Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (28 page)

Even after reaching the million-copy mark in the middle of December,
Gone With the Wind
continued to astound. Macmillan records indicate that, from December 16 through December 28, 1936, the New York office moved another 57,000 copies and, from December 29 through the first week in February, 143,000 more.
¹⁷
And Macmillan was confident
Gone
With the Wind
had more to give.

In January, the firm began running advertisements in
Publishers Weekly
hyping the novel as the big book of 1936 and predicting it would be 1937's major title as well. The notices boldly called Mitchell's story part of the nation's folklore and the greatest piece of historical fiction ever written by an American. When questioned whether it was beating a dead horse, the publisher proclaimed that the time to not give up on a proven piece of merchandise was when it showed clear signs of breaking records: “The difference between a good sales record and a great one is often merely a matter of merchandising courage.”
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Macmillan went on to blanket the country with advertisements in big-city newspapers and national magazines.

Predictably, the book's amazing success caught the attention of many ambitious souls who scrambled to grab their own slice of the
Gone With the
Wind
pie. Writers wanted to quote from it in their books. Orators had grand visions of live readings of Mitchell's dramatic prose. Theatrical producers were eager to present the story on stage. Songwriters hoped to set her tale to music. Manufacturers wanted Scarlett and Rhett to help sell all manner of goods, from housedresses to greeting cards. There seemed to be no end to the ways people were finagling to make a dollar off Mitchell's story.

Every request that came in the door—and there were thousands—required careful consideration. As Mitchell would later say, preventing people from exploiting her book kept her busy twenty-four hours a day. There was far more to being a bestselling author than cashing royalty checks and signing books. Authors who do not take seriously the legal and technical aspects of permissions and infringements risk giving away their hard-earned money. Not so Margaret Mitchell. Overwhelmed by the rewrite process, the movie negotiations, and the mantle of celebrity, Mitchell hit her stride managing the business of her book.

Stephens Mitchell wrote of his sister's acumen for the commercial side of her literary career:

I have read many lives of literary people, and . . . I realize what is the difference between Margaret and other writers. Almost all of these people had no sense of business. Some of them knew it and turned over their affairs to an agent. Some of them did not know it, and lost their money. Some of them did not get any money, because of lack of business ability. One of them, Mark Twain, after losing money, acquired a guardian and protector in the great millionaire, H.H. Rogers. [The] real story about Margaret is that she became a woman of business, a good executive, a tireless worker.
¹⁹

The author tackled the job with the able assistance of her husband and brother, who were both earning a percentage of her profits. The trio formed a makeshift management team, a sort of
Gone With the Wind
, Inc. The author held the post of chief executive responsible for making the big picture decisions. Marsh served as the administrator charged with managing the workload and, of course, public relations. Stephens Mitchell, with the occasional help of his father, constituted the law department. Because the men had office jobs, the team met in the evenings after dinner.
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They analyzed issues and developed strategies, often until the wee hours of the morning.
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Many of the inquiries the team considered came from people who wanted to quote from the book, either orally or in writing. Macmillan technically controlled the rights to use written excerpts, while Mitchell held the rights to oral performances, but she kept a careful eye on all requests that came in. By this point in her literary career, Mitchell understood that, if she wanted matters handled to her specifications, she had to take an active role. For the most part, despite a sometimes-troubled relationship, she and Macmillan worked well together on these requests. They agreed that permission to quote should be denied to any profit-making ventures. The publisher saw no reason to share the
Gone With the Wind
wealth, and, given her tax concerns, Mitchell had no need for additional income. The publisher and author agreed, however, that students, teachers, and nonprofit organizations wanting to use only small portions of the text should be able to do so and at no cost.

As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished. In many cases, the Mitchell team struggled to identify those causes that were truly charitable in nature. As Marsh put it, they became “thoroughly familiar with the many abuses that masquerade under the name of charity.”
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Also frustrating were the innocent-sounding proposals that raised complex legal issues. When several charitable organizations asked for permission to create Braille editions of
Gone With the Wind
, Mitchell was pleased that her book merited translation. She agreed that the editions could be produced at no cost, as long as the publishers gave proper credit to Macmillan and did not abridge the story. Macmillan used the Braille editions as yet another golden opportunity for publicity. When Helen Keller traveled to Japan in 1937, the firm issued a press release announcing that she brought for reading on the journey
Gone With the Wind
in twelve Braille volumes. All seemed well until charities asked Mitchell to go a step further and allow broadcast readings of
Gone With the Wind
to the blind on the radio or via “talking albums.” She wanted to oblige but did not know if she had the authority, given the rights Selznick had acquired as part of the movie deal. She also identified a host of copyright issues associated with such a project and had no interest spending hours resolving them. Although she disliked appearing uncooperative, she declined to give permission and palmed the matter off onto Selznick. Mitchell would comment many times that people had no idea the stress, work, and expense imposed on her in the name of charity.

