RARE “Discovered Margaret Mitchell" Harold Latham Hand Signed 4X5.5 B&W Photo For Sale

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RARE “Discovered Margaret Mitchell" Harold Latham Hand Signed 4X5.5 B&W Photo:
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Up for sale a VERY RARE! "Discovered Margaret Mitchell" Harold Latham Signed 4X5.5 B&W Photo.

ES-6836

Harold Latham had to admit that in all his

years as an editor with Macmillan Publishing Co. he had never met an author

quite like Margaret Mitchell. Even before he had left for his talent scouting

trip of the South in April of 1935 he was hearing rumors about this

Atlanta-based writer. The wife of a Georgia utility company executive, she was

said to be working on a novel set during the Civil War. "If she can write

the way she talks, it should bea honey of a book," Macmillan associate

editor and Mitchell friend Lois Cole had told him before he left. But since the

day he arrived in Atlanta, Mitchell had been coy. She had politely rebuffed all

of Latham's requests to look at her work. She would not even admit that she had

written anything. After three days Latham was about to give up. In a few hours

he would be leaving his Atlanta hotel room to catch a train for New Orleans. Then

the phone rang. It was Mitchell. She was in the hotel lobby and wanted to see

Latham right away. He got on the elevator wondering what this puzzling person

was up to now. As the elevator door opened on the lobby he saw her. "I

shall never forget the picture I have of Margaret Mitchell," Latham was to

write later, " . . . a tiny woman sitting on a divan, and beside her the

biggest manuscript I have ever seen, towering in two stacks almost up to her

shoulders." As he approached, Mitchell rose and looked at Latham.

"Here, take the thing before I change my mind," she said. Quickly the

surprised editor took possession of the unwieldy manuscript. Realizing that it

would not fit in his suitcase, Latham went to a luggage shop and purchased

another bag. Finally he headed for the railroad station. As his train chugged

across the South that night Harold Latham became the first person, outside of

Mitchell's husband, to read her manuscript. It was not long before he realized

that it was "something of tremendous importance." The next morning

Latham found a telegram waiting for him at his New Orleans hotel. It was from

Mitchell. "PLEASE SEND MANUSCRIPT BACK, I'VE CHANGED MY MIND," it

said. But the veteran editor was not about to let this one get away. After

assuring Mitchell by letter that her book was, "really important and

significant," he sent the manuscript on to Macmillan. It was not long

before his bosses in New York agreed with Latham's judgment. In the words of a

Mitchell biographer, they knew "it was a good book, possibly a great book,

and without a doubt a salable book." "Gone With the Wind" - or

"GWTW" as it is also known - was on its way to becoming a publishing

legend. Although its literary merit has sometimes been questioned, no one can

doubt "Gone With the Wind's" continuing popularity. Since June 30,

1936, the day the book first went on sale, it has never been out of print. By

1983 it had sold 25 million copies in 27 languages and 37 countries. It still

sells roughly 250,000 copies a year in the United States and another 100,000

worldwide. At least 40,000 of those copies are hardbacks. It has gone through

185 known editions and has been pirated many times. The 1939 movie version is

even more familiar. Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh were to become Rhett Butler and

Scarlett O'Hara to millions. A monumental undertaking, the film cost more than

$4 million to make, a huge sum at the time, and the search for an actress to

play Scarlett was a movie publicity legend. Rhett's final movie words to

Scarlett, (the version in the book is somewhat different), "Frankly, my

dear, I don't give a damn," have entered the language as a catch phrase.

What once shocked audiences with its boldness now seems an echo from an age of

innocence. No one can say why "Gone With the Wind" has had such an

impact. But it certainly surprised Margaret Mitchell. She expected a sale of

perhaps 5,000 copies. What Mitchell got was a force so powerful that it was to

change her quiet life forever. It is said that writers write best about what

they know. And no one could accuse Margaret Mitchell of not knowing her

subject. She was born in 1900 into an upper-middle-class Atlanta family. Her

father Eugene was a lawyerwith a strong interest in history. Her mother was a

member of the socially prominent Stephens family. Educated in Quebec by nuns,

Margaret Mitchell spoke almost perfect French and was interested in both

literature and history. Maybelle Stephens Mitchell also was a militant

suffragette. One of young Margaret's earliest memories was of being taken to a

votes-for-women rally. Margaret Mitchell was interested in writing at a very

early age. And her family encouraged the interest. Her mother insisted Margaret

read good books. By age 10 she was writing plays for her neighborhood

playmates. Through high school she continued to write. But it was something she

did more for enjoyment than anything else. In 1918, when she went off to Smith

College in Massachusetts, Margaret Mitchell planned to study medicine. But her

dream of being a doctor was cut short before it started. Her parents and her

brother came down with influenza during the 1919 epidemic. Her father and

brother barely survived, her mother did not. Always very close to her family,

Margaret gave up college and returned to Atlanta to take care of her father and

brother. Never one to be idle and with the family in need of money she went to

work as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal. It was as a feature writer that

Margaret Mitchell blossomed. In the early 1920s she could be found swinging

from hoists or chasing fire engines and writing about it all with style. She

described herself "as a product of the Jazz Age . . . one of those

short-haired, short-skirted, hard-boiled young women who preachers said would

go to hell or be hanged before they were 30 . . . " After a first marriage

to a man who deserted her, Mitchell met the man she really loved. In 1925 she

married John R. Marsh, who had an office job with the Georgia Power Co. The

following year she quit theJournal determined to be, as she said, "first

of all a wife." But Margaret Mitchell never gave up her desire to write.

