WI Selznick passed on "GWTW"?

D. O. Selznick almost didn't pay the money for the rights, saying Civil War pictures bomb. So, WI he'd passed?

The best-known, most-glamorous pean to the myth of the Lost Cause isn't made.

Gable doesn't deliver one of the most famous lines in film history :eek:(& it isn't misquoted for 80yr :rolleyes:).

Jimmy Stewart wins the Oscar for "Billy Jack Goes to Washington". (So does Capra.)

The first black actor to win an Oscar is Poitier, for "In the Heat of the Night". (Nobody has ever heard of Butterfly McQueen.)

TCM never happens.:eek::eek::eek: ( :openedeyewink: )

Robert Osborne & Eddie Muller open a literary detective agency in San Francisco, along with Laurence Bloch.:openedeyewink:
 
There was a bidding war war for the book, the way the movie would have turned out would have depended on which studio made it, MGM would still have used Gable but they would have been reluctant to lend him out to another studio without a big price being paid for him.
Selznick had to give MGM the distribution rights to this and other films which limited his financial and artistic freedom in the long run.
 
There was a bidding war war for the book
Rats.

Well, it's still possible another studio makes an awful version: b&w?:eek::eek: Less lavish production values? Forgettable cast? Almost certainly enough to keep it from winning an Oscar or becoming a TV staple (let alone the first thing TCM broadcasts).
MGM would still have used Gable but they would have been reluctant to lend him out to another studio without a big price being paid for him.
I'm wondering why MGM still "wins" the bidding war.
Selznick had to give MGM the distribution rights to this and other films which limited his financial and artistic freedom in the long run
That has interesting potential butterflies. It could end up hurting MGM a lot in the long run, & helping Selznick. (I'm nothing like enough a film buff to guess where that goes.)

Minor but interesting butterfly: Carol Burnett never does her famous Frankly Scarlet sketch.:eek::oops::oops:
 
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