Admirers of Hollywood's studio era (ca. 1920-60) often cite 1939 as the pinnacle of the system's film production. Two undisputed classics were released that year, Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. Both are assessed by Charles F. Adams in 1939: The Making of Six Great Films from Hollywood's Greatest Year (Craven Street, $16.95). He also includes a third landmark movie, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; a milestone Western, Stagecoach; and two surprising choices, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . For each, Adams discusses literary sources, casting, production issues, filming challenges, critical and box-office response, and the impact on careers. He also includes each movie's script/treatment.
For GWTW, he recounts how Paulette Goddard nearly played Scarlett. Her potentially scandalous living arrangements with Charlie Chaplin, however, compelled producer David O. Selznick to select Vivien Leigh, who proved perfect. But he's silent on one reason the original director, openly gay George Cukor, may have been fired. Clark Gable didn't want to be directed by a "fag" and may have feared that Cukor knew of incidents in his past when he may have been gay for pay.
Adams' scholarship is often sloppy. He mistakenly asserts that Olivia de Havilland accepted the role of Melanie after it had been offered to her sister, Joan Fontaine. Cukor may have considered Fontaine, but concluded she wasn't right, which Fontaine confirms in her memoirs. He's wrong in claiming that Bette Davis initially refused Scarlett. She was battling Warner Bros. for better parts and more money when Jack Warner said he was going to buy a new novel for her, without mentioning the title. She snapped, "I'll bet it's a pip!" When she read GWTW, she campaigned relentlessly for Scarlett and went to her grave insisting she should have played her. Adams dubiously claims that Selznick wanted Mae West for Belle Watling, but her insistence on writing her dialogue cost her the part. He erroneously states that Ann Rutherford played the eldest O'Hara sister – she played the youngest. Strangely, in discussing de Havilland's post-GWTW career, he cites her Best Actress Oscar nomination for 1948's The Snake Pit, but says nothing about her nomination for 1941's Hold Back the Dawn, or more importantly, her wins for To Each His Own (1946) and The Heiress (1949).
His section on Oz is better, if not groundbreaking. He writes how MGM's failure to borrow Shirley Temple for Dorothy resulted in Judy Garland getting the role, and of how Cukor, temporarily assigned to the movie, removed the blonde wig and other trappings she was forced to don to resemble Temple, thereby probably saving the film. Cukor's GWTW replacement, Victor Fleming, ultimately directed Oz. He mentions how Buddy Ebsen, the first Tin Man, nearly died from a reaction to the aluminum-based make-up. Ray Bolger was his initial replacement, with Jack Haley as the Scarecrow, but Bolger, determined to play the latter, succeeded in switching parts at the last minute. He adds that Ed Wynn was seriously considered for the Cowardly Lion before the selection of Broadway's Bert Lahr.
Adams' case for the importance of Stagecoach is compelling. It made John Wayne a star after about a decade of appearing in minor movies. He chronicles Wayne's complicated relationship with the often-abusive director John Ford, who was also his mentor. But he errs in stating that top-billed Claire Trevor would win "a second Academy Award in 1948 as Best Supporting Actress for Key Largo ." That was her only win.
Adams says that Frank Capra made Smith only because his studio, Columbia, rejected his proposed biography of Chopin, with Marlene Dietrich as Georges Sand. Capra, a Sicilian immigrant, believed in the populist democracy exemplified by Smith . Studio mogul Harry Cohn originally saw the picture as a sequel to Capra's successful Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur. Capra rejected the idea. To make the break explicit, he cast James Stewart as the quixotic hero, with Arthur as the smart political staffer. His sections on the complexity of building a set that was an exact replica of the Senate chamber and the furious reaction to the movie from elected politicians are fascinating. The public's response was enthusiastic. Oddly, in discussing Capra's post-Smith career, Adams says nothing about his State of the Union (1948), another cynical look at American politics.
Adams writes that Basil Rathbone, a classically-trained English actor who had memorably portrayed Sir Guy of Gisbourne in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), wanted to play Rhett Butler, and unsuccessfully pursued the role. (He reportedly was Margaret Mitchell's choice.) Rathbone would instead find great popularity as Sherlock Holmes in Baskervilles. He was neither the first nor the last big-screen Holmes, but he was perfectly cast and became synonymous with the part, which he played 13 more times in movies and television. Disappointingly, Adams ignores the subconscious homoerotic relationship between Holmes and Dr. Watson in Arthur Conan Doyle's stories and implicit in the pictures, in which Nigel Bruce played the doctor as a bumbler, rather than the hero's intelligent and able companion.
The final selection is the weakest, a bowdlerized but popular version of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn starring Mickey Rooney and Rex Ingram as Jim.
In his coda, Adams lists other significant 1939 releases, including The Women; Goodbye Mr. Chips, for which Robert Donat won the Best Actor Oscar over Gable and Stewart; and Beau Geste; but inexplicably omits William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, named Best Picture of 1939 by the New York Film Critics.
Adams provides a helpful bibliography for the six pictures analyzed, but omits Molly Haskell's superb Frankly My Dear: Gone With the Wind Revisited (2010). Adams' text would have benefitted from a fact-checker. Others might have selected a different year, but Adams' enthusiasm for 1939 makes for good reading, providing one remains skeptical about some assertions.