Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (57 page)

Even family members felt Marsh's ire when he suspected his wife's interests were being compromised. According to notes in his files, he confronted Stephens Mitchell's sister-in-law about her sneaking some of Margaret Mitchell's childhood writings out of the family home on Peachtree Street. After the death of the author's father, Stephens Mitchell and his wife, Carrie Lou, continued to live in the house with their two sons. Carrie Lou had died in 1950, and in May of the following year, Stephens Mitchell ordered some old trunks in the basement of the house cleaned out and the contents destroyed. According to Marsh's notes, Marguerite Reynolds, the wife of Carrie Lou's brother, went into the basement and rummaged around. Later, Marsh said she gave him “the impression that she had discovered a quantity of Peggy's papers, dating back to her childhood and early girlhood, and that she had taken these papers to her home.” Reynolds specifically mentioned finding what appeared to be the author's first attempt at writing her own name—a torn sheet of paper on which Eugene Mitchell had written out the word “Margaret” for his daughter to copy.
²¹

Marsh did not take this invasion of privacy lightly. He explained to Reynolds that all his wife's writings belonged to him and demanded that she return them. Over the next several weeks, Reynolds promised to give the items back but dragged her feet. She eventually returned just the scrap of paper with the author's signature scrawled on it. According to Marsh's notes, Reynolds insisted “that she had nothing else belonging to Peggy, and that Steve and I had misunderstood her if we thought she said she had found and taken a quantity of Peggy's stuff.”
²²
Though Marsh felt he had to accept her statement at face value, he impressed upon Reynolds that he “would not hesitate to sue someone who tried to exploit [his wife] by publication or sale of her private papers.”*

Also on Marsh's mind were the dramatic rights to
Gone With the Wind
. David O. Selznick remained interested in staging an extravagant theatrical production of Mitchell's story and was trying to structure a deal that appealed to Marsh. In the midst of those discussions, Annie Laurie Williams, the agent who brokered the original movie contract, reentered Marsh's life. She had gone on to a productive career since 1936 and now had a stable of respected clients, including John Steinbeck. In January 1951, on behalf of famed lyricist Alan Lerner, she offered Marsh three thousand dollars for a two-year option on the
GWTW
musical rights.
²³
Without letting on that he was close to reaching a deal with Selznick, Marsh replied vaguely that unspecified circumstances compelled him to delay consideration of the offer.
²⁴

Still no pushover, Williams ignored the brush-off. An associate of hers, Frankie McKee Robins, a movie reviewer for
McCall's
magazine, happened to be speaking in Atlanta the following month and agreed to meet with Marsh on Williams's behalf. With no small degree of effort, Robins arranged a dinner with him at the Piedmont Driving Club. As she described their meeting, Marsh was as suspicious of her as if she had been a bank robber. “Lord! Has he ever got his guards up!” she reported to Williams. As was often the case, Marsh's reserved demeanor came across as less than collegial, and he presented a “stone wall” about his plans for the subsidiary rights. However, he gave Robins an earful about the “son of a bitch” movie contract and how Macmillan had acted in a “high-handed” manner by hiring Williams without Mitchell's consent. Robins sensed he was “sore as a bear” about how things had been handled. As for Williams's offer on the dramatic rights, Marsh said he might have something to say about it that summer but for now did not want to be bothered. Robins's overall assessment of Marsh was that he was “a very peculiar person.”
²⁵

Summer came and went without Marsh taking action on the theatrical rights, but he remained in talks with Selznick. By the following spring, they appeared close to reaching a deal. As Selznick put out feelers to industry sources who might be interested in investing in the production, word leaked to the press that he was in talks with the estate. To Selznick's distress, the
Hollywood Reporter
ran a small notice asking, “Since when is a musical version of
GWTW
news? Billy Rose staged one at Fort Worth's Casa Manana in the '30s.”
²⁶
Worried the blurb gave the impression he was rehashing something that had already been done, Selznick asked the estate to demand a retraction.
²⁷
Marsh wrote the paper on April 25, 1952, explaining at length the history of the Rose production and why the
Reporter
's statement was “misleading” and “damaging to a valuable property—the
GWTW
dramatic rights.”
²⁸

A clarification appeared in the paper's May 2 edition: “John R. Marsh, husband of the late Margaret Mitchell,
Gone With the Wind
author, clarified that the
GWTW
musical bit put on by Billy Rose in Fort Worth in 1937 was not a musical version of the book but merely a song number, also that it was unauthorized and Rose subsequently made amends for the infringement.”
²⁹
Marsh likely never saw the notice. He died at home early on the morning of May 5, 1952, after suffering another heart attack. The “papa and mamma” of
Gone With the Wind
—as dubbed by the
Atlanta Journal
—were gone.

