Gone With the Wind (1939) Box Office:20 million Tickets Sold in the First Year.

[arlo]

16 minutes ago, Telemachos said:

 

I don't think it's a question of laziness, it's that the data wasn't tracked in the ways we now expect, and in many cases the original source documents (if any) are probably lost or destroyed as well.

 

Undoubtedly some records have been lost but just on what's been publicly available, we've seen random unpaid message board posters do far better research than paid journalists. Most of them just report Box Office Mojo's "adjusted" list without investigating it at all. Regarding Jaws, for example, we know it had several re-releases and it's not hard at all to find info about them, but Mojo refuses to even acknowledge them, even after being informed of a Jaws re-release trailer that can be seen on Youtube touting that Jaws' initial release was "seen by 67 million people." 

[DeeCee]

2 hours ago, arlo said:

 

Cool. Yeah I remember now, you posted as DC2010 or something like that.

 

It's actually gotten a lot more difficult to research this than in 2010, because Google has almost completely destroyed its news archives. Now the best sources I can find are Google Books, and of course its free previews are more restrictive than ever. How naive I was to think 10-15 years ago that information would be a lot more freely available now. Things have gotten so much worse. 

I know.  I started looking again and Google was nothing like 2010 when you could find a lot of scanned old newspapers from the time.  Also had a cheap subscription to the New York Times.  Some consider the earlier release one continuous release but I split them up because of articles like this in the NYT.

 

""Gone With the Wind" will return to Broadway for a third time on March 31, when the David O. Selznick production will open a continuous-run popular-price engagement at the Astor Theatre. The film, which already has grossed $30,000,000, the biggest business ever to be recorded by any picture, has played to more than 52,000,000 paid admissions in more than 12,500 engagements, according to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the distributors.

 

"Gone With the Wind" first arrived on Broadway on Dec. 19, 1939, opening simultaneously at the Astor and Capital Theatres.  It remained at the Astor for forty-three weeks, being shown twice daily at advanced prices, and ran for eleven weeks and two days at the Capital, setting a record for the latter theatre.  The picture made its second Broadway appearance at the Capital on Jan. 23 and continued through Feb. 19 of that year on a popular basis."

 

March 17 1942

 

Now that I found this article again I'll have to adjust my earlier post.  

 

It would appear that from its opening at the end of 1939 to 1944 it had roughly 76 million paid admissions in the US and Canada.  

Edited January 4, 2016 by DeeCee

[BoxOfficeFangrl]

5 hours ago, Harpospoke said:

 

I do agree that GWTW was unique for its time and changed cinema.  The studio was actually mocked when it was being filmed.   Its nickname was "Selznick's folly".   It was a risky endeavor.  Selznick was proven right though.   In retrospect, I wonder why those pundits didn't notice that every actress in Hollywood wanted to star in the movie and the public was obsessed with casting news.   I guess hindsight is 20/20 for every movie though.   SW7 is "obvious" now.    

 

GWTW was a very popular/acclaimed book but also extremely long, with fans having a lot to say about its casting. It wasn't that the media thought no one would care about a GWTW film, just that it was very costly, between getting Gable as Rhett  (studio contracts were a huge consideration back then), the Scarlett search, the first director being fired three weeks into filming (unofficially, there were three in all) and the producer ordering a massive rewrite midway through filming.

 

And the screenplay, the biggest issue was cutting down the story (the first draft was said to make a 6-hr movie) but even then, minority groups protested elements of the story and the studio did tone down the racism of the books. Plus, censorship threatened the story's most famous line. Imagine if you combined the fan interest of the first Harry Potter crossed with a Titanic/Avatar-level lavishness with the biggest budget ever, accused of glorifying slavery, and yeah, the press would be all over that, wondering if it would fail.

Edited January 5, 2016 by BoxOfficeChica

[Biph Shmata]

There is no movie I want to be overtaken more than GWTW  by any movie, even McG's Thundercats a Michael Bay production. It sucks nothing ever will.