And her husband encouraged her. Since childhood she had heard stories about the

Civil War. Many of the people she had grown up around had fought in it and

remembered. The burning of Atlanta was still vivid in the minds of most folks

at the turn of the century. But what fascinated Mitchell was the end of the Old

South. To her the Civil War and Reconstruction were a dramatic stage for the

death of one way of life and the rise of another. It was this story as felt by

the people who lived it that she wanted to tell. And she thought she could tell

it best as a love story. For the next 10 years Margaret Mitchell worked on the

book. From her typewriter came the unscrupulous but fascinating Rhett Butler;

the elegant and tragically flawed Ashley Wilkes; Mammy, the shrewd,

understanding black slave, and the ever-kind and heroic Melanie Wilkes. But in

the vast cast of characters the one that stood out was the willful young woman

who Mitchell first called Pansy O'Hara. Today the world knows her as Scarlett. The

major criticism that has been directed at Mitchell's work has been her

depiction of black people. Except for Mammy (the film role played by Hattie

McDaniel won her an Academy Award as best supporting actress), most blacks in

"GWTW" are stereotypes. Good "darkies" stay with their

masters, bad ones run away. When the slaves hear the Yankees are moving on

Atlanta they act as scared as the whites. Although surely quite a few were

afraid, a modern reader longs for at least one sympathetic black character who

saw General Sherman as liberator. Mitchell had a great deal of respect for

black people. At one point she wrote in a letter that, "Mammy and Peter

and even ignorant Sam (a field hand) knew more of decorous behavior and honor

than Scarlett did." But she found it difficult to escape the attitudes of

her day. In the spring of 1935 Mitchell was still not sure what she wanted to

do with her work. The arrival of Harold Latham was forcing the issue but still

she held back. The day Latham was to leave she was having a talk with a young

woman who was also writing a book. Without intending to, the budding author

started to needle Mitchell about her manuscript. "Really, I wouldn't take

you for the type to write a successful book," she told Mitchell. "You

know you don't take life seriously enough to be a novelist." This outburst

cut Margaret Mitchell deeply. She rushed home, gathered up her manuscript (part

of it was in the pots and pans closet) and took it down to Latham's hotel. It

was pure impulse, she told a friend later. Margaret Mitchell was soon aware of

the impact of her impulse. By July, Macmillan was bombarding her with offers.

They promised a $500 advance, very good money in the Depression, plus 10 percent

of the retail price on the first 10,000 copies and 15 percent thereafter. It

was a deal too good to pass up. A lot of work remained just to get the book in

some sort of order. And Macmillan had just begun its massive advertising

campaign. It was a year before the book was ready for publication. One of the

bigger problems was the lack of a title. Mitchell called her work "Another

Day" but she was never happy with it. She came up with everything from

"Tote the Weary Load" to "Ba! Ba! Black Sheep." Finally she

found what she wanted in a verse of poetry by the obscure Ernest Dowson.

"I have forgot much Cynara!" the poet wrote. "Gone with the

wind, flung roses, roses riotously with the throng . . . " And so

"Gone With the Wind" was born. On Tuesday, June 30, 1936, "Gone

With the Wind" went on sale. And the first review appeared that day in The

New York Times. Reviewer Ralph Thompson had some good things to say. But he

wasn't sure about "GWTW" overall. He liked the history but called the

plot "unconvincing and somewhat absurd . . . " Thompson found the

black dialogue overdone and the use of certain words out of character. Then

there was the problem of length. "I happen to feel the book would have

been infinitely better had it been edited down to say 500 pages . . . a more

disciplined and less prodigal piece of work would have more nearly done justice

to the subject matter," he wrote. But Ralph Thompson was in the minority.

Most reviewers were wildly enthusiastic. The following Sunday the chief staff

critic of The New York Times Book Review, J. Donald Adams, was overjoyed. He

called "GWTW" a "bounteous feast of storytelling. That a first

book should display such a narrative sense, so sure, so unwaveringly sustained

through more than a thousand pages, is a little short of amazing," he

wrote. For Adams the characters were all true to life. As for Scarlett,

"she is a memorable figure in American fiction . . . she lives in her own

right, completely, and will, I suspect, for a long time to come." Adams declared

that he was already looking forward to more from Margaret Mitchell. "GWTW"

