand in order to get much into you 140 unit space.
Screenplay writers have already dealt with that problem by finding ways to pitch their stories in a two or three line presentation called a logline.
Wendy Moon wrote an online piece a few years back and her words are still valid. She said, ‘A logline is the most critical thing you’ll write…it can dead end a great script and can get the worst script in the world read. You have about two or three sentences – about 25-35 words total, to convince someone to request the script…’
She used a logline describing ‘Schindler’s List’ as an example.
‘A playboy manufacturer rescues 1,100 Jews from certain death. Appalled by atrocities in Germany, he hoodwinks the Nazi Brass and converts his factory into a refuge for Jews.’ Based on Oscar Schindler’s true story.

Study that logline for form and brevity and you’ll Twitter better.

Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com

Let’s Go to the Movies

Selznick and Sam Goldwyn Not on Same Page
During the month of February 1938 Selznick and Sidney Howard were working hard on a script that would use every prominent line possible from the book.
Overall film length was a concern, but they hoped to have a script, that would meet their expectations as to content and running time, ready when cameras rolled. Selznick was so concerned with the overall length that he admonished Cukor to be careful not to add extra lines during the shooting process. Those line changes at the time might give the actors something fresh to work with, however in the long run they would be counter productive as they would end up adding dialogue and as a consequence too much to the overall length of the film.
Gary Cooper was high on Selznick’s list for the role of Rhett Butler and he was trying to put a deal together with Sam Goldwyn that would have United Artist distribute the film – but only as a package that included Gary Cooper. Sam Goldwyn was traveling to Europe and left on his trip before Selznick got any kind of agreement. And as a consequence Gary Cooper was taken off the number one prospect list to play Rhett Butler.
However, the concern over losing Cooper was short lived. The search teams out looking for Scarlett and supporting actors were being peppered with questions by book fans that were asking for Clark Gable. As the chorus grew louder the press picked up the fans enthusiasm and it soon became obvious that Gable was the public choice.
Selznick had not overlooked Gable, but in the early going he had little luck in making a deal with MGM for the loan of their biggest star. It was also known to Hollywood insiders that Gable didn’t want to be the stand-alone star in the film in case it was a dud. And secondly he didn’t want to do a Southern accent.
Of course Louis B. Mayer head of MGM might have something to say on the matter. And sometime in May 1938 Mayer posed the idea to Selznick to allow MGM to buy the property from Selznick International and produce the picture at MGM. The positive element in that proposal was the certainty that Clark Gable would play Rhett Butler and satisfy public demand.
David Selznick gave Mayer’s offer considerable thought, but after talking it over with Jock Whitney, the original champion of the film, Selznick said no.
Of course MGM had opened the door to possible negotiations and within a week they began to work on a deal. Louis B. Mayer had mentioned two of the most important issues in his original proposition to buy the film, Gable and distribution.
At the time those talks were going on between Selznick and Mayer the public was growing more vocal in its demand that Gable to play Rhett Butler. And in the end they got their wish because with the help of Jock Whitney securing more financing a deal was struck where MGM would loan Gable to Selznick International along with a million and a quarter dollars and distribution rights. Selznick International would in turn give up fifty percent of the films profit. A terrible deal on the surface, but the finance situation being what it was with Selznick, he likely figured half a loaf was better than none.
(To be continued)

Another part of ‘The Story Behind Gone With The Wind’
By Sally Trippett Rains author of ‘The Making of a Classic.’
Creative Book Publishers International
(Continued from last week)
“I was very close to Mr. Selznick,” Marcella Rabwin said. “People always said, ‘what did you do?’ and I say, ‘anything he didn’t have time for.’ I was involved in every phase of the production of his films from the beginning when you bought the thing to the time when it was finished and you could breathe again.” According to her (Marcella Rabwin) the film cost “four million, eighty-five thousand, seven hundred and ninety dollars.” Selznick’s original plan was for a movie that lasted 2 ½ hours and cost about two million. At that time it was the most expensive film ever made or even imagined. As noted by Tom Barnes, Selznick had originally turned away from buying the rights to Margaret Mitchell’s very famous book, but his money-man Jock Whitney--urged on by Kay Brown-- told him that if Selznick did not buy it, then Whitney was going to. “We had no idea of the enormous task ahead of us when we took it on,” said Marcella Rabwin. “That book (Gone With The Wind) had become such a Bible to so many people---there were 20 million copies of the book sold in the first year. The first time we ran it as a consecutive piece of work it was five hours, and I didn’t know how he was going to cut it. Every minute of it was a beauty but still he had to get it down to what it was; 3 hours and 45 minutes.” The year 2009 marks the 70th Anniversary of Gone With The Wind's movie premiere in Atlanta, Georgia. Author Sally Tippett Rains has interviewed over 70 people involved with the movie including actors, historians, and other authors. She was fortunate enough to work with one of Margaret Mitchell's cousins who has a scrapbook full of stories from her own family. Many of the stories that had been passed down from Mitchell's relatives who lived through the Civil War were similar to stories in Gone With The Wind. In her upcoming book The Making Of A Classic, Margaret Mitchell and Gone With The Wind. Rains gives insight into how Mitchell may have come to write about her various characters and stories. She worked with Tom Barnes on a chapter where there was a cross-over from one of his books, Doc Holliday's Road To Tombstone with Gone With The Wind. It seems Doc Holliday was a cousin to Margaret Mitchell. He had a special relationship with another of her cousins, Mattie Holliday (who was also his cousin.) Barnes' research tells him it was love, but it was unrequited, for he left to go out West. According to Barnes' book, after the Gunfight at OK Corral she realized he was never coming back. She joined the convent and changed her name to Sister Mary Melanie and she was called Sister Melanie. Was it a coincidence that there were at least two storylines which may have come from this Mitchell family story. There was a woman named Melanie (Melanie Wilkes)who married her cousin (Ashley); and in another part of the book, a memory of Scarlett's mother Ellen falling for her cousin, who left for the "west." Barnes has researched his book for many years and stands by his story.
Writers Notebook:
Maxwell Perkins, one of America’s best-known editors worked for Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York and edited works of such famous writers as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolf. Perkins wrote in answer to a letter, received from a young man in the Military, regarding the active pursuit of a writing career had this advice for the young man. ‘As to perhaps a couple of years in college, I should think that might be a great advantage, in the general sense, but don’t try to learn about writing there. Learn something else. Learn about writing from reading. That’s the right way to do it. But then it can only be done by those who have eyes and ears, and by seeing and listening. Very few of the great writers had that formal education, and many of them never mastered spelling or grammar. They got their vocabulary by reading and hearing. But the way they teach literature and writing in college is harmful…’
Writing courses have changed a lot since Perkins made those remarks, however much of his advice is still valid. Being a good observer and developing good reading habits will likely take you farther along the path to a writing career than anything else.
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com