I have a low tolerance for Civil War revisionism. 

[DeeCee]

Imagine the online wars about GWTW today.

[BoxOfficeFangrl]

11 minutes ago, DeeCee said:

Imagine the online wars about GWTW today.

 

Though if it came out now, it wouldn't be written the same way in the first place. It would probably be more like a Cold Mountain thing where the Southern characters get torn apart by the Civil War, yet the story finds a way to largely sidestep slavery, or Scarlett would be a secret Unionist and Mammy would be young and pretty and get to have her own love life, too. Or, Scarlett would learn she's, like, 1/32nd black, after her grandmother's deathbed confession that she was born on Monticello, the daughter of Sally Hemings (allegedly). LOL, let me stop now.

 

Another less incendiary controversy, if GWTW were being first made today, is that fans are huge sticklers for canon now and the more popular the book, the more rabid the fanbase, the more producers feel they can't make major changes.  People who've only heard about GWTW think it's long, but the movie cut out major plots and characters

Spoiler

(like the children Scarlett has with her first two husbands)

just to get it down to four hours. Today, no studio would even try to make a story like GWTW into one or two movies, but they'd treat it like a limited series, lean on Margaret Mitchell to come up with storyline suggestions to pad out the stories for the supporting characters or the next generation, and crank out 4-5 seasons Downton Abbey-style. So we'd never know what sort of box office it would have now, I don't think.

 

 

[Daxtreme]

Everything that's been said in this thread so far is the reason why the-numbers.com don't even bother adjusting any movie that came before Star Wars in 1977.

 

If they wanted their numbers to still be relevant today, they had to better report them at the time.

 

They didn't, so now the only movies that are relevant today when we want to compare with new titles are those who did, which started with Star Wars.

 

And I have no problem with that. Everyone knows GWTW had a godly run. But that's all it should stay as, a "godly run" that's not quantifiable. 

[POTUS 2020]

13 hours ago, TalismanRing said:

 

 

Interesting that ticket prices shot up 30% when the great Depression hit.

 

Also, to put the 72m admissions just after the first general release (and 96m after the second) in perspective the US population was 130.9m in 1939.  (It's almost 2 1/2 times bigger now).

Ticket prices increased due to talkies in 29-30. The affect of the crash in Oct 29 wasn't felt by the masses for more than a year and really got bad in 33. That's when they dropped the prices back down. Many that had to stand in soup lines still found a way to scrounge up 25c once in a while. It was a tremendous escape from a harsh reality. Highest annual ticket sales per capita back then. 

Edited January 5, 2016 by No Prisoners

[Jonwo]

Not related to GWTW but I assume that when they introduce Cinemascope, Ultra Panavision etc they bumped up ticket prices. 

 

When did multiplexes become more mainstream? 

[Harpospoke]

5 hours ago, BoxOfficeChica said:

GWTW was a very popular/acclaimed book but also extremely long, with fans having a lot to say about its casting. It wasn't that the media thought no one would care about a GWTW film, just that it was very costly, between getting Gable as Rhett  (studio contracts were a huge consideration back then), the Scarlett search, the first director being fired three weeks into filming (unofficially, there were three in all) and the producer ordering a massive rewrite midway through filming.

 

And the screenplay, the biggest issue was cutting down the story (the first draft was said to make a 6-hr movie) but even then, minority groups protested elements of the story and the studio did tone down the racism of the books. Plus, censorship threatened the story's most famous line. Imagine if you combined the fan interest of the first Harry Potter crossed with a Titanic/Avatar-level lavishness with the biggest budget ever, accused of glorifying slavery, and yeah, the press would be all over that, wondering if it would fail.

 

Kinda funny....Titanic faced some of the same mocking.   It too faced going way over budget and last minute reshoots.    Like GWTW, many were predicting failure.    I think I'll keep that in mind for big budget movies which look to be burdened with problems.   Can't really tell until you see it.

 

4 hours ago, Biph Shmata said:

There is no movie I want to be overtaken more than GWTW  by any movie, even McG's Thundercats a Michael Bay production. It sucks nothing ever will.