became an instant best seller. Within three weeks it had sold 178,000 copies,

unheard of for a first novel by an unknown writer. It was on the best-seller

list for 21 consecutive months and when it dropped off in April 1938, 2 million

copies had been sold. These were hard-cover copies which cost $3 apiece, a

hefty amount when people made an average wage of 25 cents an hour. But the book

was more than just a commercial success. In 1937 "GWTW" was awarded

the Pulitzer Prize. Even before the book was formally published, speculation

about a movie version was in the air. Advance copies were already making the

rounds of movie studios in May. Kay Brown, an agent for independent producer

David O Selznick, was impressed with "GWTW". She wired her boss,

"DROP EVERYTHING AND BUY IT." Eventually Selznick did for $50,000,

the largest sum ever paid to a writer for movie rights to a book up to that

time. Later on people would claim she should have gotten more but Mitchell

never expressed anything other than happiness with the amount. Clark Gable

seemed the logical choice to play Rhett Butler. Some in the South, said

Mitchell, felt Ronald Coleman or Basil Rathbone would be better suited for the

part. But Gable was America's leading matinee idol and few could imagine anyone

else in the role. The search for an actress to play Scarlett O' Hara was

another story. A talent hunt like Hollywood had never seen was launched to find

just the right woman. Big names and little names were auditioned for the part

with no result. On the night of Dec. 10, 1938, Selznick had already started

filming by burning down the movie's Atlanta on a back lot. Among those present

were Selznick's brother Myron, an agent, and his client, a young English woman

named Vivien Leigh. Watching Leigh in the firelight, Myron Selznick noticed how

good she looked. Grabbing his brother's arm Myron said, "David, meet your

Scarlett!" Trusting his brother's judgment, David Selznick decided to give

the unknown a chance. After a quick screen test a few weeks later he declared

Vivien Leigh Scarlett O' Hara. At first the choice of an English woman to play

the belle of Dixie ruffled some feathers South of the Mason-Dixon line. But

when Mrs. Walter D. Lamar, president-general of the United Daughters of the

Confederacy, endorsed Vivien Leigh, angry voices were quickly silenced. The

hoopla was front page news nationwide. In mid-December, 1939, the movie was

ready for its premiere. Selznick choose the Loew's Grand Theater in Atlanta.

For three days, Dec. 13, 14 and 15, the city celebrated. When the stars of the

film arrived for the premiere Margaret Mitchell was there to greet them. Four

Confederate veterans were in the audience. As the house lights dimmed and Clark

Gable promptly fell asleep, "Gone With the Wind" filled the screen. At

least in part Margaret Mitchell knew what was coming. She had seen the stills.

And some of what she had seen drove her crazy. Her, as she called it, " .

. . health, hardy country and somewhat crude civilization . . . " had been

transformed into elegance. The fight to keep columns off of the movie version

of the O'Hara's plantation house, Tara, was a major if ultimately fruitless

battle. Mitchell said afterwards she wanted to establish The Association of

Southerners Whose Grandpappies Did Not Live in Houses With White Columns. But

if Tara was at least close to what she hoped for, the Wilkes mansion, Twelve

Oaks, was a total surrender to Southern mythology. "I had feared Twelve

Oaks would end up looking like Grand Central Station and your description

confirms my worst apprehensions," Mitchell wrote to a friend who was

working on the movie. "I did not know whether to laugh or to throw up at

the two staircases." The ball scene in wartime Atlanta was far too elegant

and, "I cannot imagine even Scarlett having such bad taste as to wear a

hat at an evening party, my heart sank at the sight of it . . . " But

there was more about the movie that she liked than disliked. Mitchell was

especially happy thatthe cast didn't "y'all" every five minutes and

sounded like real people. The success of the film made the book all the more

popular. Reaction to "Gone With the Wind" in the Lehigh Valley was

decidely mixed. It opened on Jan. 25, 1940, at Allentown's Rialto Theater. But

long before, merchants were trying to tap into the "GWTW" phenomenon.

"Wear the Prints the Stars Wear in Gone With The Wind," touted Hess

Brothers in its dress ad a week before the opening. Also on sale were women's

hats that were said to have been inspired by the movie. They featured several

styles and colors - Scarlett rose, Bonnie blue, Rhett gray, and Ashley tan.

Thirsty opening-night audiences could walk down to Tallman's bar at 9th and

Hamilton for a Scarlett O' Hara cocktail. "Its action is as unpredictable

as the temper of its namesake . . . so . . . no more than two if you please . .

. else you may be, GONE WITH THE WIND," read the opening night ad. All

seats were reserved for the night shows and cost $1.10, including tax. Matinees

cost 75 cents and ran from 10 a.m. to 2:15 p.m. Passes were not allowed. The

movie ran for two weeks and returned later that year for a repeat run. The

Morning Call never reviewed it and there are no local newspaper accounts of it

being regarded as anything other than another movie. Perhaps with all the

national hype it was felt that there was no reason to try and sell "Gone

With the Wind" to the public. Aug. 11, 1949, had been a warm day in

Atlanta. But the evening breeze had cooled things off. Taking advantage of the

break in the weather Margaret Mitchell and her husband decided to go out to a

movie. As they were walking across the street a car turned the corner and ran

right into her. Knocked unconscious by the blow and severely hurt, Margaret

Mitchell was taken to the hospital. She lingered for fivedays but there was

little doctors could do for her. On Aug. 16, 1949, Margaret Mitchell died.

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