Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (52 page)

Brett's suggestion that Mitchell was grousing about the amount of money obtained for the movie rights threw Marsh into a rage. After thanking Brett for making the correction, he heaped a torrent of abuse on the startled publisher. Referring to Brett's comments as “slurring,” Marsh, who apparently had been biting his tongue all these years, could restrain himself no longer:

Our dissatisfaction with the motion picture contract did not arise from the amount of money and nobody has any right to attribute to Peggy the qualities of a welsher or a whiner. Our dissatisfaction did arise from very different factors and you are in [a] better position than anybody else to know what they are. You know, but apparently you have forgotten, how Macmillan put a blindfold over Peggy's eyes and tied her hands behind her back and delivered her over to Selznick. Macmillan was her agent and she relied on Macmillan in the contract negotiations. Then, several weeks after the movie contract was signed, we learned that Macmillan had not even tried to protect Peggy's interests, as it had pledged itself to do. Macmillan's representatives had acted solely to protect Macmillan's interests, versus Selznick and versus Peggy. . . .

The numerous vague and far reaching demands upon the Author in the Selznick contract, and its almost complete lack of positive protection of the Author's interest, are why it is a bad and unfair contract and why we have been dissatisfied with it. It has forced Peggy to spend large amounts of money and it has made even greater drains on her time and strength.
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Marsh acknowledged he and his wife had been extraordinarily inexperienced at the time and advised Brett, “We would not have signed such a contract in 1936, excepting only for the fact that we relied upon Macmillan, as Peggy's agent, and Macmillan failed us.”

Brett was thoroughly bewildered by the assault. He had had little to do with the movie negotiations, other than approving Latham's plan to bring in Annie Laurie Williams and dealing with the fallout of Mitchell's dissatisfaction with the contract. It had been Latham who kept Williams's involvement a secret. It had been Latham who promised to look out for Mitchell's interests and then left on vacation. It had been Richard Brett who had been at the table with Mitchell and the Selznick representatives. Unsure how to respond, George Brett forwarded the correspondence to Latham and asked for the editor's impressions of Marsh's letter. This proved to be another land mine.

Latham immediately jumped on his boss for having implied to Marsh that the editor had anything to do with the motion picture contract for
Gone
With the Wind
. Latham claimed that he, too, knew little about the matter, having been on vacation that entire summer of 1936. He explained that Williams had sent him the offer while he was out of town, suggesting he had no idea why she had bothered him with it. Did Latham forget that he had volunteered to be Mitchell's agent and had assured her that he personally would look after matters? Apparently so. Absolving himself of any responsibility, Latham said that he knew nothing about Macmillan's position at the contract conference or why Marsh would say that the publisher blindfolded Mitchell. He even pointed out that he had never seen the contract or known any of its terms beyond the fifty-thousand-dollar payment.
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After establishing to his satisfaction that the problem was not his fault, Latham suggested Brett deal with Marsh in generalities. He took the liberty of drafting a response for the publisher's consideration, which Brett used verbatim for his reply to Marsh on December 8. The letter expressed regret that Marsh was disappointed but assured him of Macmillan's good intentions. Not grasping that Marsh's concern was a matter of principle and not of money, the letter suggested that the couple was unfairly judging matters with hindsight of what literary rights were worth in 1947 as opposed to what they had been worth in 1936.
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How Marsh responded to Brett's latest letter, if at all, is not known; the records do not include a reply. But for the rest of his life, Marsh maintained the view that Macmillan was responsible for the raw deal Mitchell received in the movie contract. Mitchell, though, appears not to have shared his anger. In fact, that first week in December, she wrote friendly letters to both Brett and Latham and made no mention of the ancient history that was so vexing her husband. She told Latham that, if she ever found time to write another book, he would be the first person she told on the first day she sat down at the typewriter. She also mentioned the possibility of another book in a letter to Brett. Although she was far too well mannered to disagree publicly with her husband, these letters seem intended to let both men know where they stood in her eyes. She would hardly promise her next book, arguably the most valuable manuscript in the world, to Macmillan if she did not trust or respect the firm.