Let’s Go to the Movies
Part 7
The summer of ‘38

From late March, when the deal for Gary Cooper fell through, until mid August when MGM signed an agreement for Clark Gable to play Rhett Butler, much of Selznick International’s pre production work on Gone With the Wind was slowed to a crawl. Of course that didn’t relieve any of the pressure on Selznick himself because other pictures took much of his time. He also had a couple of worrisome problems that required his attention, one was the GWTW script and the other was the film’s director George Cukor.
Cukor had apparently gone over the line refusing assignments to one picture after another. And it was that particular annoyance that caused Selznick to begin looking at Cukor as expendable to the production of Gone With the Wind. Considering long term and big money agreements with directors Selznick expected some loyalty and flexibility regarding picture assignments and he wasn’t getting that from Cukor.
With that in mind Selznick began to look around at possible replacements. MGM directors Jack Conway and Victor Fleming were both mentioned, but no preference was given at that time.

In the early planning stages of GWTW there was some talk of using black and white film, however, by mid summer of 1938 everyone was focused on Technicolor and who would be the best cameraman to shoot the picture. There were many top cameramen to draw from but not all of them had knowledge and experience in Technicolor. Several men under consideration were Hal Rosson, Oliver Marsh, and Ray June at MGM and Charlie Lang at Paramount. However, the possible front-runner for that position might have been Tony Gaudio mentioned in one of Selznick’s memos when he said, ‘Tony Gaudio’s work on Robin Hood was, in my opinion the best photographic job in color that has yet been done.’
And while those were major parts to the production of GWTW, getting a workable shooting script in place before cameras rolled was still the number one priority. Selznick needed some rest and decided to take a short working vacation in Bermuda. He hoped to be joined there by Sidney Howard, whose screenplay they were working from, along with Margaret Mitchell as a kind of on scene consultant. As it turned out they both declined his offer to join him and at the last minute Selznick chose Jo Swerling to work with him in Bermuda.
When the short working vacation was over Selznick returned to New York, still not satisfied with the script. At that time he put out a call for writers, he wanted Oliver Garrett to work on continuity and mentioned several writers he thought might be good for dialogue Robert Sherwood, Stark Young, James Boyd and F. Scott Fitzgerald were among them.
At that point in time as regards to casting -- of the four major players only Clark Gable was set for the film. There were too many candidates for Scarlett to even try to organize a list; in fact you might come just as close to a Scarlett by throwing darts at the pages of a Hollywood phone book.
Selznick ran hot and cold on Leslie Howard for the Ashley role, although some of that negativity was likely posturing for the benefit of Howard’s agent in order to get a better price.
The role of Melanie would be simple if Warner Brothers would play ball. Selznick wanted Olivia de Havilland but Warner Brothers was reluctant to loan out one of their stars for a secondary role.
(To be continued)

Before the film ‘Gone With the Wind ‘ there was the book:
And before the book there were lives and legends. Lenora Smalley makes the connection in her review of ‘Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone.’

“Who would have ever thought the legend of Doc Holliday could be connected in any way to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind.
When Doc Holliday went west after he discovered he had tuberculosis… He left behind a sweetheart who thought he would return after he was cured…
During his incredible research into the life of Doc Holliday, Tom Barnes discovered that this sweetheart, besides being a cousin of Doc Holliday was a distant cousin of Margaret (Peggy) Mitchell. This beautiful girl, Mattie Holliday, wrote letters to Doc for a number of years before giving up and becoming a nun in the order of Sisters of Mercy. If you read the letters, which appear in this book, you will know almost immediately which of the main characters of Gone With the Wind was inspired by Mattie Holliday.”

Writers Notebook:
Fiction and nonfiction:
Nonfiction is a term loosely used to describe a factual happening or event. But is it all fact? No. During the recreation of actual events fiction techniques are often employed, and when those techniques are used today they are called creative non-fiction. For example – one of the most famous nonfiction books in the English language is Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood,’ a book filled with passages of pure fiction. There are no clear-cut rules that state how far writers of nonfiction may legitimately go into the area of fiction. And while the ivory tower crowd mull over the changing rules of the English language, non fiction writers that feel a need to stray too far into fiction might keep Television’s famous cop Joe Friday’s admonition in mind – ‘Just the facts, ma’am.’

Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com

Let’s Go to the Movies: Part 8
Atlanta Burning

A back lot face-lift, under the direction of William Cameron Menzies, was moving at a rapid pace putting new facades on old sets in order to simulate Atlanta buildings during the period of the Civil War.
All this activity was aimed at one short scene to be shot by seven Technicolor cameras photographing doubles for the characters of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara in medium and long shots against the background of Atlanta burning. The timing of the burn was necessitated in order to clear the area and allow for construction of Tara, the Wilkes mansion and other necessary sets to be used when shooting the film.
The fire sequence was shot on December 10, 1938.
Here are a few things David Selznick had to say about the fire sequence. Just hours after the fire was out he sent a memo to Jock Whitney. ‘You have missed a great thrill. Gone With the Wind has been started. Shot key fire scenes at 8:20 tonight, and judging by how they looked to the eye they are going to be sensational.’
Selznick wrote to his wife Irene in New York and said, ‘Saturday night I was greatly exhilarated by the fire sequence. It was one of the biggest thrills I have had out of making pictures…’
A day or two after the fires scene Selznick wrote a general information memo: ‘Before my brother, Myron, Hollywood’s leading agent, brought Laurence Olivier and Miss Leigh over to the set to see the shooting of the burning of Atlanta I had never seen her. When he introduced her to me the flames were lighting up her face and Myron said: I want you to meet Scarlett O’Hara. I took one look and knew that she was right, at least right as far as her appearance at least right as far as my conception as how Scarlett O’Hara looked…’
The surprising arrival of Vivian Leigh on the fire set that night, and meeting David Selznick gave her not only the proper lighting but also immediate dark horse status in the race for Scarlett. At that point in time that huge number of Scarlett contenders had been winnowed down to four Paulette Goddard, Jean Arthur, Joan Bennett and Vivian Leigh.
George Cukor was then given one full day for each of the final candidates to test in three different scenes taken from the GWTW script.
(To be continued)

Another Take on Atlanta Burning.

