David O. Selznick - Personal Life

Personal Life

Selznick married Irene Gladys Mayer, daughter of MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer, in 1930. They separated in 1945 and divorced in 1948. They had two sons, Daniel and Jeffrey Selznick. In 1949 he married actress Jennifer Jones and they had one daughter, Mary Jennifer Selznick (1954–1976), who committed suicide by jumping from a 20th-floor window in Los Angeles on May 11, 1976.

Selznick was an amphetamine user, and would often dictate long and rambling memos under the influence of amphetamine to his directors. The documentary Shadowing The Third Man relates that Selznick introduced The Third Man director Carol Reed to the use of amphetamine, which allowed Reed to bring the picture in below budget and on schedule by filming nearly 22 hours at a time.

Read more about this topic:  David O. Selznick

Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:

    Healthy parenting is nothing if not a process of empowerment. As we help to raise our children’s self-esteem, we also increase their personal power. When we encourage them to be confident, self-reliant, self-directed, and responsible individuals, we are giving them power.
    Louise Hart (20th century)

    “Is there life on Mars?” “No, not there either.”
    —Russian saying popular in the Soviet period, trans. by Vladimir Ivanovich Shlyakov (1993)