That she wrote to both Latham and Brett is also noteworthy. Over the years, it has been speculated that Mitchell had a hopeless case of hero worship for the editor but never liked her publisher. Comparing Mitchell's relationships with Latham and Brett, it does appear at first glance that she shared a more cordial one with the editor. Early in their relationship, when Latham urged her to call him by his first name, she assented, but added effusively, “I feel exactly as though I had referred to God Almighty familiarly as ‘G.A.' ”
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With her editor, Mitchell always acted like something of an ingenue bewildered with all the goings-on around her. Latham brought out the Southern belle in her, and she, the paternalistic side in him.

But Mitchell was not so taken by Latham's charm that he was above reproach in her eyes. If anyone was at fault over the movie deal, ultimately it was Latham. He is the one who talked her into selling the rights. He brought Williams into the negotiations behind Mitchell's back. He then left the author hanging while he went on vacation. It must have also rankled Mitchell that Latham took all the credit for discovering her manuscript without ever publicly—and apparently not privately—giving credit to Mitchell's dear friend, Lois Cole. Cole resented Latham's handling of the matter, as she revealed in a 1956 letter to Margaret Baugh. Latham talked as if he had received a bonus for
Gone With the Wind
, Cole said. “You know how he was—anything to make other people uncomfortable.” She had not received any financial recognition for her role in the manuscript's acquisition, saying the thought of acknowledging her contribution “never occurred to them.”
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Cole had not made waves though, and Mitchell followed her friend's lead in not burning bridges with Latham.

Brett, on the other hand, had gotten off on the wrong foot with the author. He had reduced her royalties and refused to apologize for the poorly handled movie deal. Yet, he quickly came around to seeing that Mitchell was a person of unique charm. Although he never explicitly admitted having done anything wrong in those early days, he appeared to spend the next several years trying to win Mitchell over, often going above and beyond the call of duty to support her interests. He volunteered to share the legal bills on the Susan Lawrence Davis case. He agreed to defer royalties for tax purposes. He reversed his brother's decision to not aid in the Billy Rose case and the Dutch piracy lawsuit. He spent countless hours helping her deal with the foreign rights. He was the one who approached Selznick about letting Mitchell off the hook on the “God Almighty clause.” Mitchell and Brett did not always see eye to eye, but their relationship was all the richer for having been tested. He knew she was no pushover and certainly no fool. In 1943, British prime minister Winston Churchill famously said that “the price of greatness is responsibility.” Brett borrowed that sentiment and reworked it to Mitchell's accomplishments, telling her with admiration that the price of greatness, in her case, had been labor.
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For her willingness to pay that price with such a fine attitude, he had come to respect her greatly. He was also impressed by the level of expertise she developed in handling her publishing rights. As he wrote her in 1946, “In copyright matters I may have some knowledge, and perhaps some horse sense, but I think I bow to you. I find you too are an expert.”
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If she forgave the Dutch publisher, Adrian Stok, for all the trouble he caused, it seems unlikely she had not forgiven Brett who, despite his missteps, had been supportive of her and her brainchild.

Brett and Mitchell also seemed to enjoy each other's company in a way she and Latham never did. Whereas Mitchell's letters to her editor were warm, with Brett she seemed more comfortable showing the old Peggy, the one who enjoyed a good off-color joke. They were closer in age—only seven years apart—and shared a similar sense of humor. Indicative of her comfort with him is a response she offered to a suggestion he made in the spring of 1937 that the next commercial tie-in might be a
Gone With the
Wind
corset. Even though they were not yet on a first-name basis, she had no problem taking his reference to intimate women's apparel to the next level:

I am sure, however, that there is one ante bellum garment which will not return with the wind. That is the ante bellum pantie. Not long ago an admirer sent me a pair of her grandmother's drawers (yes, I know that sounds like a queer present, but I have received a few even queerer than this!). I tried these panties on, and I give you my word I could get both legs in one of the legs of Granny's pants. That pair of drawers was the most uncomfortable garment I ever had on, highly starched, baggy as a Turk's britches and covered with ruffles and embroidery. And chilly—my goodness! But I will not go into indelicate reasons for the chilliness of these pants, and I will only say that after trying them on I am sure ante bellum britches will not come back in style again.
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Only occasionally did her letters to Latham reveal the same sort of ribald spirit.

