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

[franfar]

Highest grossing film adjusted, was re-released like 10 times, and is still seen as a classic. Enough said.

 

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=releases&id=gonewiththewind.htm

Edited February 4, 2017 by franfar

[grim22]

A comment from Reddit from a few years ago which was meant to put it in context but amazed me that a movie could do so well over so many re-releases

 

Quote

Gone with the Wind is the highest grossing movie of all time. Adjusted for inflation it has made 3.3 billion dollars. Does this sound familiar? Whenever people bring up big summer movies that make a ton of cash there is always someone who throws this out there and to them I say... that's awesome, but let's put that into context. All $ from here on out has been adjusted for inflation.
 
Gone with the Wind was released in 1939 and its initial run lasted until 1943. It made 221 million its first year in limited release and then 285 million over its next 3 years in general release to bring its initial 4 year total to 506 million globally. Combining those 4 years it sold 60 million tickets. So over four years it sold 60 million tickets and made $506 million in the US. Let's compare that to Iron Man 3 that sold roughly 40 million tickets and made 380 million in its first four weeks in the US or The Avengers that sold 50 million and made 532 million and all of a sudden Gone with the Wind isn't looking all that impressive. So where did the rest of Gone with the Wind's gross come from? That would be the eight re-releases in 1947, 1954, 1961, 1967, 1971, 1974, 1989, and 1998 which earned the movie its additional 2.8 billion dollars.
 
So the next time someone throws out how much money Gone with the Wind made keep it mind it took the movie nearly 60 years to reach it’s total. Many of those years took place during a time when alternative entertainment was not as easily accessible as it is today. There was no TV for the first 10 years of the movies run, no movie rentals for the first 40 years, there certainly wasn't Netflix, video games, sports packages, computers, and whatever other endless river of entertainment options we have today.
 
TLDR – Gone with the Wind made 506 million in its first 4 years and had 8 other re-releases over the span of 60 years to bring its total to 3.3 billion.

 

[Eevin]

The film's enormous success may be somewhat negated by the massive amount of rereleases, but no one should discount how important that makes it to cinema. The fact that so many people saw the film in rerelease shows that it's clearly a widely beloved and extremely successful film...

[franfar]

16 minutes ago, grim22 said:

A comment from Reddit from a few years ago which was meant to put it in context but amazed me that a movie could do so well over so many re-releases

 

 

A simple love story with a historical context everyone understood, made it timeless

[TalismanRing]

Yeah a movie doesn't get re-releases and attendance like that over 60 years if it's not extremely popular . Reportedly 225m admissions in the U.S.

http://www.mrob.com/pub/film-video/topadj.html

 

Other numbers to put it into perspective. 

 

In 1939 the US population was 130.9m  vs 325.5m today

Canada 11.2m v 36.5m

 

The Domestic market:  142.1m v  362m - more than  a 250% population increase

 

[Edit: Though to put that into perspective in 1939 the U.S. averaged 80m ticket sold a week - about 4.16b a year compared to about 1.3-1.4b a year now. 

 

http://articles.latimes.com/1989-01-01/entertainment/ca-223_1_greatest-year

 

365 films were released in 1939 - but there weren't any multiplies and prints usually traveled from town to town to city over months (if not years) before everyone had a chance to see a movie.]

 

O/S

The UK's  pop hasn't changed that much 47m to 60m but GWTW still reigns supreme (according to the BFI)  with a staggering 35m admissions

Australia: 6.9m vs 24.5m today  - But it's admissions compared to population is an insane - 38.9m

 

 

WW II also put a bit of a crimp in O/S distribution

 

Or one can look at it comparison to other top releases (some including all time classics) from 1939-1943 to see what a complete outlier it was even before any of it's re-releases. 

 

Snow White and The Seven Dwarves with all it's re-releases is at almost 100 adm less with 126.3m.    The Wizard of Oz with re-releases is the only other film from the 1930s with 46.6m.   From the 1940s the top two non Disney re-releases are for The Bells Of St Mary (60.7m) and The Best Years of Our Lives  (56.7m).    In the 1950s the big two are The 10 Commandements (130m) and Ben Hur (110m) - both of which have had  re-releases.