McDonough Road, Jonesboro and the night Atlanta burned were all part of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. They also had a place in a story I was researching and writing, “The Life and Times of John Henry Holliday.” The scene I was working on took place at Jonesboro on the night Atlanta burned and one of the characters involved was Philip Fitzgerald, a great uncle of Mattie Holliday John Henry’s romantic interest in the story.
The longer I worked on the Jonesboro scenes, with their foreboding sense of war, the more I was convinced that there was a connection between the Holliday story and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. However, that conviction was based on rumor, hearsay and my own intuition rather than fact. Rumor had it that the Melanie character in Gone With the Wind was named after Sister Mary Melanie a real live character in my Holliday Story.
But I needed some facts if I ever expected to nail down the rumor. I had an idea the film or the making of the film GWTW might shed some light on the subject. I had read David Selznick’s Memo, a book that consisted of memos written during the best years of Selznick's motion picture producing career. Maybe it was there in Memo and I had just missed it. So I reread that 110-page section dealing with the making of the film, which included everything from purchase, to casting and production, to the gala premier in Atlanta. And while I didn’t find a connection I did notice something during that second reading that I hadn’t seen earlier. It turned out to be a negative; and in fact it was what wasn’t there that got my attention. There wasn’t a thing in those pages that indicated that Selznick had included Margaret Mitchell in the loop of his memo recipients. I am quite sure that the producer’s natural instinct would have been a desire to discuss, with the original writer, some of his problems of putting the story onto the screen. But there was nothing there to indicate any direct contact, an omission I could not ignore. I questioned several people that might have known, but got no answers. A day or two later I heard from a third party source that Selznick did contact Ms. Mitchell by way of his New York representative Kay Brown. The story I got was that Ms. Mitchell had simply and firmly declined most of' his efforts by justly saying, ‘I’ve sold it and want nothing to do with the making of the film.’ But that wasn’t entirely true because there were certain things she did not hesitate to talk about while others set up an immediate barrier. The most telling example of this can be found in Richard Harwell’s book about the writing of the screenplay for GWTW.
On page 22 he relates a telephone conversation between Kay Brown in New York and Ms. Mitchell in Atlanta. During that talk, Ms. Mitchell quite freely talks about a scene with Belle Watling and Rhett Butler. They talk about why the scene would not be true to the book or the era as reflected by copy they were discussing. They also talk about other characters in the book and screenplay. However, the following page gives us a far different picture of openness when Mr. Selznick asked for a bit of help with the introduction of Melanie. At that point there was total silence on the part of the authoress.
I was troubled by the situation though and kept asking myself, why would a writer refuse to talk about an extension of her work? I began to think, was it possible that she didn’t write certain parts of the story and as a consequence was afraid to have Selznick asking questions?
That wasn’t likely I thought, but it had to be something. And that rumor floating around Griffin about the Doc Holliday story connection to Gone With the Wind was persistent.
(To be continued)

Writers Notebook
Last week we talked about fiction vs. nonfiction and used Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’ as an illustration. I looked back in my files and discovered the genesis of his nonfiction style used ‘In Cold Blood.’ It came from Capote’s observations and his natural inclination to write down, as would a reporter or journalist, what he saw. It was a kind of ‘… reporting – style of seeing and hearing that would later seriously influence me, though I was unaware of it then…’
So it appears that it was all a natural progression of Truman Capote’s writing style.

Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com

Final Four: Clark Gable, Vivian Leigh, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland
Let’s Go to the Movies
Part 9
Final tests for Scarlett
Never letting an opportunity go to waste Selznick instructed that the characters playing opposite Scarlett in all the tests be cast in a way that would highlight and help to narrow the search for Ashley and Mammy.
Of course Leslie Howard was still the likely choice for Ashley but as a backup Selznick instructed his casting people to use Melvyn Douglas, Ray Milland, Richard Carlson and Shepard Strudwick to alternate working opposite Scarlett in the four tests.
There were at least three people vying for the Mammy role that would do the same in her scenes with Hattie McDaniel, Hattie Noel and Louise Beavers.
During late December and early January the Selznick Casting department probably put out more calls for lead and feature players than did Central Casting for extras during that same period.
And while negotiations were going on behind the scenes for several leads and feature players the only ones mentioned by Selznick during the period was in a note to Kay Brown in New York about the casting of Scarlett’s mother Ellen. The candidates for that role were Lillian Gish And Cornelia Otis Skinner in New York and Barbara O’Neil in California.
The clock was running out on an arbitrary date set by David Selznick for general photography to begin on GWTW. As I said earlier negotiations were ongoing, but the only principals assigned to the picture at that time were Clark Gable, George Cukor, the director who was on shaky grounds and Bill Menzies, the art director putting in long days and turning out beautiful sets.
Following Sidney Howard’s refusal to accompany Selznick to Bermuda and work on the GWTW screenplay Selznick turned to Oliver Garrett for help. Within a week Selznick commissioned Garrett to do a complete rewrite of the Howard work. In several respects it turned out to be a good move since Garrett was a good storyteller and his continuity was excellent. Howard’s script was strong on individual scene development and with Selznick’s input, in the end; they essentially merged the two screenplays into one.
During the first week of January 1939 the selection of the four major cast members had been made. However press releases announcing the cast had not gone out pending final contract agreements and signings. The decision had been made that Clark Gable, Vivian Leigh, Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland would be the marquee headliners and stars of Gone With the Wind.
David Selznick was not only one of Hollywood’s top producers he was great in another field, public relations and showmanship. What PT Barnham was to ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ David Selznick was to Hollywood movies. During the year of 1938 Selznick used the whole country as one giant pool of talent aimed at a casting call for Gone With the Wind. Of course the characters drawing the most attention was Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler. Selznick’s well-publicized casting calls were an ongoing campaign to promote a motion picture that was already being talked about as the greatest picture of the century.
All that being said, the first two weeks in January 1939 casting for Gone With the Wind was virtually complete. The only two characters of any consequence not cast were Belle Watling, Rhett’s friend the madam, and Frank Kennedy, Scarlett’s second husband.
On Friday January 13, 1939 the David Selznick International Pictures publicity department began churning out press releases reflecting members of the cast and crew that would be involved in the making of Gone With the Wind.
(To be continued)