I have a low tolerance for Civil War revisionism. 

 

So that's it.   I always wondered why it got attacked so often.   I put it right up there with Casablanca and Citizen Kane.   Easily one of the best movies ever made.

 

Some people really think that's what GWTW is about?     I guess it makes sense, we live in a time when every southerner of that era is portrayed as a raving racist and every northerner is portrayed as a good hearted crusader for equality.    In "movie reality" it gets kinda humorous as northerners suddenly transform into racists again when sports teams start having black players in the 20th century.    I wonder what Bill Russell thinks when he sees a civil war era movie's portrayal of northern white people?    That's gotta be eye-rolling to him.

[MasterDodsen]

This may be off topic, but a more fruitful search would be what Jaws really made. 260,000,000 exactly? Come on, man.

[Biph Shmata]

2 minutes ago, Harpospoke said:

 

Kinda funny....Titanic faced some of the same mocking.   It too faced going way over budget and last minute reshoots.    Like GWTW, many were predicting failure.    I think I'll keep that in mind for big budget movies which look to be burdened with problems.   Can't really tell until you see it.

 

 

So that's it.   I always wondered why it got attacked so often.   I put it right up there with Casablanca and Citizen Kane.   Easily one of the best movies ever made.

 

Some people really think that's what GWTW is about?     I guess it makes sense, we live in a time when every southerner of that era is portrayed as a raving racist and every northerner is portrayed as a good hearted crusader for equality.    In "movie reality" it gets kinda humorous as northerners suddenly transform into racists again when sports teams start having black players in the 20th century.    I wonder what Bill Russell thinks when he sees a civil war era movie's portrayal of northern white people?    That's gotta be eye-rolling to him.

GWTW is a part of the Civil War racist revisionism that began to occur in the U.S. in the early 20th century, a revisionism that downplayed the importance of slavery as a cause of the war. It's certainly not the most egregious example of that in film, Birth of a Nation holds that title, but the book and to a lesser extant the movie pushed the revisionist agenda. 

It's a well made, technically brilliant film, the same could be said of both Birth of A Nation and Triumph of the Will. Those 2 films are abhorrent whereas I find GWTW merely distasteful, so it has that going for it.  

[Harpospoke]

18 minutes ago, Biph Shmata said:

GWTW is a part of the Civil War racist revisionism that began to occur in the U.S. in the early 20th century, a revisionism that downplayed the importance of slavery as a cause of the war. It's certainly not the most egregious example of that in film, Birth of a Nation holds that title, but the book and to a lesser extant the movie pushed the revisionist agenda. 

It's a well made, technically brilliant film, the same could be said of both Birth of A Nation and Triumph of the Will. Those 2 films are abhorrent whereas I find GWTW merely distasteful, so it has that going for it.  

 

The racist northerners in the 20th century actually support this "revisionism".   Where were all those civil rights minded northerners when Jackie Robinson and Bill Russell were playing sports in the north?   It's clearly more complicated than "people in the north hated slavery and people in the south loved it".   The real revisionism appears to be the idea that all those poor southern white boys would march off to war so the rich plantation owners could keep their slaves.   Yeah...that totally makes sense.   Poor people are well known for being passionate about helping rich people make more money.      I think people on both sides are exaggerating.

 

The war is a backdrop to the story in GWTW.   That's not what the movie is about at all.   I guess some people never bother to watch it.   Those who do seem to be upset that the white people and black people appeared to like each other.   I guess the only approved version is now white people beating black people with a whip?    Political correctness strikes again.

[Biph Shmata]

52 minutes ago, Harpospoke said:

 

The racist northerners in the 20th century actually support this "revisionism".   Where were all those civil rights minded northerners when Jackie Robinson and Bill Russell were playing sports in the north?   It's clearly more complicated than "people in the north hated slavery and people in the south loved it".   The real revisionism appears to be the idea that all those poor southern white boys would march off to war so the rich plantation owners could keep their slaves.   Yeah...that totally makes sense.   Poor people are well known for being passionate about helping rich people make more money.      I think people on both sides are exaggerating.