 

 

 

Edited February 4, 2017 by TalismanRing

[franfar]

There were also some badass posters for this film:

[franfar]

The film has some historical.....blemishes, but it's still the definitive epic saga

[TalismanRing]

It's also the era where the producer was king.  Look at Selznick's name HUGE on top of the original posters and then again at the bottom before Victor Fleming (who worked on this and Wizard of Oz on and off and sometimes at the same time) who has a hell of a director who doesn't get enough credit because he wasn't designated an "auteur",

 

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2009/dec/27/philip-french-victor-fleming

 

 

Quote

 

In Sarris's famous taxonomy of American filmmakers, first published in 1963 in the quarterly Film Culture and then in The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-68, one of the most influential film books ever written, Fleming was assigned to the final, catch-all category "Miscellany". Sarris did, however, concede that "apart from Cukor, he was the only Metro director who could occasionally make the lion roar".

 

Having leapt at the chance to make Oz, Fleming took on Gone With the Wind with some reluctance. But he was the man with the versatility, the combination of the tough and the tender, and the decisiveness to bring order to these expensive, drifting projects. No wonder Selznick eventually issued an order that "Fleming should direct everything, however seemingly unimportant".

 

He was able to tell Selznick that "your fucking script is no fucking good", and to set about reshaping it. He would tell the capricious, initially uncooperative British star, "Miss Leigh, you can stick this script up your royal British ass." This was part of a strategy to stop her making Scarlett too sympathetic too early. On the other hand he was one of the few directors who could convince Gable that it was not unmanly to cry in the crucial scene where Rhett hears of Scarlett's miscarriage. He was not as subtle as Cukor was, and upset some actors by constantly saying, "Ham it up." But Howard Hughes reassured his then girlfriend Olivia De Havilland that she and the other actresses in the film should not be alarmed by the departure of the sensitive Cukor. "Don't worry," he told her, "everything is going to be all right – with George and Victor it's the same talent, only Victor's is strained through a coarser sieve."

 

The question remains, was Victor Fleming more than the reliable journeyman filmmaker doing his job with anonymous efficiency? Sragow's biography suggests that he was in fact a highly emotional man whose commitment to his work was so extreme that he frequently drove himself to a state of extreme physical and nervous exhaustion. The final instance was Joan of Arc, the troubled epic he hoped would surpass Gone With the Wind but which brought about his death in 1949. It would seem that his two 1939 movies became personal projects for him as a result of his second marriage in 1931, which had turned him into a family man and devoted father.

 

He brought great sensitivity to the world of children in Treasure Island (1934) and Captains Courageous (1937), stories set in the world of men. When he undertook Oz, a story seen through the eyes of the innocent young Dorothy, he was thinking of his two little daughters. He told the film's producer, Mervyn LeRoy, that he wanted them to see "a picture that searched for beauty and decency and love in the world". It was the other side of the marriage, the increasingly difficult relationship with his wife, Lu, that he brought to Gone With the Wind. Fleming had a very personal understanding of the complex relationship between Scarlett and Rhett and the problems of a confident long-time bachelor and celebrated ladies' man adjusting to a wilful wife and a different way of life.

 

 

[franfar]

4 minutes ago, TalismanRing said:

It's also the era where the producer was king.  Look at Selznick's name HUGE on top of the original posters and then again at the bottom before Victor Fleming (who worked on this and Wizard of Oz on and off and sometimes at the same time) who has a hell of a director who doesn't get enough credit because he wasn't designated an "auteur",

 

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2009/dec/27/philip-french-victor-fleming

 

 

 

Directors back then weren't respected period unless you were a true "auteur" for that time, a la Chaplin, John Ford, Hitchcock, Lubitsch, Capra, and some more. Those are the only ones I can remember that had a distinctive "non-studio" look. Directors didn't become king until like the late 50s/1960s

 