Gone With the Wind and Doc Holliday Connection:
(Continued)
Perhaps Margaret Mitchell’s papers could shed some light on the subject, so the next day I drove over to the Atlanta Historical Society. I said to the lady behind the counter, “I understand Margaret Mitchell’s papers are here. Is there any way that I could take a look at them?” The lady smiled. “They were here, but recently they were moved to The University of Georgia and at the present time they can’t be seen.”
That wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but I figured they might have something so I asked hopefully, “Do you have anything at all on Ms. Mitchell?”
“Very little, but we do have one small folder. Would you like to see it?”
I nodded. The lady produced a folder with three or four pieces of paper inside. There was one full page that was in Margaret Mitchell’s own hand, and it was dated April 6, 1937.
Misc. details of interest:
Maternal great grandfather - Philip Fitzgerald born 1798 at Lagistown Parish of Nagraphin, Tipperary Co. Ireland.
Died 1880 Clayton Co. Georgia. Married near Columbus Ga.
Fraternal great grandmother - Eleanor McGhan, born Locust Grove, Taliaferro Co. Ga. in 1818, died Clayton Co. Ga. in 1893.
Call it fate or whatever you like, I could not have asked for better luck. That scrap of paper was the key to what I had been looking for. Why Margaret Mitchell didn't wish to discuss her characters with David Selznick. Autobiographical! She simply had not wanted it known how close her story came to true life and her own family heritage.
The name Philip Fitzgerald jumped off the page and into its proper place, he was Margaret Mitchell’s great grandfather and Sister Mary Melanie’s great uncle. My cast of characters taken from research began to merge with “Gone With the Wind’s” fictional characters. Of course Sister Mary Melanie was not a fictional character she was, in fact, Margaret Mitchell’s cousin.
It was common knowledge in Atlanta that Ms. Mitchell paid regular visits to Sister Melanie, at St Joseph’s Infirmary located on Peachtree Street, most every Saturday afternoon.
Margaret Mitchell’s research abilities and dedication to the subject led her to interview just about every living Civil War Veteran in the state of Georgia. She spent countless weeks at Atlanta’s Carnegie Library and many hours listening to and making notes as Sister Melanie tells about life during those early years.
No one in the Atlanta literary community called her Margaret it was always Peggy Mitchell. And from what I had heard about that petite lady the name Peggy seemed to fit very nicely.
(To be continued.)

Writers Notebook:

From Hemingway’s ‘A Moveable Feast.’

‘My Old Man’ and ‘Up in Michigan’ were the only two manuscripts he had left …’when everything I had written was stolen in Hadley’s suitcase that time at the Gare de Lyon when she was bringing the manuscripts down to me at Lausanne as a surprise…’
Hemingway was devastated by the loss of that material, but in his effort to recapture some of his spirit and begin writing again, he started with …’a very simple story called ‘Out of Season’ and I had omitted the real end of it which was that the old man hanged himself. This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted it and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make the people feel something more than they understood.’

Now whether Hemingway pursued that exact theory or not, I don’t know. Nonetheless he did believe in leaving out anything that didn’t move the story line forward. For example, he once talked about that subject and said that in his short story ‘The Killers’ he left out the whole city of Chicago. Now there was a good reason for that omission and I suspect there are others.

Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com

Let’s Go to the Movies
Part 10
Quiet on the set – Roll Camera -- Action

January 26, 1939
Lowell V. Calvert
Selznick International Pictures
New York, NY
‘Started shooting “Gone With the Wind” today.’
David O. Selznick

Technicolor was still in its infancy in 1939. All the technical people cinematographers, camera operators, lighting, costume designers, set designers were all making the transition from black and white film to color. David Selznick was a tough taskmaster and didn’t make it easy for anyone working on GWTW. From the time he saw the first rushes and heard grumbling coming from the set Selznick was displeased with the color coordination of sets costumes and lighting. And on the third day of shooting he issued a memo to all concerned that the final word about color coordination would come from Bill Menzies.
Then within the first two weeks of production Selznick’s partner MGM began pushing him to pick up the pace. And while he didn’t want to admit it, he had to agree with them, the production pace was moving along at a crawl.
Director George Cukor was taking his time in rehearsals and setups and was resentful of Selznick’s hands on producer’s methods regarding script changes as well as his on-set presence.
David Selznick sensed a catastrophe in the making and decided to take drastic measures – call a temporary halt to production and change directors.
In a memo dated February 13, 1939 to Jock Whitney Selznick made this statement: ‘The following is being released immediately: George Cukor and David Selznick last night jointly issued the following statement: “As a result of a series of disagreements between us over many of the individual scenes of Gone With the Wind, we have mutually decided that the only solution is for a new director to be selected at as early a date as is practical.”