 

The war is a backdrop to the story in GWTW.   That's not what the movie is about at all.   I guess some people never bother to watch it.   Those who do seem to be upset that the white people and black people appeared to like each other.   I guess the only approved version is now white people beating black people with a whip?    Political correctness strikes again.

This is OT so im gonna spoiler

Spoiler

It has nothing to do with racism in the North, it's about GWTW being a slavery-apologist film, I just don't cotton to those films.  

There were many causes to the Civil War, but without slavery there would have been no war. The reason confederate state after confederate gave for leaving the Union was slavery. Bleeding Kansas showed what happened when the issue of slavery was to be voted on by the territory. Northern Soldiers marched to the first battle of Bull Run singing "John Brown's lies a moldering in the grave, but his truth goes marching on" to the tune of Battle Hymn of the Republic. The Civil War was primarily about slavery which was a vile institution, GWTW glorifies that vile institution.

I am allowed to dislike even a well made film for moral and or political reasons without it having anything to do with "political correctness".

 

Edited January 5, 2016 by Biph Shmata

[MovieMan89]

Ugh, box office all should have just been admissions tracked from the get go. I know it would make records way less exciting, but then we would at least know where movies really stand in the most successful ever. 

[BoxOfficeFangrl]

37 minutes ago, Harpospoke said:

 

The racist northerners in the 20th century actually support this "revisionism".   Where were all those civil rights minded northerners when Jackie Robinson and Bill Russell were playing sports in the north?   It's clearly more complicated than "people in the north hated slavery and people in the south loved it".   The real revisionism appears to be the idea that all those poor southern white boys would march off to war so the rich plantation owners could keep their slaves.   Yeah...that totally makes sense.   Poor people are well known for being passionate about helping rich people make more money.      I think people on both sides are exaggerating.

 

The war is a backdrop to the story in GWTW.   That's not what the movie is about at all.   I guess some people never bother to watch it.   Those who do seem to be upset that the white people and black people appeared to like each other.   I guess the only approved version is now white people beating black people with a whip?    Political correctness strikes again.

 

Nah, they just don't like the grinning/singing/stupid slaves on display in the movie. Some can look past it and focus on Scarlett, Melanie and Rhett and Tara, others can't. No one expected constant whippings, sex abuse or children ripped from their mothers' arms on the auction block, but it just takes them out of the story to root for people who gladly own slaves, to see the minstrel show imagery and/or the happy, loyal former slaves marveling at the fancy new house where they'll be still be drudges to the people who used to own them and regard them as property, but yay, a mansion! If some modern audiences think that's unforgivably gross, fine. If other people regard GWTW as a product of its time and don't see the racial depictions as dealbreakers to enjoying it, IMO that's fine too. If they look at GWTW and conclude hey, wasn't life so much better in the Antebellum South...  

 

It wasn't like the Northerners were all yay, intergration! or that all, or most, Southern whites all had plantations and slaves. But in the South, the institution reinforced a hierarchy and for people who were poor and white, they could look at themselves and say, well, least they were free and could feel superior to slaves. And maybe someday, if the system stayed in place, maybe they wouldn't always be poor and they'd have slaves of their own. Then came the North wanting to blow up that world for good, trying to give black people their freedom, the right to own property and vote. So where would that leave someone poor and white who didn't necessarily have very much to begin with, if they had new competition for property and jobs? It's a familiar pattern in US history, that the group feeling they're on the next-to-the-lowest rung ends up being the most defensive about keeping someone else—someone "other"— further down the ladder, out of their own self-interest. 

 

After GWTW, what is the most controversial on the all-time adjusted list, The Exorcist?

[BadAtGender]

1 hour ago, MovieMan89 said:

Ugh, box office all should have just been admissions tracked from the get go. I know it would make records way less exciting, but then we would at least know where movies really stand in the most successful ever. 