Fleming was a legend, but he was just one of few directors who was involved in this film

[franfar]

10 minutes ago, TalismanRing said:

The question remains, was Victor Fleming more than the reliable journeyman filmmaker doing his job with anonymous efficiency? Sragow's biography suggests that he was in fact a highly emotional man whose commitment to his work was so extreme that he frequently drove himself to a state of extreme physical and nervous exhaustion. The final instance was Joan of Arc, the troubled epic he hoped would surpass Gone With the Wind but which brought about his death in 1949. It would seem that his two 1939 movies became personal projects for him as a result of his second marriage in 1931, which had turned him into a family man and devoted father.

 

He brought great sensitivity to the world of children in Treasure Island (1934) and Captains Courageous (1937), stories set in the world of men. When he undertook Oz, a story seen through the eyes of the innocent young Dorothy, he was thinking of his two little daughters. He told the film's producer, Mervyn LeRoy, that he wanted them to see "a picture that searched for beauty and decency and love in the world". It was the other side of the marriage, the increasingly difficult relationship with his wife, Lu, that he brought to Gone With the Wind. Fleming had a very personal understanding of the complex relationship between Scarlett and Rhett and the problems of a confident long-time bachelor and celebrated ladies' man adjusting to a wilful wife and a different way of life.

 

That's so sad 

 

He's truly an underrated director

[TalismanRing]

25 minutes ago, franfar said:

Directors back then weren't respected period unless you were a true "auteur" for that time, a la Chaplin, John Ford, Hitchcock, Lubitsch, Capra, and some more. Those are the only ones I can remember that had a distinctive "non-studio" look. Directors didn't become king until like the late 50s/1960s

 

Fleming was a legend, but he was just one of few directors who was involved in this film

 

He shaped the film, he got a script rewrite by Hecht, he re-shot most of Cukor's stuff and the other significant parts were mostly second unit and the early filmed battle scenes.

 

I think the auteur distinction is overplayed.  As the article points out the auteur theory and pundits favored those directors who kept working into the 50s and 60s and Fleming died in 1949.   Look at William Wyler - he could do any genre (Drama, Historical Drama, Thriller, Romantic Comedy, Epic, Musical, Western)  for a studio -  but he did everything magnificently - be it 1940s, 50s or 60s.

 

 

 

Edited February 4, 2017 by TalismanRing

[grim22]

 

[franfar]

13 minutes ago, TalismanRing said:

 

He shaped the film, he got a script rewrite by Hecht, he re-shot most of Cukor's stuff and the other significant parts were mostly second unit and battle scenes.

 

I think the auteur distinction is overplayed.  As the article points out the auteur theory and pundits favored those directors who kept working into the 50s and 60s and Fleming died in 1949.   Look at William Wyler - he could do any genre (Drama, Historical Drama, Thriller, Romantic Comedy, Epic, Musical, Western)  for a studio -  but he did everything magnificently - be it 1940s, 50s or 60s.

 

 

Well, the auteur form of filmmaking didn't really come into vogue until then... The article said that while Fleming filmed the bulk of GWTW, it was still a producer's movie. He couldn't be classified as an auteur because he didn't add his personal "touch" or insignia or whatever to the film. It was more of a studio/producer affair, and Fleming was referred to as a "steady hand."

 

The lack of distinction makes sense 

[franfar]

It's been a while since I've seen a Wyler film but....

 

As far as I remember, while he indisputably had a diverse range of films, they still came across as fairly.... what's the word. "Mainstream," and in line with the style of the era's films.

 

Quote

William Wyler was the invisible director. He felt the director's hand shouldn't be evident in a movie. "It's 80% script and 20% you get great actors," he once said. "There's nothing else to it."

 

[TalismanRing]

1 minute ago, franfar said:

Well, the auteur form of filmmaking didn't really come into vogue until then... The article said that while Fleming filmed the bulk of GWTW, it was still a producer's movie. He couldn't be classified as an auteur because he didn't add his personal "touch" or insignia or whatever to the film. It was more of a studio/producer affair, and Fleming was referred to as a "steady hand."

