Myron Selznick

Myron was born on October 5, 1898, the eldest of the two sons of Lewis J. Selznick, one of the pioneers of studio film production. Born Lewis Zeleznik in Kiev, Ukraine in the Russian Empire into a poor Jewish family of eighteen, Selznick migrated to London at the age of twelve, and then to the United States, eventually winding up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he made his living as a jeweler. His shop was located near the nickelodeon opened by John P.

Harris in 1905, which Pennsylvania officials claim was the country's first dedicated movie theater. Selznick and another merchant with a shop near Harris' nickelodeon, Harry Warner, were intrigued by Harris' business, and both would go on to be the founders of film studios. After becoming the general manager of the East Coast Universal Film Exchange, Lewis J. Selznick started Equitable Pictures, raiding Vitagraph for Clara Kimball Young, a superstar of the silent screen.

Selznick was one of the investors who created World Pictures in 1914 to import foreign feature films and to distribute the movies of several newly-established feature-film companies, including Equitable. Eventually, Selznick merged his company with Shubert Pictures and Peerless Pictures and took effective control of World. World Pictures, whose corporate motto was "Quality Not Quantity," released movies produced by Equitable, Peerless, Shubert Pictures, and various independent companies, with production centered in Fort Lee, New Jersey. World Pictures wound up dominating the companies whose movies it distributed. When World Film Corp.

was incorporated in February 1915, Selznick was appointed its vice president and general manager. A financial innovator, Lewis Selznick inaugurated a new age of Wall Street investment in the film industry.

World Film was a large feature film company with a market capitalization of $2 million (75% of which was outstanding stock), earning a net profit of $329,000 for a return of a little over 20% on the outstanding stock for the fiscal year ending June 27, 1915.

Lewis Selznick was ousted as general manager of World Film in 1916. He left World, taking with him the movie star Clara Kimball Young (who likely was his mistress), and forming his own production company, the Clara Kimball Young Film Corp. Selznick's new company also released movies produced by the Schenck brothers, Joseph and Nicholas, who were partners with theater-owner Marcus Lowe in his chain of movie houses. In the early years of the film industry, there was a constant series of mergers and acquisitions among studios as individual moguls jockeyed for position.

In 1917, Selznick merged with Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Pictures, creating Select Pictures, later reorganized as the Selznick Film Co. He eventually bought out Zukor and merged the two companies into Selznick-Select, then acquired World Pictures' film exchanges, which he renamed Republic Distributing Corp.

" She starred in Upstairs and Down (1919), the first film produced by Myron Selznick, and the first film released by the new Selznick Pictures Corp.

The motion picture producer Myron Selznick, who was the head of his father's Lewis J. Selznick Pictures in the early 1920s, is most famous for being the first great talent agent in Hollywood and the brother of David O. Selznick. Movie stars for which Selznick received his ten percent included Constance Bennett, W. C. Fields, Paulette Goddard, Katharine Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, Carole Lombard, and Laurence Olivier. Selznick also represented directors, including George Cukor, Alfred Hitchcock (whom he was instrumental in bringing to the United States), and Rouben Mamoulian.

He shifted his operation to California, completing the move in 1920, where he again linked up with Zukor and Jesse Lasky's Paramount-Artcraft, the successor to Famous Players-Lasky. The slogan "Selznick Pictures Make Happy Hours" was, by the end of the second decade of the new 20th Century, the best-known slogan in the entertainment industry. Colorful and flamboyant, a quote of Selznick's became one of the most famous aphorisms about the motion picture industry: "There's no business in the world in which a man needs so little brains as in the movies. "Personally, Selznick was a spendthrift, living in a high and imperious style, which shocked the more puritanical and abstentious Louis B. Mayer. Unlike most of the other moguls who lusted for legitimacy for their new industry and themselves, Lewis J. Selznick didn't take the movie business too seriously. Other movie magnates were outraged by his cavalier attitude toward the industry and to the moguls themselves. Among the immigrant businessmen who created Hollywood and the American motion picture industry, many of whom were barely literate when they entered what would become known almost a century later as the "communications industry," it was the cultured and introspective ones who failed. Selznick had a self-deprecating cynicism that eventually diluted his ambition. It was said that in the early 20s, Selznick would rather stay at home surrounded by his ojects d'art than make the rounds of Hollywood. Apparently, he eschewed schmoozing with other industry insiders at their favorite haunts. Lacking their tastes and world view, Selznick wound up distrusted by the other movie magnates. Lewis Selznick thoroughly grounded his two sons in the movie industry, an industry in which nepotism is taken for granted. Myron attended Columbia University, but he dropped out and then went to work for his father's movie company as a film examiner, an entry-level position, to "earn his bones" in the industry. He became the youngest producer in Hollywood by the time he was 20, and was producer-in-chief of Selznick Pictures by the time he was 21.

By 1920, he had been appointed president of the company, a post he held until the company's failure in 1923, when Adolph Zukor bested his old rival, Lewis J. Selznick. One of Lewis J. and Myron Selnick's protégés was former Follies girl (and courtesan) Olive Thomas, who was billed as "the world's most beautiful girl.