 

Well, yes and no. It would give us a definitive list of what movies have sold the most tickets, but absent the context of the what the market was like during a film's release(s) it's not really going to be an accurate statement of success.

 

If you're comparing a film, you need to pick a basis for comparison that makes sense. Sometimes, yes, admissions may be the best. But at others you may want just the straight dollar values. And sometimes you'll want to do some inflation adjustment, either average ticket price or real dollar adjustment. But all of those are just tools. You need to understand why they do what they do as you use them.

 

Too often people on the forum have a very narrow focus on finding the biggest and best of whatever. Opening Weekend. Domestic Gross. Worldwide Gross. Whatever. It's myopic because it starts to lose any value. If you only care about that one thing, you're going to miss a lot of the more fun and interesting details. There's so much more to box office tracking than breaking records.

 

Really, I think a lot of the discussion on this thread seems to be hovering around the question about whether GWTW or Star Wars IV is the more successful movie. And... I don't think that can be answered. In some ways, it's probably GWTW. In others it's ANH. (In others, it's Titanic. And in others it's Avatar.) Context matters. There is never going to be an absolute answer.

 

This isn't just a movie box office problem. Any reasonably built up system that lasts a while is going to have enough going on that there will be too many details to really pin down absolutes. If you follow baseball, who's the greatest player ever? Best all time pitcher? You start asking around to fans and you'll get dozens of answers, and they can all be backed up by stats and reasons and so forth. But you'll likely never get a firm answer. The game has been played for too long with too many changing factors that you can't really make a firm conclusion.

 

And all that's fine. We're not robots.

[Plain Old Tele]

4 hours ago, Jonwo said:

Not related to GWTW but I assume that when they introduce Cinemascope, Ultra Panavision etc they bumped up ticket prices. 

 

When did multiplexes become more mainstream? 

 

While there were some "duplex" theaters in the 60s (and I think some very isolated and rare 4-screen theaters), multiplexes didn't really become a thing until the 80s. 

[Harpospoke]

2 hours ago, Biph Shmata said:

This is OT so im gonna spoiler

  Hide contents

It has nothing to do with racism in the North, it's about GWTW being a slavery-apologist film, I just don't cotton to those films.  

There were many causes to the Civil War, but without slavery there would have been no war. The reason confederate state after confederate gave for leaving the Union was slavery. Bleeding Kansas showed what happened when the issue of slavery was to be voted on by the territory. Northern Soldiers marched to the first battle of Bull Run singing "John Brown's lies a moldering in the grave, but his truth goes marching on" to the tune of Battle Hymn of the Republic. The Civil War was primarily about slavery which was a vile institution, GWTW glorifies that vile institution.

I am allowed to dislike even a well made film for moral and or political reasons without it having anything to do with "political correctness".

 

 

Good idea Biph.

Spoiler

 

I don't see GWTW "apologizing" or "glorifying" anything so I don't know where that comes from.   It depicted a certain rich family who did have a good relationship with slaves that worked both ways.   That did occur so it's not like they invented it to cover up that everyone was beating slaves all day long.   The story really would not have worked if they used a family who mistreated black people.

 

As for the motivation, Frankly (ha!) the scene with the southern guys sitting around drinking talking about how they are much better fighters than guys from the north sounds like a much more logical reason for why those guys marched off to war to me.   It's not like the south invented slavery in the US...it  was the north which got that started.

 

 

57 minutes ago, BoxOfficeChica said:

 

Nah, they just don't like the grinning/singing/stupid slaves on display in the movie. Some can look past it and focus on Scarlett, Melanie and Rhett and Tara, others can't. No one expected constant whippings, sex abuse or children ripped from their mothers' arms on the auction block, but it just takes them out of the story to root for people who gladly own slaves, to see the minstrel show imagery and/or the happy, loyal former slaves marveling at the fancy new house where they'll be still be drudges to the people who used to own them and regard them as property, but yay, a mansion! If some modern audiences think that's unforgivably gross, fine. If other people regard GWTW as a product of its time and don't see the racial depictions as dealbreakers to enjoying it, IMO that's fine too. If they look at GWTW and conclude hey, wasn't life so much better in the Antebellum South...  

