Mary & Charlie v. David

Of all the unhappy families in Hollywood, United Artists Corp. seemed to be the unhappiest. One-third owner Mary Pickford and one-third owner Charlie Chaplin had not been on speaking terms for a year and a half. Yet last week, via counsel, they agreed to boot out one-third owner David Oliver Selznick.

If Mary and Charlie wanted to go to court about it, as they said they did, that was all right with David. He promptly announced that he would distribute no more of his films through U.A. Instead he would form a new distributing company, a difficult job, call it the Selznick

Releasing Organization. S.R.O. (which could also mean Standing Room Only) would go to work distributing the latest Selznick epic, the $5,500,000 Technicolor Duel in the Sun.

Thus, when asked how it felt to be pushed out of U.A., David was able to cry: "Pushed, hell, I jumped !"

When Mary and Charlie, along with Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, set up U.A. in 1919, the idea was that U.A. would distribute films made independently by each of the partners. But, one by one, the original incorporators died off or stopped producing enough pictures to pay U.A.'s operating expenses. Mary and Charlie therefore began taking in new partners. But something always went wrong. Usually, Mary and Charlie thought the newcomers tried to run things too much their own way. So the newcomers had to go. In rapid succession, such notables as Sam Goldwyn, Darryl Zanuck, Alexander Korda went through U.A.'s revolving door.

Love & Kisses. Dauntless David Selznick stepped into the door in 1941. In return for a chance to obtain one-third of U.A.'s stock (now worth an estimated $4 million), David agreed to deliver ten pictures to U.A. within 20 years. At the contract signing, all was love & kisses (see cut).

What went wrong? Everybody had a different answer. Mary and Charlie accused David of using part of a $1,000,000 loan from U.A. to develop story properties which he later sold as packages (that is, complete with scripts and even Selznick stars) to other companies, with profit to David, none to U.A. David said that these were his babies and he could do as he liked with them. Besides, the three pictures he had already turned in on his contract (Since You Went Away, I'll be Seeing You, Spellbound) had all grossed more than $5 million each. In fact, said David, he had helped save U.A. from bankruptcy.

Stuff & Nonsense. David concluded that Mary had "an impulsive urge" to run the company, was trying to harass him into selling back his stock. Nonsense, cried Mary. In the first place, David's permanent ownership in the stock was contingent on his delivering all ten of the pictures he had contracted for; if he delivered a minimum of five, he could resell his stock to U.A. at an "equitable" price; if he delivered less than five, as was now the case, he had no rights in the stock at all. Despite David's claims to have bought the stock outright, said Mary, he had actually never paid a cent for it until a month ago, when he handed U.A. a check for $300,000.

To settle the stock-ownership dispute, a long legal fight was in prospect. Meanwhile, Mary and Charlie were busy lining up more pictures for U.A. with independent producers. Mary, in a new company formed with Lester Cowan (G.I. Joe), planned to produce four pictures of her own next year. She'd show that David.

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