She also appeared in "The Flapper" (1920), helping give wide currency to the word which helped define the new, modern, liberated woman of what became known as "The Roaring Twenties," and it was Myron who was considered to have made her a star.

Married to Mary Pickford's brother Jack, Thomas died under mysterious circumstances on her "second honeymoon" in Paris in 1920, at the height of her youthful fame. Ruled an accidental suicide by French authorities, she perished after ingesting the contents of a full bottle of mercury bi-chloride pills, a common remedy for syphilis at the time, which her husband said she had mistaken for a bottle of aspirin, never explaining why she had downed its entire contents.

The 1920 edition of "Who's Who on the Screen" hailed Myron as being "recognized by all concerned as one of the most thorough and efficient men connected with the industry. Being in absolute charge of the purchasing of all stories and supervising productions for all the Selznick stars, young Mr. Selznick is indeed a busy executive. When the wonderful new Selznick Studio building is formally opened in Long Island City, Myron Selznick will assume command and Studio Managers, Casting Directors, and Film Editors will work under the youthful executive's wing. He is still in his early twenties and from all indications will become one of the great leaders of the fourth industry of the United States. "That prophecy was never to be realized. When Lewis J. Selznick Production, Inc.

, became financially troubled during a cyclical downturn that hit the industry in 1923, Lewis J. had no one to turn to.

His company went bankrupt in 1923 due to over-expansion, done in by the machinations of a vengeful Zukor, who had bought up stock behind his back and forced the company into bankruptcy. Lewis J. Selznick never produced another movie.

The actress Marjorie Daw had appeared in England in the silent film with The Passionate Adventure (1924), co-starring Alice Joyce, Clive Brook and Victor McLaglen, a movie co-written by a young Alfred Hitchcock. Daw divorced her husband A. Edward Sutherland to become the wife of Myron Selznick, whose Lewis J.

Selznick Enterprises released the film in 1924 in the U. S. Eventually, Myron was the one who "discovered" Histchcock, the director, and brought him to the attention of his brother, Davd O. Selznick, who in turn, brought Hitchcock to Hollywood to direct "Rebecca," the younger Selznick's second consecutive Best Picture Oscar winner. Myron was no stranger to dealing with his brother as an agent. Earlier, he had represented director-writer William A. Wellman when he was making "A Star is Born" for David, who as a producer, was a notorious control-freak. Behind his director-writer's back, David hired Dorothy Parker and her husband Alan Campbell to rewrite Wellman's dialog. He also hired fellow mogul's son Budd Schulberg and future Hollywood 10 member Ring Lardner, Jr. to help rewrite to the screenplay. When Wellman had had enough of David's meddling, he had Myron threaten to sue his own brother on Wellman's behalf. The meddling stopped.

M,'s original 1925 production of "Ben-Hur," claiming he had rights to the stage play. David apologized to Mayer for his father, admitting it wasn't right for his father to have pulled such a con, and the two healed their rift. To avoid charges of nepotism, David eventually quit M. G. M. for Paramount, then became production boss at R. K. O. before returning to M. G. M.

In 1927, he produced the B-Western The Arizona Whirlwind (1927) with Bill Cody. Two years later, he established himself as a talent agent, creating Myron Selznick & Co. , which eventually had offices in Hollywood, New York, and London. His brilliance as an agent made him a millionaire many times over.

In 1930, Myron hired Warner Bros. producer-in-chief Darryl F. Zanuck's former secretary, Marcella Rabwin, to be part of his agency. She had left Zanuck due to sexual harassment, and Rabwin herself had approached Selznick, offering him a proposition; if hired, she'd go back to Warner Bros. and sign up writers and directors, none of whom were under contract. Rabwin's proposition was accepted and proved successful for both her and Myron. Soon she was making more money than anyone else in Selznick's agency. Rabwin quit when Myron asked her to take a pay cut so she'd make less than his male agents. She went back to secretarial work, hired by R. K. O. at $35 per week, and eventually she became David O. Selznick's secretary, moving with him to Selznick International Pictures as his executive assistant.

He died on January 25, 1933, in Los Angeles, California. It was said that the professional lives of Myron and his younger brother David O. Selznick thereafter were lived to vindicate the Selznick name. David also learned the ropes as a young man at Lewis J.

in 1933 after the heart attack of central producer Irving Thalberg. (The news of the elevation of David O. Selznick to supervising producer at M. G. M. was the source of the famous newspaper headline "The Son-in-Law Also Rises. ") After quitting M. G. M.

a second time in 1935, he went on to become arguably the greatest independent producer ever, responsible for "Gone With the Wind (1939), the most popular motion picture in cinematic history. After the collapse of Lewis J. Selznick Production, Myron Selznick tried but failed to establish himself as an independent producer.

In 1938, Selznick had a memorable run-in with 20th Century-Fox chief executive Joseph M. Schenck, a former business partner of his father's. He demanded that Loretta Young's salary be doubled to approximately $70,000 a picture and also demanded also that the studio give her the right to work for other studios. Schenck, who had recently been appointed the new president of the Association of Motion Picture Producers, was so incensed by Myron's demands, he ordered Selznick off of the 20th Century-Fox lot. Despite Schenck's intransigence and influence with other studio executives, the Selznick Agency continued to flourish, and Myron's luck remained good. That year, Myron's horse "Can't Wait" finished third at the Kentucky Derby, a fortuitous augury in a company town mad for horse raising.

