Wartime Romance For A Wartime Boom

Selznick On A Budget: I'll Be Seeing You (1944)

Five Weeks and Counting in Chicago

David Selznick tended to roll over top of associates simply because he knew more about picture-making than anyone beneath, or above, him. He had learned as boy apprentice to his father, read most literary classics during teen-age, took shrewd account of what sold in Hollywood, and how long a shelf life all stars had. Selznick is for me a most fascinating of independent producers, an attitude formed when NBC saluted him with a primetime special in 1968. Now the DOS backlog is being released on Blu-Ray by Kino, who thankfully are getting out minor titles in addition to known and expected ones. I'll Be Seeing You came of the "Vanguard" unit that Selznick kept to feed distribution channels and ease overhead at his Culver City plant. He'd at least try to hold below a million in negative costs, and though IBSY ran over that, it wasn't by enough to keep the film out of splendid profit realized by an ongoing wartime boom. $3.1 million in domestic rentals was grease to wheels ground slow by personal projects DOS overspent on. Had he done more like it, maybe Selznick would have lasted longer, but it wasn't this producer's habit to think modest, so I'll Be Seeing You would be a more/less isolated event.

Selznick tabbed up-and-comer Dore Schary to line produce I'll Be Seeing You. Schary was lately out of MGM where he had done a string of successful B's with aroma of A's (Lassie Come Home was one, its Technicolor and public reception to belie humble origin). Schary came to Selznick with determination not to be a toady. There are memos between them to reflect the push-pull. Selznick's wife (daughter of L.B. Mayer) shamed DOS into giving Schary a free hand and to remarkable extent (for DOS), he let him have it. I'll Be Seeing You is wartime romance between a shell-shocked soldier on leave and a lady convict also on furlough from state quarters. All aboard is improbable but IBSY was keyed to a hit title tune and rang long-run bells in every key site that got it. This was the kind of show that captured mood of the moment, took oodles of money, then was promptly forgot. Trio of stars had voltage that would dim to degree after the war, but for 1944, Ginger Rogers, Joseph Cotten, and especially Shirley Temple, were admission-getters good as any that DOS or competing majors could tender. Temple was peaking before exposure as a somewhat insipid ingénue, her wedding to John Agar the last truly big parade she'd ride in. Her Child Star memoir speaks to cling of position as a Selznick contract player and claws-out conduct by Rogers who wanted Shirley out, then treated her shabby when Selznick wouldn't let that happen. Account in the book makes clear that Ginger knew too well a threat to her spotlight, a sixth sense any actress needed to tread water of stardom (GR was 33 in '44).

Starting-Out John Derek Gets An I'll Be Seeing You Look-In

I'll Be Seeing You would probably have done even better if an outfit other than United Artists had distributed. Selznick never trusted them to apply a best effort, part of reason he'd ultimately form his own, and ruinous, distrib division. Sad 40's fate for Selznick was time mostly spent packaging stars, script, near-fully developed ventures, then peddling the lot to other companies for finish of what DOS started, sharing bounty with him after. Bows for success would be taken by others, while an increasingly reckless Selznick too often gambled away his portion, a dreadful compulsion he and too many others of Hollywood royalty labored under. There should be a book or at least an essay on damage this habit inflicted on Classic Era makers, but I know not of any. Imagine earning one fortune after another and then tossing them upon soiled cloth of gaming tables. For Selznick and kin, it was a worse drug than heroin or alcohol. Again to I'll Be Seeing You, it pleases too as record of how Christmas was celebrated when holidays really looked like pages from Currier-Ives, or at least Sears-Roebuck. As that sort of charmed period piece, I'll Be Seeing You will more than endure.