There is no paper trail to give us a time line on Selznick’s decision-making process as to when he resolved to remove Cukor. Of course Selznick had known for months that the situation was going to be testy at best. But exactly when he started his search for a new director we just don’t know. However, the fact that within two or three days after announcing Cukor’s departure Selznick was fully engaged and talking over GWTW problems with Victor Fleming.
Fleming was a top MGM director and was just finishing work on ‘The Wizard of Oz’ when he was tapped for the GWTW assignment.
Something that might have played a part in the change of director’s and the Fleming choice might have been Clark Gable. With out a doubt Gable wanted a man’s director and likely touted Victor Fleming to Selznick.
‘Gone With the Wind’ resumed filming on Monday February 27th with the scene between the Tarleton twins and Scarlett on the front porch of Tara, and contains Scarlett’s memorable line ‘Fiddle le dee. War, War, War. This war talk is spoiling all the fun at every party…’
Then they went on to reshoot every scene Cukor had filmed during his tenure.
A minor problem, while Cukor was still working on the film, grew along with the pace demanded by Victor Fleming. Cinematographer Lee Garmes was having problems with
the Technicolor staff in the area of shadowing dark scenes. Several scenes that demanded dark tones came out too dark and would have to be reshot.
Selznick decided to make another change, but this time there would be no halt in production to accommodate the change.
Ten days after resuming production under the direction of Victor Fleming, Selznick decided to hire Oscar nominee Ernest (Ernie) Haller to replace Lee Garmes as cinematographer and not a shot was delayed or missed as Haller took his position behind the camera and continued the filming of ‘Gone With the Wind.
(To be continued)

Gone With the Wind and Doc Holliday Connection
Continued
I picked up a copy of Gone With the Wind and spent the weekend reading it from cover to cover. By the time I finished the book I had marked a dozen or more scenes of interest, most of which had a Savannah, Georgia location. Mattie Holliday had attended St. Vincent’s Academy in Savannah and that was where she eventually entered the nunnery and took the name Sister Mary Melanie.
In GWTW Ellen Robillard, later to become Ellen O’Hara, was part of a prominent Savannah family.
Referring to my notes I began reading where Pork tells Gerald O'Hara that he needs a wife. The little Irishmen seemed to agree and they travel from Tara to Savannah on a mission to remedy that need. I expect I had read less than a page of that scene when it all began to come back to me. And once I finished reading it the connection was perfectly clear. There was no question in my mind that John Henry Holliday was Margaret Mitchell’s “wild buck” Philippe Robillard. And using Ellen Robillard as the real character and Ashley’s Melanie to carry the name was absolutely brilliant. It’s obvious that Sister Melanie told cousin Margaret the whole story about her relationship with John Henry. (Doc Holliday)
(Continued next week)

Writers Notebook:
A piece of dialogue between Josh Logan and Maxwell Anderson from Logan’s out of print ‘My Up and Down, In and Out Life.’
‘It was working closely with Max Anderson – a man dedicated to the craft of playwriting – that taught me something that has been useful to me all my professional life. One day he casually mentioned that he had arrived at a theory for making a play a hit.’
My ears perked up. “You mean any play?”
“Any literate play, yes. I’ve made a study of what kind of story an audience accepts and what kind it rejects. I set out to discover if there is a single element in success that isn’t in failures. I started by examining my own plays. They were after all conceived by the same talent, yet some survived and the rest died quickly. Why? I searched for my answers in Aristotle and I reread Shakespeare, the great Greek masters and hit plays of the present. Eventually, I arrived at my little personal rule. I’m going to write about it some day and I’ll send it to you.”
“Max, you’re going to tell me now! What is it?”

Now this is called a cliffhanger – I’ll tell you Max’s rule next week.

Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com

Let’s go to the Movies

David Selznick had some sleepless nights mulling over his vision for the final cut of his Gone With the Wind film. Not only did it involve the length of the picture it involved the grand scope of every frame. Could they make a larger than life picture within the confines of their back lot? The answer was a resounding NO.
Selznick tackled the problem and alluded to a partial answer in a memo dated March 9, 1939 directed to Ray Klune, his production manager,
Selznick complained about the exteriors being shot outside Tara and compared them to other films such as ‘Robin Hood’ and ‘The Great Waltz,’ and he wasn’t pleased with what he saw…’Frankly, I’m now terribly sorry we didn’t build Tara on location…I’d like you and Mr. Menzies to get together immediately to make sure that out remaining exteriors, such as the exterior of Twelve Oaks, and the shot in which Gerald talks about the land being the only thing that matters, have real beauty instead of looking like B picture film…This is quite apart from the photography – I don’t see how the greatest cameraman in the world could get much beauty out of what we have given him for the exterior of Tara. (I am not speaking now of the set itself but of the landscaping, the line of trees etc…Incidentally, I would also like you to consider whether your second unit should go immediately to Georgia, or any other place, to pick up some shots for the opening sequence…’
Well, that memo sparked an increase in location scouting and eventually second unit film crews moved off the Selznick Studio back lot and began shooting GWTW’s exterior scenes in the great outdoors.
James Fitzpatrick (‘Travel Talks’ short subject producer) was hired as a second unit director and dispatched to Georgia to get an authentic sense of the land and the Georgia environment.
Second unit camera’s cast and crew’s traveled from Culver City to locations at Agoura Hills, Big Bear, Calabasas, Chico, Malibu Lake, Pasadena, San Bernardino National Forest, Simi Valley, and probably several other locations.
Some of the directors involve in that location filming were Sam Wood, Yakima Canutt, Chester Franklin, and the aforementioned James Fitzpatrick filmed Georgia scenes, some of which were used in the title sequence of the film.
The second unit work on those exterior scenes was well worth the effort as they gave the film an openness that would otherwise have been missing had Selznick not had that great vision.
Some of the outdoor scenes that added real life and continuity to the film include Big Sam’s ‘Quittin’ time’ scene with men coming home from the fields.
Gerald O’Hara’s horse riding and jumping sequences, Gerald and Scarlett’s walk and his talk about the land.
Scarlett’s ‘As God is my witness’ scene in the open field gives us a few moments of true movie magic.
The cotton field scene with sisters Suellen and Careen as well as the returning veterans and the long shot sequence of Ashley coming home from the war are all effective.
And when you consider that this film was made long before modern special effects became a part of moviemaking is hard to believe they actually pulled it off. But the test of time alone proves that their hard work was rewarded and that Selznick’s vision had been right on target.
The industry recognized the quality of the film immediately and gave awards to Lyle Wheeler for best interior decoration and William Cameron Menzies for outstanding achievement in the use of color. (Those are just a couple of awards; Gone With the Wind almost swept the Academy Awards in 1939 – a year of great films. More later on 1939 films and awards.)