According to the will Marsh wrote after his wife's death, all the author's rights to
Gone With the Wind
devolved to Stephens Mitchell. Marsh's brother-in-law also received all the author's personal papers and the business records of
Gone With the Wind
.* As the new owner of one of the world's most valuable literary properties, Stephens Mitchell might have been tempted to hire an agent to manage the estate's business affairs, while he and his family enjoyed the profits of his sister's labor. But Margaret and John had trusted him to watch over the book's interests, so that is what he resigned himself to do. Having been involved with
GWTW
legal matters for many years, the author's brother felt well qualified to assume the mantle of leadership.

He asked Baugh—whom Margaret Mitchell once described as “the office angel” and “the bringer of order to chaos”
³⁰
—to stay on and assist with the estate's administrative duties. The secretary had helped manage the business of
Gone With the Wind
since January 1937 and had an in-depth knowledge of the records, issues, and people related to its history. He first set her up in the basement of his house, then eventually moved her to an office across the hall from his downtown law practice. He granted her a great deal of independence managing the daily affairs of the estate. The two communicated by telephone or memoranda and sometimes did not interact in person for weeks at a time.
³¹

Baugh found the transition to her new role difficult. After having spent so much time working side by side with the Marshes in their home, she found the isolation of this arrangement unsettling. Moreover, Stephens Mitchell's way of operating was quite different from how the Marshes handled the business of
Gone With the Wind
. He changed his mind often, a practice Baugh found irritating. As she vented to Cole, “After 15 years of John and Peggy, who thought everything through to the end, knew what they thought, and stuck to it, it is very confusing.”
³²
Baugh also expressed concern about the lawyer's lack of attention to appearances. When he allowed himself to be photographed in his home office without having the room straightened up, Baugh told Cole, “Peggy would die. After all those years of the careful front she put up to the public! . . . If we come through this without disgracing her, it will surprise me. (By ‘this' of course, I mean the next 2 or 3 decades.)”
³³

That Stephens Mitchell's approach differed from that of the Marshes is no surprise. Unlike the couple, who made
Gone With the Wind
the focus of their lives and devoted most of their waking hours to its care, he had a career and a family to tend to. Furthermore, because the Marshes treated
Gone
With the Wind
as if it were their child, defending its honor was their highest priority; making money off it was a secondary concern. Stephens Mitchell could not afford to take the same high-minded approach. His two sons would ultimately inherit the estate, and he felt an obligation to maximize the value of the literary rights for their benefit. In a letter to George Brett, the author's brother offered insight into how the business of
Gone With the
Wind
would be different under his direction:

During her life, Margaret set up a certain standard of values and stuck to it. She spent a great part of the money she made policing the world to maintain these standards. This redounded mainly to the profit of other people, such as Selznick, Loew's and foreign publishers, and to the prestige she desired. At the present time I do not have the money, the time nor the desire to be such a policeman.
³⁴

Brett appreciated what a monumental task faced Mitchell's brother in handling
Gone With the Wind
. “Believe me, Steve, . . . I sympathize with you in what I know will be your burden in complying with [Peggy] and John's wishes,” the publisher responded.
³⁵

One of the estate's top priorities after Marsh's death was wrapping up negotiations with Selznick for the dramatic rights to
Gone With the Wind
. Having no experience with theatrical matters, Stephens Mitchell looked to Kay Brown for advice on what the rights were worth. By September 1952, Mitchell and Selznick signed a contract authorizing the producer to release what they termed a “Dramatico-Musical production” of the novel. The estate received a $2,500 advance and would earn a percentage of the boxoffice receipts and proceeds from a recording of the show's music. Consistent with his sister's wishes that Scarlett and Rhett's story not be expanded upon, the contract also noted that “no right of sequelization is granted . . . neither the plot nor the story nor the lives of the characters shall be carried beyond the point where they end on the last page of the Novel.” Mitchell was also careful not to give Selznick the right to create a book or script version of his production; there was no need to provide competition for the novel. Mitchell admitted to Brett that he “may have been over cautious in this respect, but I wished to assure you that we were looking after every interest of The Macmillan Company.”
³⁶

Selznick promised that a musical titled “Scarlett O'Hara” would be onstage in two years. When word of the deal reached Robins, she could not help wonder why Marsh had been so secretive about Selznick's interest when she had approached him the year before. “
That
John Marsh!” she wrote Williams. “I'll bet he's the sneaky-est angel floating around in the other side of Paradise.”
³⁷
She likened his passion for secrecy to “more than a phobia—almost a private cult.”
³⁸