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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 PathΓ© 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 on facilities rented at the RKO studios, Pioneer was informally merged with Selznick International Pictures in 1936. Selznick International 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]
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][5][6] 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.[7]
After the dissolution of Selznick International, Selznick established Vanguard Films, Inc. in 1943 and Selznick Releasing Organization in 1946.[8] 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.
The rights to the Selznick library have been scattered, as noted in the following timeline.
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.[14] Most of the Selznick films are now owned by ABC (via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures). The notable exception is Gone with the Wind, which Jock Whitney and his sister sold to MGM in 1944, which was subsequently acquired by Turner Entertainment, with distribution by Warner Bros. The films A Star Is Born, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Nothing Sacred, and Made for Each Other are now in the public domain in the United States, with original film negatives to the latter three films owned by Disney[15] and the former's owned by Warner Bros.
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.
Title | Release Date | Notes |
---|---|---|
Little Lord Fauntleroy | April 2, 1936 | |
The Garden of Allah | November 19, 1936 | |
A Star Is Born | April 27, 1937 | |
The Prisoner of Zenda | September 3, 1937 | |
Nothing Sacred | November 25, 1937 | |
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer | February 11, 1938 | |
The Young in Heart | November 3, 1938 | |
Made for Each Other | February 10, 1939 | |
Intermezzo: A Love Story | September 22, 1939 | |
Gone with the Wind | January 17, 1940 | The only Selznick International picture to be distributed by a different studio (MGM) as opposed to United Artists |
Rebecca | April 12, 1940 | |
Since You Went Away | July 20, 1944 | |
I'll Be Seeing You | January 5, 1945 | |
Spellbound | December 28, 1945 | |
Portrait of Jennie | April 22, 1949 |