 

The lack of distinction makes sense 

 

The article actually posits if it was just assumed to be a producer's  movie because of the almighty Selznik and the revolving directors and scriptwriters or was did it truly have Fleming's personal touch and more than just a steady hand and I think comes down on that later opinion.  The movie was in chaos, it needed far more than a steady hand or Fleming wouldn't have been pulled off Oz (which he also came into later to set right and which he returned to after to film more stuff and then edit) .  If it was just a matter of Selznick calling the shots he could have pulled in one of the multitude of journey men directors to film it.  But he didn't and Fleming came in and demanded a new script and he reshaped the film and drove that behemoth to completion (sans one week when he had a breakdown and had to replaced).

 

[franfar]

3 minutes ago, TalismanRing said:

 

The article actually posits if it was just assumed to be a producer's  movie because of the almighty Selznik and the revolving directors and scriptwriters or was did it truly have Fleming's personal touch and more than just a steady hand and I think comes down on that later opinion.  The movie was in chaos, it needed far more than a steady hand or Fleming wouldn't have been pulled off Oz (which he also came into later to set right and which he returned to after to film more stuff and then edit) .  If it was just a matter of Selznick calling the shots he could have pulled in one of the multitude of journey men directors to film it.  But he didn't and Fleming came in and demanded a new script and he reshaped the film and drove that behemoth to completion (sans one week when he had a breakdown and had to replaced).

 

Hmm...

 

He saved the film, there's that. 

 

One thing I forgot to clarify, though, is that the auteur theory usually involves a personal touch/insignia for most of their films, not just one... 

 

But I can see how GWTW wasn't just a personal touch, but was basically his vision.

[TalismanRing]

4 minutes ago, franfar said:

It's been a while since I've seen a Wyler film but....

 

As far as I remember, while he indisputably had a diverse range of films, they still came across as fairly.... what's the word. "Mainstream," and in line with the style of the era's films.

 

 

Quote

William Wyler was the invisible director. He felt the director's hand shouldn't be evident in a movie. "It's 80% script and 20% you get great actors," he once said. "There's nothing else to it."

 

He may be invisible in terms of style but he is a master of technique.   His hand is evident in how well crafted his films are.  He was considered one of if not the preeminent actor's director and I believe still has the record for most Oscar wins and nominated performances in his movies.   And it was far from easy, because he was NOT an easy director on set - he did take after take until some actor's broke down (think Fincher+).   Bette Davis fought with him all the time but said she'd put up with it because he was brilliant and maddening usually right and he got the best out of her.

 

There's a great quote on Dave Kehr's Blog talking about George Stevens & Auterism

 

http://www.davekehr.com/?p=1338&cpage=3

 

Quote

 

nicolas saada:  May 10, 2012 at 4:48 pm    Johann, It’s not a personality that seems behind Stevens or Wyler’s movies, but rather a “persona”. Wyler and Stevens are more Stan Kentons and Claude Thornhills than Chet Bakers or Duke Elingtons. They arrange the orchestra full force, and twist every possible standard (genre) to the pulsating and loud sound it can produce. The director as composer becomes the director as orchestrator. And it is sometimes massively impressive.

 

 

 

The Best Years Of Our Lives

The Heiress

The Little Foxes

Roman Holiday

The Big Country

Dodsworth

Jezebel

The Letter

Friendly Persuasion

Desperate Hours

How To Steal A Million

Detective Story

The Children's Hour

Funny, Girl

The Collector

Ben Hur

[DeeCee]

I'll find my thread. Probably should merge this one with it. 

 

Here we go.

 

 

Edited February 5, 2017 by DeeCee

[DeeCee]

Bump

 

Could this please be moves to the new Classic Forum?

Edited February 5, 2017 by DeeCee

[franfar]

I thought the prior discussion on this film was interesting.

 

I feel that while the film was a technical and epic marvel, it's portrayal of the slave-master dynamic was at best, tone deaf

Edited February 5, 2017 by franfar