"Moonlight & Magnolias" character profile: David O. Selznick

The Character

David O. Selznick
Motion Picture Producer
1902-1965
Oscars for Best Picture for "Gone With the Wind" (1939) and "Rebecca" (1940)
Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, 1939

David O. Selznick, son of a Pittsburgh movie producer, worked at MGM and Paramount in the late 1920s before joining RKO as head of production, working on movies like "King Kong." He moved back to MGM in 1933 and began its second production unit, which yielded classics like Dinner at Eight (1933), David Copperfield (1935), Anna Karenina (1935) and A Tale of Two Cities (1935). He began his own studio in 1935 and produced The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), A Star Is Born (1937), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), Intermezzo (1939) and Gone with the Wind (1939), which remains the highest grossing film of all time (adjusted for inflation). It also won seven additional Oscars and two special awards. Selznick also launched the American film career of Alfred Hitchcock, who won his only Best Picture Oscar for "Rebecca" in 1940.

Selznick closed his studio in the early 1940s, but returned to producing later in the decade. His first marriage, to Louis B. Mayer's daughter Irene, ended in 1948; he married actress Jennifer Jones in 1949 and spent much of the 1950s nurturing her career. He died in 1965 after several heart attacks. Selznick's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located outside the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

"Moonlight & Magnolias" takes place in Selznick's office in 1939, after he fired director George Cukor from "Gone With the Wind" and halted production to rewrite the script. He and the replacement director, Victor Fleming, have one week to bring screenwriter Ben Hecht up to speed and produce the script for the most anticipated film in Hollywood history.

The Actor
Henry Wihnyk
Henry Wihnyk is a fixture on the GCP stage. Over the past 20 years, he has delighted audiences as Billis in "South Pacific," Alfred P. Doolittle in "My Fair Lady," Mayor Shinn in "The Music Man," the Angel in "The Sugar Bean Sisters," Henry Perkins in "Funny Money," and most recently, Wilbur Turnblad in "Hairspray."