Hitler’s Stolen Art Still in the News
The irony is in the timing. While America was waiting for the opening of ‘Gone With the Wind’ Europe was preparing for World War II. .

BERLIN (AP) — Two paintings that the Nazis forced a Jewish art dealer to sell off in the 1930s have been returned to his estate, and its heirs said Wednesday they were working hard to recover hundreds more.

‘Tom Barnes has tapped the headlines into Nazis stolen art and crafted a spellbinding mystery.’ Julie Burton, playwright and author of “Consider the Tulips.”
‘The Goring Collection.’
Jacob Meyers is stunned to see his father’s Pissarro – taken by the Nazi’s in 1945 – among the paintings up for sale at the Old World Auction House in Manhattan. He questions management and while he reads a phony provenance, the Pissarro is withdrawn from sale and mysteriously disappears. Jacob, head of an intelligence group, alerts Interpol and joins their ongoing investigation into the underground world of stolen art.
Two suspect paintings, a Manet and a Cézanne sold by an international cartel in Berlin as copies, are tracked to the Berghoff Gallery in Chicago where they are auctioned off as originals. An accidental shooting at the gallery exposes the cartel’s shell game and leads to blackmail of a Las Vegas odds maker, murder of a San Francisco politician, and the assassination of a former matinee idol in West Virginia.
Link to stolen art display: Click Here
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/art...

Writers Notebook:
On Internet Blogging:
Think of blogging as a community bulletin board.
Simply put you blog to share information with others and you can blog about anything Aunt Suzie’s favorite recipes, politics, pop art, gardening or fly-fishing.
The political classes are having a field day in the blog world.
My ‘RocktheTower’ blog reflects many of my personal experiences as writer, actor and hurricane hunter.
Most writers have files filled with stuff (and some is just that – stuff) we’ve written in the past articles, essays etc. If you’ve written a book you’re in good shape because you have lots of material to fall back on. Use excerpts to promote your book or make a point.
You set your own schedule and deadline to post. My idea is to work with consistency in order to make that deadline. One of the incentives I use is that at the end of the day I will have accumulated enough material to edit into a book about storytelling on the blog.
Twitter is something you might look into, it will give you another way to generate new ideas and feed your blog: something to think about.

Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com

Let’s Go to the Movies
Part 14

Exhausted!
Victor Fleming never got a break between his work on ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and his assignment to ‘Gone With the Wind.’
Under normal circumstances, with only a couple of days rest it would have been enough for a routine transition. However, his assignment to ‘Gone With the Wind,’ was anything but routine. The general public had already formed opinions and had high expectations of what they wanted from reading the 1034 page novel. And David Selznick had every intention of satisfying those expectations.
In a sense Fleming’s first hurdle was in the area of public relations. He was replacing George Cukor, a very popular director; through no fault of his own, nonetheless it was a touchy situation, as some members of the GWTW cast didn’t like the change at all.
Second and probably more important was that the script was still in pieces and had to be assembled, one script written by Sidney Howard and the other by Oliver Garrett. David Selznick picked and chose from, not unlike a Chinese Restaurant menu, scenes by selecting from Side A or Side B. Now this is just an educated guess, but I suspect that Ben Hecht was the go to guy to write, when necessary, transitions and any other slight modifications that Selznick came up with. For the most part those changes within the scenes came from the book. You see Selznick, continued to sift through Margaret Mitchell’s novel and, when he found a fit, he transferred dialogue or a phrase or two straight out of the book to the shooting script. Sounds insane, but you have to admit that when all the pieces were assembled – it worked.
The trouble was that Victor Fleming didn’t have a clue about the eventual outcome. To him at that moment it probably looked like a train wreck in the making.
That was in mid February of 1939 and it took about two months before the shooting schedule and other duties began to take a physical tole on the director.
The first indication of a problem was a hush, hush memo dated April 14, 1939 from Selznick to his Vice President Henry Ginsberg and first assistant Daniel O’Shea.
The memo posed the possibilities of again having to halt production. ‘…I have for some time been worried that Fleming would not be able to finish the picture because of his physical condition….’
Fleming’s doctor thought he was in good enough shape to continue work, but from Selznick’s personal observation he said ‘…he is so near the breaking point both physically and mentally from shear exhaustion that it would be a miracle, in my opinion, if he’s able to shoot for another seven or eight weeks.’
Selznick certainly didn’t want his opinion to get back to Fleming, but during the course of the memo he mentioned a couple of possible replacement directors Bob Leonard from the MGM staff and Bill Wellman at Paramount.
Selznick’s intuition regarding Fleming’s physical condition likely came from his knowledge about what brought him to GWTW in the first place. Fleming had been working in a pressure cooker situation over at MGM on ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ the directors position had been like playing the game of musical chairs. Some of the directors that had been assigned and later replaced were Norman Taurog, Richard Thorpe, George Cukor, and Victor Fleming, sound familiar? When Fleming was pulled off Oz to replace Cukor on ‘Gone With the Wind’ he was replaced by King Vidor.
And although Victor Fleming wasn’t there for the final takes of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ he got sole credit for directing the film. Screen Credits are part of the inside Hollywood politics and while several directors might work on and contribute to a film, usually only one gets the screen credit while the others go Unaccredited.

On April 26, Fleming collapsed on the set from exhaustion and was out for a two-week rest. Sam Wood took over for the ailing Fleming. Wood came over from MGM and was not without credentials, he had directed Ginger Rogers in her Oscar winning performance in Kitty Foyle.
(To be continued)

More about Nazi Stolen art and ‘The Goring Collection.’

