Word: selznick
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...studios began to build until Code compliance became standard in 1934. The self-censorship mechanism was in place, and it dominated major U.S. releases without exception until 1953, when Otto Preminger used the word "virgin" in "The Moon Is Blue" and got away with it. Even David O. Selznick had to beg Hayes Office approval for the final "I don't give a damn" in "Gone With the Wind." The Code insured that all married couples used twin beds, that no kiss lasted longer than 10 seconds, and that crime never paid. (Network television seems to be the last venue...
Kong was made for $650,000, a significant figure at the time, high enough to require special pleading from Selznick with East Coast stockholders. It brought in $5,000,000 on the first release alone. And those were mid-Depression dollars. Think of it as the "Star Wars" of the '30s - a blockbuster. Boffo at the B.O., as Variety would...
...Komodo Island and somehow get the ape to fight a lizard on film. There were some logistical problems (I wonder what they could have been?) and the plan never got off the ground. A couple years later Cooper was asked by newly appointed RKO studio head David O. Selznick to compile an inventory of every piece of film in the library. Cooper came across some sequences from an unfinished stop-action animation film called "Creation," the pet project of animator Willis O'Brien (more on him in a moment). As soon as Cooper saw the footage, he realized that Komodo...
...three brothers lived in while their father was still rich and famous, a magnet for such visitors as Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald ("I have never seen a photograph that conveyed the beauty I saw in her"). There are glittering Hollywood anecdotes featuring everyone from David O. Selznick to Robert Altman, and behind-the-scenes stories about Lardner's two screenwriting Oscars, for Woman of the Year and M*A*S*H. The only sad thing about this book is its timing. Lardner died on Oct. 31 at age 85. He is worth remembering...
...Reds (1981). Warren Beatty's epic is very much a recollection of Gone With the Wind, and it shares the Selznick classic's main failing: It takes too long getting to the war. Diane Keaton, we are told, is radiant enough to ensnare Beatty's Jack Reed and Nicholson's Eugene O'Neill -- but it's a captivation the viewer somehow doesn't share. And aren't "The Witnesses" just an endless parade of wizened faces fleshing out a story we'd rather watch ourselves...