David O. Selznick Biography Quotes 21 Report mistakes

Early Life and Family
David O. Selznick was born in 1902 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, into a family already tethered to the nascent movie business. His father, Lewis J. Selznick, was a prominent early producer who ran Selznick Pictures and introduced David to the mechanics and ambitions of commercial cinema. The household was both entrepreneurial and turbulent, and the bankruptcy of his father's company in the early 1920s left a lasting imprint on David's sense of risk and control. His older brother, Myron Selznick, would become one of Hollywood's most powerful talent agents and a crucial ally, go-between, and sometimes foil throughout David's career.

Entry into the Film Business
As a young man, Selznick gravitated toward story analysis and production, absorbing lessons in publicity, casting, and cost control. He moved west as Hollywood overtook the East Coast as the industry's center. Early studio posts taught him how scripts were developed and how star power could be engineered. The collapse of his father's fortunes made him wary of dependence on any single backer, a habit that shaped his later independence.

RKO and MGM: Shaping a Producer
Selznick's first major mark came at RKO in the early 1930s, where he rose quickly and displayed a feel for both literary material and market timing. He backed A Bill of Divorcement and What Price Hollywood?, collaborated with director George Cukor, and helped shepherd Little Women. He also supported Merian C. Cooper's giant-ape project that became King Kong, proof of his appetite for bold spectacle. In 1933 he moved to MGM, then dominated by Louis B. Mayer and Irving G. Thalberg. There he produced Dinner at Eight and mounted grand literary adaptations such as David Copperfield, Anna Karenina, and A Tale of Two Cities, honing a signature blend of polished casting, meticulous art direction, and promotional savvy.

Selznick International Pictures
Craving autonomy, he founded Selznick International Pictures in 1935 with backing from Jock Whitney and C. V. Whitney. The new company leaned into Technicolor glamour and prestige storytelling: The Garden of Allah, A Star Is Born, Nothing Sacred, The Prisoner of Zenda, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer showcased his taste for high production values, careful grooming of stars, and shrewd publicity. Kay Brown, his New York story editor, proved invaluable in scouting properties that matched his ambitions.

Gone with the Wind
Kay Brown urged him to acquire Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, and Selznick orchestrated the era's most famous casting search. He secured Clark Gable from MGM through a hard-bargained distribution arrangement, found Vivien Leigh for Scarlett O'Hara after months of public suspense, and assembled a team that included George Cukor (initially), Victor Fleming (who took over), and Sam Wood (who assisted). William Cameron Menzies designed the production's sweeping look, Max Steiner composed the score, and Ernest Haller shot much of the film after early photography by Lee Garmes. Sidney Howard's screenplay, revised by others including Ben Hecht, anchored the adaptation. Olivia de Havilland and Hattie McDaniel delivered indelible performances, with McDaniel's supporting Oscar marking a historic milestone. Released in 1939, the film became a cultural event and earned Selznick the Academy Award for Best Picture, cementing his reputation as the consummate independent producer.

Hitchcock and a New Kind of Prestige
Selznick brought Alfred Hitchcock to America and produced Rebecca, starring Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier, a gothic triumph that won Best Picture in 1940 and introduced Hollywood to Hitchcock's distinctive sensibility under Selznick's exacting supervision. Their later collaborations included Spellbound, with Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck, and The Paradine Case. Selznick also developed Notorious with Hitchcock and writer Ben Hecht and sold it as a package to RKO while retaining a guiding hand. His eye for talent extended to recruiting Ingrid Bergman from Europe and building fruitful associations with performers like Joseph Cotten.

War Years and the Jennifer Jones Era
During World War II, Selznick shifted toward home-front epics and intimate romantic dramas. Since You Went Away, with Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, and Shirley Temple, captured domestic resilience with lush sentiment and careful detail. He then mounted Duel in the Sun, a Technicolor western melodrama starring Jones and Gregory Peck and directed in part by King Vidor, a production famous for its ambition and equally famous for its turbulent reshoots and edits. Portrait of Jennie, again with Jones and Cotten, fused romance with the supernatural and remains admired for its visual experimentation.

Later Projects and a Changing Industry
Postwar transformations in financing and distribution complicated Selznick's brand of handcrafted spectacle. He collaborated with Alexander Korda on ventures that included bringing The Third Man to American audiences, and he continued to shape projects around the persona of Jennifer Jones. He involved himself with European directors such as the team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger on Gone to Earth, which he recut for U.S. release, and with Vittorio De Sica on Terminal Station, reissued domestically as Indiscretion of an American Wife. A later, lavish A Farewell to Arms with Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones aimed to recapture the sweep of his 1930s achievements but arrived in a more skeptical, television-aware marketplace.

Style, Methods, and Collaborators
Selznick was a writer-producer in the truest sense, known for exhaustive memos that prescribed tone, pacing, costumes, and camera angles. He prized craftsmanship and surrounded himself with master technicians: art director William Cameron Menzies; composers Max Steiner and Franz Waxman; cinematographers such as Ernest Haller and George Barnes; editor Hal C. Kern; and costume designer Walter Plunkett, among many others. He believed in the producer as the central creative force, and his orchestration of publicity, assisted by figures like Russell Birdwell, turned production into narrative, drawing audiences into the making of a film before its release. He famously insisted that the middle initial "O". stood for nothing, using it as a distinctive flourish.

Personal Life
In 1930 he married Irene Mayer, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer. Their union positioned him at the heart of Hollywood's power structure, and Irene later became a notable Broadway producer in her own right. After their divorce, he married Jennifer Jones, whose career he managed and around whom he built several of his most personal projects. Family ties also threaded through his professional life: his brother Myron's influence as an agent shaped casting and negotiations on many key films.

Legacy and Death
Selznick's legacy rests on the scale and polish of his productions, his intuitive grasp of public appetite, and his conviction that movies could be both artful and overwhelming. He won Best Picture for both Gone with the Wind and Rebecca, introduced or accelerated the American careers of talents like Alfred Hitchcock and Ingrid Bergman, and left behind a paper trail of memos that reveal a mind attuned to every facet of filmmaking. He died in 1965 in Los Angeles, his name synonymous with Hollywood's golden-age mix of romance, ambition, and exacting showmanship.

Our collection contains 21 quotes who is written by David, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Wisdom - Writing - Mother - Legacy & Remembrance.

Other people realated to David: Alfred Hitchcock (Director), Hattie McDaniel (Actress), Vivien Leigh (Actress), Irving Thalberg (Producer), Basil Rathbone (Actor), Ronald Colman (Actor), Jane Darwell (Actress), Clark Gable (Actor), Judith Anderson (Actress), Norton Simon (Businessman)