SECRETS OF HOLLYWOOD’S GREATEST YEAR
FROM GONE WITH THE WIND TO THE WIZARD OF OZ, 1939 EXEMPLIFIED THE GOLDEN AGE OF MOVIES. HERE’S AN EXCLUSIVE SCOOP ON THE ERA’S BEST PICTURES
How 1939 birthed The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind and so many more cherished American films.
It was a brief, incandescent intermission between cataclysms. In 1939, America was just coming out of the crushing depths of the Great Depression and two years away from tragically getting divebombed into World War II. When the nation needed an emotional respite the most, Hollywood delivered it with a record-breaking 505 films — ranging from lush Civil War epics (Gone With the Wind) and whip-smart Westerns (Stagecoach) to idealistic political dramas (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) and cathartic escapist fantasies (The Wizard of Oz). “Audiences were appreciating movies that had a more upbeat, romantic tone to them,” Turner Classic Movies host Dave Karger tells Closer. “That’s what a lot of the great 1939 movies share.”
As America’s industrial factories were gearing up to provide the supplies needed for the coming conflict, Hollywood’s dream factory was humming right along. “You could argue that 1939 was when the Hollywood factory was at its peak efficiency in turning out entertainments that were wellproduced, well-designed, well-directed and well-acted,” Ty Burr, author of Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame, tells Closer. “Everybody knew what they were doing, and they had it down not to a science, but to a craft, and arguably an art.”
Now on the 80th anniversary of this golden cinematic year, Closer looks back at 1939’s peak silver-screen achievements — and
shares never-before-told stories about the making of these timeless classics.
THE UNDEFEATED
The year came roaring out of the gate with Stagecoach. Former USC offensive tackle Marion Morrison had changed his name to John Wayne and made his debut as a Yale football player in 1926’s forgettable gridiron drama Brown of Harvard. He toiled in more than 80 films over the next 13 years before director John Ford cast him as the Ringo Kid, an escaped outlaw who protects a carriage full of disparate passengers through Apache territory in 1880s New Mexico. The breakout role transformed The Duke into a superstar.
“This ‘new’ guy just dazzled people,” Thomas Hischak, author of 1939: Hollywood’s Greatest Year, tells Closer. But he was far from the movie’s only attraction. “The scenery is unbelievable,” raves Hischak of Stagecoach, which was the first film to shoot in Utah’s breathtaking Monument Valley, with its striking red desert dirt and stark rock formations.
Duke received second billing beneath Claire Trevor (who’d co-starred with Humphrey Bogart in 1937’s Dead End) as the proverbial hooker with the heart of gold who lassos the
Ringo Kid’s affection. The 32-year-old Duke was paid $3,700, less than half what was given to standout supporting cast members Andy Devine and Thomas Mitchell (who won a best supporting actor Oscar as a boozy philosopher). Stagecoach was nominated for seven Oscars in all, including best picture, but its only other victory came for the film’s stirring orchestral score.
“Westerns
are an American art form.
They represent what this country is
about.”
— John Wayne
OVER THE RAINBOW
As spring turned to summer, audiences prepared themselves for a lavish, surreal musical based on a beloved children’s novel: L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Judy Garland, a musical sensation who’d struck up chemistry with Mickey Rooney in 1938’s Love Finds Andy Hardy, wasn’t the first choice to play Dorothy Gale, the Kansas farm girl swept up in a twister and deposited in an alternately magical and terrifying land of adorable Munchkins and flying monkeys.
Producer Mervyn LeRoy wanted Shirley Temple, the 10-year-old star who was Hollywood’s top box-office draw from 1935 to 1938. Shirley was much closer in age to Dorothy, who’s around 10 in the book, but 20th Century Fox, which had the child megastar under contract, refused to loan her out to MGM. Enter Judy, then 16. Dorothy had to be aged up — and Judy’s burgeoning breasts needed to be bound down. “It was the beginning of the studio’s influence on making Judy uncomfortable with her body,” Aljean Harmetz, author of The Making of The Wizard of Oz, tells Closer. The studio also prescribed Judy diet pills, possibly kicking off her lifelong struggles with addiction.
Then there were the Munchkins. “They were drunk and crabby all the time,” Joan Kenmore, who was 7 and played one of the little people with flower pots on their heads, tells Closer. Explains Harmetz, “The people in the hotel bar were eager to buy them drinks, and a little liquor is more debilitating to someone who weighs 80 pounds than it would be to a person of a normal weight.”
Everything wasn’t wicked on the Wizard of Oz set, though. “Toto! Judy fell in love with that little dog,” William Stillman, author of The Wizard of Oz: The Official 75th Anniversary Companion, tells Closer. “She told a
reporter she wanted a dog just like it.”
Critics and audiences didn’t lap up The Wizard of Oz right away, however. “It was perceived as overdone,” says Burr. The film was a minor hit and won just two Oscars, one of them for best song (“Over the Rainbow”). It was overwhelming for kids to see on the big screen, so it was only after the film started showing annually on TV years later that it developed its fanatical following. “It had great music, an amazing cast and brilliant Technicolor,” says Stillman. “It was the perfect storm.”
Its message also resonated deeply. “We’re so spread out, there’s so much social movement in this country and everybody remembers home,” says Hamilton Meserve, the son of Margaret Hamilton, aka the Wicked Witch of the West. “Dorothy gets home, and that’s satisfying to a lot of people.”
A MIGHTY WIND
With the arrival of fall, more serious pictures rolled out, like Ninotchka and The Women. A few weeks before the election, Frank Capra released Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, with Jimmy Stewart as an ethical senator who
lectures his colleagues on the true meaning of virtue. The sentimental crowd-pleaser is “the perfect example of ‘Capra-corn,’” says Burr. “But it’s very moving and has real moral concerns at its core.”
The year built to the apotheosis of Gone With the Wind. Fans of Margaret Mitchell’s massive best-seller gobbled up the publicity stunt of a worldwide casting call for Scarlett O’Hara, and Southerners were relieved when a Brit, Vivien Leigh, won the role — at least she wasn’t a Yankee. Clark Gable feared his role was too reactive to fiery Scarlett. “Rhett was harder to play than I anticipated,” he said. “His scenes were all climaxes.”
The greatest climax was Rhett’s exit line: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Codirector Victor Fleming (who also helped helm Oz) was threatened with a $5,000 fine for putting profanity into the film. Remembers co-star Mickey Kuhn (who, at 7, played Beau Wilkes and is the film’s only surviving cast member, aside from 103-year-old Olivia de Havilland), Fleming “said, ‘Go ahead, I don’t care, I’ll pay it!’ And he put it into the movie, and it turned out to be a classic.”
So, too, did Gone With the Wind. “Adjusted for inflation, it’s still the biggest moneymaker of all time,” says Burr of the film, which snagged eight Oscars, including best picture, director, actress and supporting actress (for Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American to be nominated for and win an Academy Award).
Eighty years later, 1939’s best films have stood the test of time. “They exemplify the best of classic Hollywood — big stars, a grand scale and something to say, whether it’s Mr. Smith’s political message, Oz’s lovely sense of family or Gone With the Wind’s historical sweep,” observes Karger. “These are movies that generations of families have passed down.” In any era, they remind us there’s no place like home, and frankly, my dears, we do give a damn. — Reporting by
Amanda Champagne-Meadows