Gone with the Wind. WITH Typed letter signed, to Walter Winchell.
INSCRIBED
Mitchell, Margaret. Gone with the Wind. New York: Macmillan Company, 1936.
8vo.; gray cloth; dust-jacket; light wear; front flap corner slipped but retaining the $3.00 price to the lower corner.
First edition, in the first state dust-jacket listing this title second in the right-hand column on the lower panel. A presentation copy, inscribed on the front endpaper: To Mrs. Robert Field, with a world of love, Margaret Mitchell. Mrs. Field was the mother of Mitchell’s best friend and maid of honor, Medora Field Perkerson. Perkerson introduced Mitchell to the Atlanta representative of Macmillan, and in 1935 she arranged for the luncheon at which Mitchell first met Harold Latham, the publisher’s editor in chief. In 1939 she hosted the movie premiere party and conducted a radio interview with Mitchell. When Mrs. Field died, having no children of her own, Perkerson gave this copy to her niece Frances.
Together with:
MITCHELL TO WINCHELL
Mitchell, Margaret. Typed letter signed, to Walter Winchell, March 15, 1940, one leaf, two pages, of Mitchell’s personal letterhead.
Mitchell respond’s to the Hollywood gossip columnist’s libelous accusation that in the light of Selznick’s Oscar winning adaptation of Gone With The Wind the producer had sent its author both his Academy award and a large “ ‘packet of lettuce’ the income taxer hoped to get…”
Mitchell writes, “Recently I have been caused considerable embarrassment by widespread rumours that Mr. Selznick was going to send me, or had already sent me, a ‘bonus’ check because of the great success of the motion picture of ‘Gone With the Wind.’ and also that he was sending me the Academy Award which he received...your column a few days ago made the flat and unqualified statement that the trophy and the money had been sent to me by Mr. Selznick.” She goes on at some length and with imperious southern authority to make her case and to establish the truth of her situation. She requests, “You will be doing me a great service if you will publish the correction. I feel that you owe this to me, as the public belief that I had actually received the bonus was based very largely on your unqualified statement...” Finally she suggests Winchell might like to query with here any rumours and statements he wishes to publish: “Other columnists and writers will tell you that I make a practice of giving prompt answers to reasonable questions, and I believe that both of us would be better off if you could query me in the future...”
Winchell’s response was not quite so elegant: “Margaret Mithchell, who auth’d ‘Gone, etc’ says that the producers of the flick did not send her a bonus of $50,000, as reported, and would we say so? The rumour had been widely published, she added, causing her great annoyance. It is true Mr. Selznick offered her his Academy award, but she declined it because ‘it rightfully belongs to him.””
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