When Jacob asked why the painting was withdrawn from the auction a tight-lipped manager was trotted out and asserted, “Due to confidentiality agreements with the seller we can offer no reason why the painting has been withdrawn.”
“Is there any possibility that it will be offered at a later time?” Jacob asked.
“We have no way of knowing that,” the manager said in a tone that dismissed any further questions.
‘Jacob knew the man was lying and was frustrated by his own actions that had allowed the painting to be snatched right out from under his nose. Suddenly he felt pangs of guilt, not for his present thoughts, but what he hadn’t recognized in the past. For soon after the Nazi’s took the painting he had simply dismissed Papa’s Pissarro as just another relic that could easily be replaced. Of course, looking back at the situation he could only attribute that callous dismissal to his youth. But when the painting turned up, at the Auction House, he saw everything in a different light and suddenly realized just how much the painting had meant to him and his sister during the war years. And at that moment he made a solemn promise, in the memory of his parents, to use every resource at his disposal to find Papa’s cherished painting. Jacob furrowed his brow as he thought about the daunting task ahead.’

Even today Nazi stolen art still grabs headlines.

U.S. Customs Seizes Old Master Lost in Nazi-Era Forced Sale
By Catherine Hickley
For Old Master story Click Here
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pi...

Writers Notebook:
F. Scott Fitzgerald
In a long ago April, 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his editor Maxwell Perkins were bantering about who should get credit for the structure of ‘The Great Gatsby.’ As the release date approached everyone at Scribner’s along with the author believed they had a best seller on their hands. As it turned out the critic’s had other ideas.
Two days after publication The New York World described F. Scott Fitzgerald’s latest A Dud. And unfortunately most of those early critics’s arrived at that same conclusion.
The book didn’t sell and Scribner’s warehouse had several thousand copies of the unsold books to prove it. But to find a reason why later generations gave ‘Gatsby’ a new life, one might look back at H.L. Mencken’s remarks at the time of publishing. Mencken said he found the form ‘No more than a glorified anecdote and a far inferior story at bottom.’ But he did recognize ‘the novel as plainly the product of a sound stable talent, conjured into being by hard work. And he appreciated the craft of revision that accounted for so much, and it shows on every page.’
Mencken also credited Fitzgerald with ‘depicting the rattle and hullabaloo of society with great gusto and sharp accuracy.’ (The flapper, Speakeasies and Bathtub gin)
Of course there were some good reviews at the time that were drowned out by the other side. However, even today with its rebirth and popularity when talk gets around to ‘The Great Gatsby’ you can still find good arguments on both sides of the debate.

Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com

Let’s go to the Movies
Part 15
Victor Fleming returned to work and Sam Wood stayed on to help.

According to David Selznick Sam Wood did an outstanding job filling in for Fleming and in one of his memos he stated that there was no loss in picture quality during that period.
Fleming was back on the set the second week of May and Sam Wood agreed to stick around and help out where ever he was needed. By that time in the production the working script was in place and Selznick’s idea was to drive forward and complete filming as soon as possible.
To accomplish that goal he wanted to have as many as five units shooting various scenes on the same day. And as a means to that end Selznick would take Sam Wood up on his offer and then add several other second unit directors to shoot various location scenes.
Previously mentioned second unit directors Yakima Canutt and James A Fitzpatrick were already on the list.
Fitzpatrick was in Georgia shooting background scenes from the actual Tara area.
In order to have enough directing talent available Peter Ballbusch, a solid utility director was added to the second unit director’s list.
B. Reeves Eason had a wide range of experience as actor, writer and director also signed up as a second unit director.
Chester M. Franklin was hired for his experience dating back to the silent days.
William Cameron Menzies the present production designer and art director of GWTW was pressed into service as a second unit director. The versatile Menzies was also a film director, producer and screenwriter.
Menzies would later add to his resume the film ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ where he shared producer credits with Mike Todd and Kevin McCloy.

The Kentucky Derby
This week’s sports pages all over the world will be filled with stories about Saturday’s Kentucky Derby. Horses, trainers and owners will all get their moment of fame. Some of the stories will be original and insightful while most will be boilerplate rhetoric you could have read the week before any past derby. And some of the best stories may be overlooked this week simply because late in the afternoon on the first Saturday in May at Churchill Downs the Kentucky Derby will be run. And sometimes a star is born.
But once the winner gets that blanked of roses, be it favorite or unbelievable Longshot a new cycle begins with talk in the Sunday morning sports pages about the 2009 race for the Triple Crown.
Back in 1919 a star and a tradition was born.
The big story coming out of the 1919 Kentucky Derby was that Sir Barton was not in the race to win, he was entered as a rabbit to go out fast and wear down the favorites giving Sir Barton’s stable mate Billy Kelly a chance to come from behind and take all the marbles. Well, it didn’t work out that way because Sir Barton didn’t tire; he just went on to win the race.
Sir Barton was immediately put on a train and shipped to Baltimore where only four days later he won the Preakness. Then a couple of weeks after that race he took New York by storm and won a race at Belmont, which was later to become the Belmont Stakes.
And that was the beginning of a horse racing tradition known as the Triple Crown.
(To be continued)

Nazi Stolen Art
Excerpt from ‘The Goring Collection.
Jacob Meyers, head of the Founders Group Intelligence Division, hooks up with Interpol’s international art investigation. Two suspect paintings, a Manet and Cézanne, are sold in Berlin as copies and tracked to the Berghoff Gallery in Chicago where they sell as originals. The paintings came from cache plundered by the Nazi’s now controlled by Cartel.
FGI Operatives investigate and report a flurry of Cartel activities in Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco and Las Vegas. Accidental shooting at the Chicago Gallery, two murders in San Francisco, political blackmail in Las Vegas and a rogue group within the Cartel dealing drugs in West Georgia. That hodgepodge of crimes makes no sense until Jacob gets a tip from informant giving him date and place for Cartel’s upcoming grand auction. But the real bombshell comes when Cartel member – ex Senator Tripp Farrell – is linked to San Francisco murders.
A task force made up of FGI, Customs, DEA and a local sheriff quashed the Cartel’s multi-million dollar auction and shut down the drug trafficking operation. But the hunt for Cartel’s main stash continued and leads to Europe where FGI, Interpol and a Danish Partisan group team up to search for the Goring Collection.