 

Spoiler

You seem to insisting that every movie depict the worst slave owners and no movie should ever depict the slave owners like those in GWTW.   Since situations like the one in GWTW did indeed exist in real life, it's a valid setting for a movie.    Not sure how it can be reasoned that the story would have worked if they used one of the horrid families.    Now that would take me out of the story!    

 

Quote

 

It wasn't like the Northerners were all yay, intergration! or that all, or most, Southern whites all had plantations and slaves. But in the South, the institution reinforced a hierarchy and for people who were poor and white, they could look at themselves and say, well, least they were free and could feel superior to slaves. And maybe someday, if the system stayed in place, maybe they wouldn't always be poor and they'd have slaves of their own. Then came the North wanting to blow up that world for good, trying to give black people their freedom, the right to own property and vote. So where would that leave someone poor and white who didn't necessarily have very much to begin with, if they had new competition for property and jobs? It's a familiar pattern in US history, that the group feeling they're on the next-to-the-lowest rung ends up being the most defensive about keeping someone else—someone "other"— further down the ladder, out of their own self-interest. 

Spoiler

 

I'm not really comfortable assuming negative motivations for people.   It simply doesn't make any sense that the soldiers from the north "wanted to blow up that world for good" (right after you said they weren't "yay integration!") while those in the south were secretly hoping to be slave owners someday.

 

Again, I find it a little suspect when northerners are depicted as benevolent saviors in civil war movies but then raving racists a century later in movies about Jackie Robinson.    What happened to the north?   I thought they were all about civil rights?   And...people in the north bought a metric ton of tickets to see GWTW too....  There is a big disconnect in logic in that whole thing.

 

 

44 minutes ago, DamienRoc said:

 

Well, yes and no. It would give us a definitive list of what movies have sold the most tickets, but absent the context of the what the market was like during a film's release(s) it's not really going to be an accurate statement of success.

 

If you're comparing a film, you need to pick a basis for comparison that makes sense. Sometimes, yes, admissions may be the best. But at others you may want just the straight dollar values. And sometimes you'll want to do some inflation adjustment, either average ticket price or real dollar adjustment. But all of those are just tools. You need to understand why they do what they do as you use them.

 

Too often people on the forum have a very narrow focus on finding the biggest and best of whatever. Opening Weekend. Domestic Gross. Worldwide Gross. Whatever. It's myopic because it starts to lose any value. If you only care about that one thing, you're going to miss a lot of the more fun and interesting details. There's so much more to box office tracking than breaking records.

 

Really, I think a lot of the discussion on this thread seems to be hovering around the question about whether GWTW or Star Wars IV is the more successful movie. And... I don't think that can be answered. In some ways, it's probably GWTW. In others it's ANH. (In others, it's Titanic. And in others it's Avatar.) Context matters. There is never going to be an absolute answer.

 

This isn't just a movie box office problem. Any reasonably built up system that lasts a while is going to have enough going on that there will be too many details to really pin down absolutes. If you follow baseball, who's the greatest player ever? Best all time pitcher? You start asking around to fans and you'll get dozens of answers, and they can all be backed up by stats and reasons and so forth. But you'll likely never get a firm answer. The game has been played for too long with too many changing factors that you can't really make a firm conclusion.

 

And all that's fine. We're not robots.

 

Pretty much what I was thinking.   There would always be something to debate about in "most impressive" conversations.

 

edit:   Wow!   that was the weirdest bug ever!

Edited January 5, 2016 by Harpospoke

[theultimatebiu]

Severely OT but it is quite worrying that people actual think GWTW depicts a POSITIVE relationship between slaves and their owners.

Prissy was physically and verbally abused (and depicted in one of the most offensively racist ways) and all the others were treated like property. There was no humanity given to them. They were property, no matter how much people want to gloss over it.