Then there were myriad proposals for commercial tie-ins associated with
Gone With the Wind
and its characters. The most straightforward situations were retailers who wanted to use Mitchell's book to draw attention to their own products. For instance, at the New York Motor Boat Show in February 1937, a publisher of nautical books placed
Gone With the Wind
among a display of volumes about boating. The exhibit grabbed a lot of attention as visitors puzzled over the connection. According to
Publishers
Weekly
, the man in charge of the booth stayed busy explaining that “
Gone
With the Wind
was not nautical, but nice.”
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In other cases, manufacturers wanted to use Mitchell's title to promote their own products. An advertising display for a water heater proclaimed “Gone with the wind are your hot water worries.” Book titles are not copyrightable in the United States, and so there was nothing Mitchell could do to stop uses like these. But that is not to say that the phrase “gone with the wind” was free for the taking.

When Pepperell Manufacturing Company asked for permission to create a
Gone With the Wind
fabric printed with scenes from the story, Macmillan and Mitchell were confident they had a propriety interest in such a product. They were not clear exactly how far those rights went though and suspected Selznick might have something to say about visual depictions of the story. After much hemming and hawing, neither the author nor the publisher were opposed to the fabric, and neither wanted to expend the time and resources necessary to figure out the legal nuances. They told Pepperell, as well as several other companies with similar plans, to proceed at their own risk. That winter, Pepperell sent Mitchell several yards of the fabric as a gift. She admitted it turned out well and Macmillan, too, had reason to be pleased when Pepperell took out a full-page ad in
Life
featuring the fabric, and bookstores put the material to good use in creating window displays.

Macmillan put its foot down, however, when third parties asked to use images of the book to promote other products. The publisher owned the rights to the dust jacket design and did not want it used in advertisements for other companies. One of the rare approvals Macmillan gave in this regard went to Winter Drittel, a clothing manufacturer, which asked to reproduce the dust jacket on hang tags for a line of
Gone With the Wind
dresses. Macmillan apparently wavered in this case because the manufacturer had already created an attractive window display at Stern Brothers department store in New York that featured the book with the dresses, thereby proving itself a good advertising partner.

Mitchell also wondered who controlled the further adventures of her characters. When fans began to accept that she would not write a sequel, some took matters into their own hands and wrote continuations of the story themselves, answering the burning question of what happened to the star-crossed lovers. Under modern copyright law, it is well established that authors have the exclusive right to prepare derivative works based on the lives of their characters. In the 1930s, however, the legality of this so-called fan fiction was less certain, and Mitchell did not know what, if anything, she could do to stop these unauthorized sequels. In the spring of 1937, she read about a Louisiana woman who could not bear the unhappy conclusion of
Gone With the Wind
and had written a happy ending, which a local newspaper published. Professing ignorance of the legalities involved, Mitchell forwarded the information to Macmillan and suggested the firm decide whether to voice any complaint.
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Macmillan did not pursue the matter and seemed fine with fans writing their own endings. For the time being, Mitchell did not question this approach.

A related question was who controlled the names of the characters. The movie contract allowed Selznick to use those names for manufactured items related to the film. Mitchell assumed she retained the rights for all other purposes. In the late fall of 1936, when manufacturers proposed using Scarlett O'Hara to promote their products, Mitchell did not bother to consult Selznick and took an open-minded approach. If someone wanted to assert that Scarlett might have liked a certain item, she had no problem with that as long as the manufacturer did not call the item a Scarlett O'Hara suchand-such or give the impression that Mitchell endorsed it.
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On one occasion in the winter of 1937, she went a step further and allowed a charitable group to use the name Scarlett O'Hara on dolls being sold to raise money for women on welfare.

Mitchell's liberal attitude about the use of her characters came to an end that spring when Cole had lunch with Mitchell's college friend Ginny Morris. The subject of the Scarlett dolls came up, and Morris, who worked in the publicity department of United Artists Film Corporation, expressed concern about Mitchell being so generous to the charity. She wrote the author to make sure she understood the commercial value of her characters, pointing out that Walt Disney made more from merchandise royalties than he did from his movies. Morris apologized for “butting in” but recommended that Mitchell and her brother take a careful look at the commercial tie-ups before they let a fortune slip away.
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Heeding Morris's warning, Mitchell approached Selznick to clarify ownership of the characters' names. To her consternation, the producer claimed that he had acquired the exclusive rights to merchandise the characters. This position contradicted what Stephens Mitchell understood the studio people to have said during the 1936 contract negotiations, and there were several heated exchanges over the matter. Mitchell stood her ground that the studio owned only the rights to the character names as they appeared in the movie. If Selznick wanted all the rights to Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler, he would have to pay for them. Selznick balked, and discussions stalled. Mitchell withdrew permission for the Scarlett O'Hara dolls and declined all similar proposals pending a resolution with Selznick.