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Wednesday, 09 April 2008

Where are the David O. Selznicks of today?

I'm haunted by this passage from Leonard Leff's Hitchcock & Selznick: "'I'm not sure that I like the fade-out of the sequence with the girl promising "the surprise of their lives!"' Selznick told Hitchcock as the director worked on the shooting script for Rebecca. 'Since she has nothing in mind at this moment, the line seems a device simply to give us a dissolve, rather than having any point in itself.'"

Are there any powerful producers in Hollywood today who care — or know — this much about movies?

Selznick makes a remarkable appearance in Hello Americans, the second volume of Simon Callow's three-volume Orson Welles biography. (The third volume isn't out yet.)

Welles's second movie, The Magnificent Ambersons, was mutilated beyond recognition by RKO studio executives. The damage was so bad — about an hour of footage removed, a bravura long take cut up into small pieces, music removed and new music added — that Bernard Herrmann demanded that his name be taken off the picture. (It was.)

Just as we will almost certainly never be able to see London After Midnight, we will almost certainly never be able to see the real Ambersons. Selznick tried to do something about this, though he was not involved with the movie.

Callow writes: "Such was [Selznick's] regard for Welles's work as a director that he begged RKO to deposit a copy of Welles's original cut of The Magnificent Ambersons with the Museum of Modern Art in New York, a tantalising prospect that, needless to say, never materialized."

Oh, well. Since reading these books, I watch David O. Selznick productions with a more than casual interest.