Mitchell also visited socially with Brett over the years, and it was not unusual for her to come to New York unannounced and ring him up. They would have dinner or go to the theater and usually ended the evening at the Plaza Hotel, where they talked until the wee hours of the morning.
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He had taken her to the famous New York City nightspot, the Stork Club. Brett family lore says he was impressed with how well Mitchell could hold her liquor; he declared she could probably drink any man under the table.
¹³
Despite the early bumps in their relationship, he came to feel that Mitchell was closer to him than to anyone else at Macmillan. He did not think her visits with him were good diplomacy; he genuinely felt they were friends.
¹⁴
Stephens Mitchell agreed with Brett's assessment: “You are right about Margaret's liking for you. She was not much of a diplomat. If she liked people, she let them know it.”
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With the foreign accounts back in order for the most part, Mitchell relished the sense of accomplishment. Despite all the troubles the translations had caused, the effort had been worth it. “Casting modesty to the four winds,” she proclaimed to a friend, she and Baugh had “done wonders” cooking up foreign contracts and getting money out of places nobody thought possible.
¹⁶
She was impressed with her secretary's efficiency and tenaciousness, and several times expressed gratitude by presenting Baugh with copies of the foreign editions. In an Italian translation, the author paid tribute to Baugh's ability to “read a royalty report in any language” and, in a Spanish edition, offered the inscription “Senorita Margarita Baugh, From la autora Margarita Mitchell, I kees your leetel wite fooot, Senorita, for your help on this edition.”
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Mitchell managed a veritable publishing empire from her Atlanta apartment and did a remarkable job, all things considered. Did she handle matters perfectly? Certainly not. At times, she let her pride and principles come before practicalities and business sense, especially when it came to fighting piracies. But, to her credit, she maintained her sense of humor and recognized the absurdity of what she was going through. To Baugh, she joked of writing a play about the life of a bestselling author. Whenever something ludicrous happened in the office, one of them would say, “That is something for the play.”
¹⁸
Mitchell saw it as an author's duty to “scramble for themselves and fight for and defend their copyrights as best they can” and took seriously her obligation to protect
Gone With the Wind
.
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While Brett and Walbridge Taft thought she went overboard spending so much money and time worrying about copyright problems, she had the last laugh.

Mitchell had proven that, with diligence and fortitude, foreign royalties could be profitable. Having the rights nailed down all over the world ultimately proved to her advantage when the foreign market for American books exploded after the war. Mitchell was ready to move. She had written one of the most famous novels in the world. She had a stable of reliable publishers in place. It also did not hurt that her book resonated with those rebuilding their lives amidst the ruins of World War II. A reader from Budapest, who dubbed herself “a Hungarian Scarlett O'Hara,” wrote to Mitchell in 1946, telling her that in
Gone With the Wind
“every single account which describes the terrible destruction and sufferings of war is so much like our experiences that it seems as though you, too, had been living among us during those ghastly times.”
²⁰
As a result, the overseas publishing rights to
Gone
With the Wind
turned out to be more profitable after the war than before. Years later, Stephens Mitchell wrote of how proud he was of his sister for her management of
Gone With the Wind
. Unlike other writers who let fortunes slip through their fingers, Margaret Mitchell's personal story was that she became a successful and diligent businessperson. Through her tireless efforts, she ensured she and Marsh were the ones to profit from her book's success.
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