TCM Schedule for Friday, May 10, 2024: Birthday Tribute: David O. Selznick / Troubled Youth

[Auggie]

David O. Selznick (May 10, 1902 – June 22, 1965) was an American film producer, screenwriter and film studio executive who produced Gone with the Wind (1939) and Rebecca (1940), both of which earned him an Academy Award for Best Picture.

He won the Irving Thalberg Award at the 12th Academy Awards, Hollywood's top honor for a producer, in recognition of his shepherding Gone with the Wind through a long and troubled production and into a record-breaking blockbuster.

The son and son-in-law of movie moguls Lewis J. Selznick and Louis B. Mayer, Selznick served as head of production at R.K.O. Radio Pictures and went on to become one of the first independent movie producers.

His father was a silent film producer and distributor. He studied at Columbia University in New York City and started training as an apprentice for his father until the elder's bankruptcy in 1923.

In 1926, Selznick moved to Hollywood, and with the help of his father's connections, gained a job as an assistant story editor at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He left MGM for Paramount Pictures in 1928, where he worked until 1931. While at Paramount he married Irene Gladys Mayer, daughter of MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer.

David Sarnoff, head of RKO, hired Selznick as Head of Production in October 1931. In addition to implementing rigorous cost-control measures, Selznick championed the unit production system, which gave the producers of individual movies much greater independence than they had under the prevailing central producer system.

Selznick's tenure was widely considered masterful: In 1931, before he arrived, the studio had produced forty-two features for $16 million in total budgets. In 1932, under Selznick, forty-one features were made for $10.2 million, with clear improvement in quality and popularity. It was Selznick who green lit the Merian Cooper masterpiece King Kong (1933).

It was also Selznick that approved the RKO screen test for a thirty-three-year-old, balding Broadway song-and-dance man named Fred Astaire. In a memo, Selznick wrote, "I feel, in spite of his enormous ears and bad chin line, that his charm is ... tremendous"

In 1933 he returned to MGM to run a production unit that paralleled that of Irving Thalberg's. But Selznick longed to be an independent producer with his own studio. In 1935 he leased RKO's Culver City studios and back lot, formed Selznick International Pictures, and distributed films through United Artists.

His successes continued with classics such as The Garden of Allah (1936), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), A Star Is Born (1937), Nothing Sacred (1937), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), The Young in Heart (1938), Made for Each Other (1939), Intermezzo (1939) and Gone with the Wind (1939).

In 1939, Selznick brought Alfred Hitchcock to Hollywood. For Hitchcock, being a director meant being the primary creative source for the film—working on everything from the script to the props. In Hollywood, however, the power of the studios put producers in charge.

Not surprisingly, Hitchcock and Selznick had difficulties from the very first film they made, Rebecca. They made two more films, working in tandem on Spellbound (1945) and Notorious (1946), though by the latter film, Hitchcock had gained complete production control.

Hitchcock's masterful success of Notorious signaled the rising importance of the film director and the declining importance of the film producer. The two parted ways in 1948. Hitchcock, of course, made dozens of more films, becoming one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. For Selznick, on the downward slide, there were to be only a few more films.

Full bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_O._Selznick
Hitchcock collaboration: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/david-o-selznick-about-david-o-selznick/700/




------------- MORNING & AFTERNOON: DAVID O. SELZNICK (EST) -------------

7:00 AM | No Other Woman (1933)
A newly rich couple finds wealth drives them apart.
Dir: J. Walter Ruben | Cast: Irene Dunne, Charles Bickford, Gwili Andre

8:00 AM | Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936)
An American orphan discovers he is heir to a British title.
Dir: John Cromwell | Cast: Freddie Bartholomew, Dolores Costello Barrymore, C. Aubrey Smith

10:00 AM | The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)
An Englishman on holiday must impersonate the king when the monarch, a distant cousin, is kidnapped.
Dir: John Cromwell | Cast: Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, C. Aubrey Smith

12:00 PM | Viva Villa (1934)
Rousing biography of the bandit chief who led the battle for Mexican independence.
Dir: Jack Conway | Cast: Wallace Beery, Leo Carrillo, Fay Wray

2:00 PM | A Star Is Born (1937)
A woman achieves Hollywood stardom with the help of an alcoholic leading man.
Dir: William A. Wellman | Cast: Janet Gaynor, Fredric March, Adolphe Menjou

4:00 PM | Reckless (1935)
A theatrical star gets in over her head when she marries a drunken millionaire.
Dir: Victor Fleming | Cast: Jean Harlow, William Powell, Franchot Tone

5:45 PM | A Tale of Two Cities (1935)
A British lawyer sacrifices himself to save another man from the guillotine.
Dir: Jack Conway | Cast: Ronald Colman, Elizabeth Allen, Edna May Oliver


---------------- PRIME TIME & LATE NIGHT: TROUBLED YOUTH ----------------

8:00 PM | Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
A rebellious young man with a troubled past comes to a new town, finding friends and enemies.
Dir: Nicholas Ray | Cast: James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo

10:00 PM | The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)
A boy from the Irish slums reviews his troubled past while training for a school race.
Dir: Tony Richardson | Cast: Tom Courtenay, Michael Redgrave, Avis Bunnage

12:00 AM | Rumble Fish (1983)
A street thug struggles to live up to his legendary older brother's reputation.
Dir: Francis Ford Coppola | Cast: Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke, Diane Lane

2:00 AM | Wild Boys of the Road (1933)
An impoverished girl masquerades as a boy to run with a gang of young hobos.
Dir: William A. Wellman | Cast: Frankie Darro, Edwin Phillips, Rochelle Hudson

3:30 AM | Crime School (1938)
A crusading warden sets out to improve conditions at a reform school.
Dir: Lewis Seiler | Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gale Page, Billy Halop

-----------------------------------------------------------------

5:00 AM | Haunted Gold (1932)
A cowboy and his girl fight bandits and a ghost over an abandoned mine.
Dir: Mack V. Wright | Cast: John Wayne, Duke, Sheila Terry