In December 1938, he invited the couple to attend the filming of the burning of Atlanta sequence on the old R. K. O. back-lot, now owned by his brother's Selznick International Pictures. When they arrived that night for the filming of the sequence, the action was being performed by stunt doubles, as would be expected on any picture. But for this, the most hyped movie of its time, it was absolutely necessary as David O. Selznick had yet to cast his leading lady despite a well-publicized talent search over the past year and the fact that he had actually begun production of the movie that very night. When Myron, Olivier, and the beautiful Vivien Leigh joined the group watching the filming, Myron introduced his client to David with the immortal line, "Hey genius. Meet your Scarlett O'Hara. "The rest, as they say, was history.

Selznick Production, and as an independent producer for his own Selznick International, David would win back-to-back Best Picture Oscars for "Gone With the Wind" (1939) and "Rebecca" (1940). After his father went bankrupt, David O. Selznick quit Columbia University like his brother Myron had before him and moved to California to get back into the industry. Without any help from his father, he got a proofreaders job at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He worked his way up to become an assistant producer in Harry Rapf's unit, then got engaged to Irene Mayer, daughter of Louis B. Mayer, a match strongly disapproved by the M. G. M. boss, who despised David's father. Lewis J. Selznick had tried to horn in on M. G.

Perhaps Myron Selznick's most famous exploit in Hollywood was his role in the casting of Vivien Leigh as Scarlet O'Hara in his brother's "Gone With the Wind (1939). Then representing Laurence Olivier, Myron took on as a client Olivier's lover Leigh, who had only appeared in English motion pictures.

"God With the Wind" (1939), with Leigh in an Oscar-wining turn as Scarlett, went on to become the most popular motion picture in history, for over half-a-century touted as the greatest American commercial movie ever made. Myron, at five-and-a-half feet tall, was quite a contrast with his taller brother David, whom according to David's ex-wife Irene Mayer Selznick, he adored and was extremely proud of. Irene Selznick, in her memoir, comments that Myron was frustrated by the agent business as it did not fully engage his extraordinary intelligence and talents. He let David remain the sole producer in the family, although towards the end of his life, he was involved in the setting up of a production company for another major independent producer, Hunt Stromberg. A long-time M. G. M. producer, Stromberg was involved in a contract dispute with Louis B.

Selznick became so well-known and such a power in the industry by the early 1940s, that he was mentioned by name in Budd Schulberg's seminal Hollywood novel, "What Makes Sammy Run" (1941).

Mayer in 1941.

Mayer released him from his obligations, and Stromberg officially left the studio on February 10, 1942. Hollywood expected Stromberg to join United Artists, or to hook up with Myron's brother David O. Selznick. There were other rumors that he would form a partnership with former United Artists executive Murray Silverstone, who had left his studio. Instead, with the help of Myron Selznick, Stromberg revived his independent production company that had lain dormant for 20 years. Stromberg signed up executives from David O. 's old Selznick International team, including Kay Brown, who had bird-dogged "Gone With the Wind" when the novel was in galleys. Already one of the primary investors in Hunt Stromberg Productions, Inc. , it was Myron who negotiated a lucrative five-year distribution deal with United Artists. Myron Selznick never returned to movie production.

He died on Mrch 23, 1944, at the age of 45 years old. According to Irene Selznick, the death of Myron was a tragedy for David as only he and David's former producing partner and best friend, John Hay "Jock" Whitney, had had an ameliorating effect on David's megalomaniacal behavior. Jock was off to military service during World War II when Myron died and when Jock returned to the States after being held as a prisoner of war, he abandoned the movie industry for Wall Street. Without his brother and his best friend, the producer David O. Selznick became reckless and eventually became a shell of himself after engaging in the flamboyantly destructive behavior that had brought his own father to ruin. Myron Selznick was buried at Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery (now the Hollywood Forever Cemetery) in Hollywood near the Paramount and R. K. O. studios. The pallbearers at his funeral included Walter Wanger and William Powell, who read the funeral oration.

Before Lew Wasserman assumed the late Myron Selznick's mantle as agent extraordinaire around 1950, Selznick had pioneered the production of motion pictures by the stars he represented.

According to a September 1, 1952 "Time" Magazine cover story on Katharine Hepburn, when she first arrived in Hollywood from Broadway, Myron Selznick, her agent, was appalled at her looks, including her casual way of dressing. He said, "My God, are we sticking them $1,500 a week for this?!?" "Them" was R. K. O. , where his brother David was production chief. But Myron's eye for talent was keen, and Hepburn quickly established herself as a star. Myron built up his agency by signing movie personnel at a time where the studios were cavalier about their employees.

Is portrayed by Bill Macy in The Scarlett O'Hara War (1980)

On December 13th, after 18 years with the studio, Stomberg resigned, though he had three years to go on his contract.