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112 Chapter 6 Fewer but Bigger, 1939–1949 In the 1930s, MGM consistently had the highest production costs, and earned the highest rentals, in the industry. Between 1936 and 1940 it made eleven films costing $2 million and over, as many as all other studios combined. But even with the company’s considerable distribution clout, only two of these—The Great Ziegfeld and Maytime (1937), the most successful of the Jeanette MacDonald–Nelson Eddy series of operettas—were profitable. With the number of feature films released by all companies in any one year averaging seven hundred, all competing for theater play dates and consumer dollars, it was virtually impossible for pictures above a certain budgetary level to make a good profit. Fox chairman Joseph M. Schenck suggested that the way for the industry to maximize business for each picture was to make fewer pictures. Currently, Schenck argued, exhibitors had too many films to choose from and too many to play, so each one was not earning its full potential gross. If the same overall costs were invested in a smaller number of pictures, each would have proportionately higher production values, hence greater audience appeal. With fewer films taking up playing time, each would be able to run longer and earn greater revenues.1 Production and release policies were slow to change. But from the 1942–43 season onward, all the studios gradually scaled down their operations to produce annual slates of fewer but more expensive films. Between 1939 and 1945, the total number of pictures released in the United States fell by slightly more than half. Although the impetus for reduced output and enhanced production values derived in part from the market conditions of the 1930s, the tendency was accelerated by two additional factors from the early 1940s: antitrust action against the film industry by the federal government and the involvement of America in the Second World War. Before we examine these, however, we must turn to the single most important picture for the film industry in the decade following its debut in 1939. 113 Fewer but Bigger, 1939–1949 Streamlining the Roadshow: Gone with the Wind David O. Selznick’s production of Gone with the Wind (GWTW) is often taken to be the culmination of “classical” Hollywood, though in many respects it was an exception to all its norms and standards. With a running time of 222 minutes and a negative cost of some $4 million, it was the longest and most expensive American film yet made.2 Adapted from the hottest literary property of the decade, Margaret Mitchell’s bestselling 1936 novel of the Old South, it had the largest amount of pre-release publicity accorded any film to date, and was therefore quite reasonably described as the picture most eagerly awaited by the public. Once exhibited, it quickly broke all records for box-office performance, setting new benchmarks for admissions and grosses. GWTW had certainly been expected to be a success, but the scale of that success took everyone, including its producer, by surprise. Nevertheless, both Selznick and MGM (which had invested $1,250,000 of the film’s budget and loaned its contract star Clark Gable in exchange for the distribution rights and 50 percent of the profits) made every attempt to guarantee the film’s profitability in advance and to make it an “event” (Selznick’s term). The story of the production (and preproduction) of GWTW has been told many times.3 Less often discussed are the distribution and exhibition methods used to bring it to audiences. They were not only significantly different from those of any preceding roadshow attraction, they also effectively changed both the practice and the very definition of roadshowing, setting a new pattern for big-picture releases from the early 1940s to the mid-1950s. Although it had been widely expected in the trade that the film would be roadshown in the traditional manner, following its recent bad experiences with The Great Waltz and Marie Antoinette MGM instead wanted to put the film into immediate general release in order to get a quicker return on its investment. In a memo addressed (though not sent) to MGM vice president Al Lichtman, Selznick strongly objected to the company’s plans, arguing that it would be “as wrong not to road show Gone with the Wind as it would have been not to road show The Birth of a Nation.” Selznick pointed out that the length of...

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