RKO made a film version of Sidney Howard's Pulitzer Prize play, They Knew What They Wanted, with Charles Laughton in a dialect part, and doing it well. Carole Lombard played the mail-order wife admirably.
Preston Sturges, author of the play Strictly Dishonorable and one of Paramount's best script writers, had a story, so the legend goes, that he begged Paramount to let him produce and direct. Paramount refused, but offered a large sum for the story. Sturges finally got his way by selling his bosses the story for one dollar, taking his change, as director, on the profits of the picture. The result, The Great McGinty, was a great success in 1939. He had no difficulty, therefore, in inducing Paramount to let him follow the same procedure with his later pictures, Christmas in July, The Lady Eve, and Sullivan's Travels.
In 1940 David O. Selznick made a picture of Daphne Du Maurier's story, Rebecca. Alfred Hitchcock gave it masterly direction, which, coupled with beautiful performances by Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, and Judith Anderson, made it one of the important pictures of the year.
Bette Davis added to her reputation as one of Hollywood's best actresses with her performance in a screen version of W. Somerset Maugham's play, The Letter, which Warners produced in 1940.
John Ford directed two outstanding productions in 1940. One was John Steinbeck's saga of migrant workers, The Grapes of Wrath. Nunnally Johnson prepared the script for Twentieth Century-Fox.
The other Ford production was Long Voyage Home, based on Eugene O'Neill's one-act sea plays. This was another realistic and gripping film, without fancy costumes and lavish sets. In it Thomas Mitchell gave one of his best performances.
One of the brightest comedies of 1940 was Philip Barry's The Philadelphia Story, with Katharine Hepburn repeating her stage role. M-G-M produced, and George Cukor directed it.
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