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Civil War story and threatened him that we'd release it before he'd finish Gone with the Wind, thereby beating him to the punch, maybe it would work. Then somebody said, 'Say, Faulkner has just written a Civil War story.‘So that's why we bought The Unvanquished. We went to Selznik and said, 'We've got Faulkner's new Civil War story'--of course Selznik hadn't read The Unvanquished--'and if you don't let us do Gone with the Wind, we're going to do The Unvanquished before you get out Gone with the Wind.‘Under that threat, Selznik signed up for Gone with the Wind.”

It was the biggest money-maker picture MGM has ever had...the biggest money-maker in the history of movies. It's just been released again. But once that was accomplished, The Unvanquished was put on a back shelf and it's been forgotten ever since. But MGM considers that one of the smartest deals they ever made. It was indeed.

Did you tell Faulkner this later on?

Of course. He roared with laughter. He didn't care. Another movie story, while I'm at it, was during World War II. We published a very good mystery story called Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton. It was a very successful book, but there had not been any movie interest. About seven months after we had published Hangover Square, a very tall, robust movie star called Laird Cregar came walking into my office. He's dead. He died at unfortunately a very young