Writers Notebook:
A lesson from Hemingway’s ‘A Moveable Feast.’
‘…good and severe discipline.’
‘It was in that room that I learned not to think about anything that I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day. That way my subconscious could be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything…’
‘Going down the stairs when I had worked well, and that needed luck as well as discipline, was a wonderful feeling and I was free then to walk anywhere in Paris. If I walked down by different streets to Jardin du Luxembourg in the afternoon I would walk through the gardens and then go to the Musee du Luxembourg…’ ‘I went there nearly every day for the Cézanne’s and to see the Manet’s and the Monet’s and the other Impressionist’s that I had first come to know about in the Art Institute in Chicago…’
‘But if the light was gone in the Luxembourg I would walk up through the gardens and stop in at the studio apartment where Gertrude Stein lived at 27 rue de Fleurus.’

Another example of what the writer observes is what eventually goes onto the printed page. And Hemingway believed that those observations after passing through the subconscious was the way to build from, ‘that one true sentence,’ he talked about so often.
Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com

Mine That Bird Rail to Wire Win

Dream up all the cliché’s in the book and you’ll find several that will fit into Saturday’s Kentucky Derby.
When Calvin Borel looked at Mine that Bird’s past performance chart he saw a mixed bag. Two-year-old champion in Canada and then some unmentionable races in the States. But as he studied the form some things became apparent. Mine that Bird’s losses came with consistency when he got caught wide on the turns.
I suspect a wry grin crossed Calvin’s face as he thought, ‘Well, we can fix that,’
The handicappers looking at the Kentucky Derby form saw that awful race Mine that Bird ran at Santa Anita last October, and at that point most of them probably crossed him off their list of contenders.
However, had they thrown that race out (and by the way Santa Anita’s racing surface is a synthetic material, which might have made a difference) it could have made a world of difference but then he wouldn’t have gone off at 50-1 and there would have been no big story.
Heavy overnight rains came to Churchill Downs and that seemed to favor the Louisiana Derby winner Friesan Fire, he had won his race over a sloppy track.
The 3-1 favorite I want Revenge was an early morning scratch.

For those of us that watched on TV you could sense a typical Kentucky Derby day kind of excitement in the crowd. Wide brimmed ladies hats, celebrities and mint juleps were all in evidence and while there was plenty of betting going on there were no wide swings in the odds.
During the saddling process, the post parade and as the 19-horse field loaded into the gate the horses maintained a calm.
Out of the gate Dunkirk stumbled and Mine that Bird was pinched in between horses.
Borel gently took a hold on the Bird, got him out of trouble and went about his business of moving to the rail – dead last.
Join the Dance and Regal Ransom led the field up front and kept the horses moving at a good pace.
Borel got Mine that Bird to the rail and they went almost unnoticed to the public and track announcer as they passed horses on the inside. They had no traffic problems along the way, and moving into the stretch That Bird kicked into another gear with only a sliver of a hole in front of him, the space was paper thin, but he accelerated through it and burst into the clear. By the time the announcer realized what was happening Borel had that Bird three lengths in front of the field and extending his lead as they pulled away to an easy 5 and ½ length win.
Now on to the Preakness and quest for the Triple Crown:

One of my daily updates on Twitter:
‘Calvin Borel pilots Mine that Bird to the rail and they fly inside the field to nab second longest price in Kentucky Derby history.’
Read more tweets at www.Twitter.com/tombarnes39


Let’s Go to the Movies Part 16
It’s a Wrap
June 27, 1939
Mr. John Hay Whitney
630 5th Avenue
New York, N.Y.
‘Sound the siren. Scarlett O’Hara completed her performance at noon today. Gable finishes tonight or in the morning…’
That left only a week of pickup shots and Gone With the Wind filming would be complete.
During the next several months David Selznick would be overseeing the editing process while at the same time conducting a low key PR campaign. During that same period Selznick had to use diplomacy to calm the mayor of Atlanta. It seems that Atlanta Mayor William B. Hartsfield had heard a rumor that Atlanta was out of the running for the World Premier of Gone With the Wind and communicated his concern to David Selznick.
On July 17, 1939 Selznick sent this reassuring letter to the mayor, and it reads in part: ‘Dear Mayor Hartsfield:
I am in receipt of your telegram concerning the premier of Gone With the Wind. The rumors, which you have heard, have no foundation. Neither we, nor Loew’s, Incorporated have ever given any thought to opening any place but Atlanta, as I have repeatedly assured Governor Rivers, yourself, Miss Mitchell, and other important Georgians…’

And just to give you a sense of what went on behind the scenes between the film’s completion and the premier in Atlanta of Gone With the Wind here is an excerpt from a memo sent to Kay Brown in New York October 7, 1939.
‘…we have our main title all laid out on the basis of having Gone With the Wind come first, and in a unique manner; but if MGM for some strange reason thinks that Clark Gable is more important than Gone With the Wind, and should come first, and wants to bitch up our main title layout, I suppose there’s nothing I can do but get up a new main title, since under out contract with MGM Gable’s name must precede Gone With the Wind.’
A footnote following that memo: The names of the four stars, in a size fifty percent of the films title, followed the films title on the screen and in all advertising.’
One of Selznick’s final battles was that the language censors, at the time, demanded a change from the words in the book, Rhett Butler’s punch line to Scarlett as he turns to walk away – ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,’ was being questioned by the Hays office.
Fortunately Selznick won that battle and shortly after the film’s release ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn’ became a catch phrase and part of Hollywood and Movie lore.
(To be continued)

Writers Notebook.
There can be no honor without a foundation of integrity. That may seem old-fashioned, but – it is a fact.
Honor your character’s integrity.
To paraphrase Sherwood Anderson: Your characters should be as real as living people. You should be no more willing to sell them out than you would to sell out your friends or the woman you love. To take the lives of those people and bend or twist them to suit the needs of some cleverly thought out plot to give your readers a false emotion is as mean and ignoble as it is to sell out living men or women… And that is the truth.

Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
www.RocktheTower.com
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