The following morning I met with David Selznick and Dore Schary. Selznick was a tall, imposing figure, seated behind a huge desk in an ornate, beautifully furnished office. Dore Schary was dark and trim with a visible intelligence. We shook hands.
Selznick said, “Sit down, Sheldon, I’m glad to meet you.”
I thought maybe I could see Mr. Selznick—
No, Mr. Selznick is a busy man.
“I liked your story. It’s excellent. I hope your screenplay turns out as good as your original treatment.”
Dore said, “I’m sure it will be.”
Selznick studied me a moment. “I heard you had another offer from Wanger. I’m glad you came to me. I talked to your agent. We’ll pay you thirty-five thousand for the original and the screenplay.”
I flashed back to Selznick’s secretary handing me an envelope. There’s ten dollars in there.
I started to work that morning. I was given an office at the RKO studios, where we were going to make Suddenly It’s Spring. RKO was an important studio. They were currently shooting It’s a Wonderful Life, The Farmer’s Daughter, and Dick Tracy. In the commissary I saw James Stewart, Robert Mitchum, and Loretta Young, and because I had seen them so often in movies, I felt as though they were old friends. But I didn’t have enough courage to speak to any of them.
I was enjoying writing the screenplay. The story involved a playboy, a young girl, and her sister, a judge. The man I had had in mind when I wrote the treatment was Cary Grant, but he was always so busy that I was sure it would be impossible to get him.
I thought the screenplay was coming along well. Knowing Selznick’s penchant for hiring writer after writer on the same project, I was flattered that he had not tried to replace me. And then one day, I came across a memo from Selznick to Dore Schary:
Why don’t we fire Sheldon and bring another writer in?
To Dore’s credit, he had never mentioned that to me, and apparently found a way around Selznick’s request.
My moods were still fluctuating. I would go from periods of elation to periods of despondence, with no transition. At the Brown Derby restaurant one evening, a friend was seated with a young woman. He waved me over.
“Sidney, I want you to meet Jane Harding.”
Jane was from New York. She was amusing and intelligent, with a restless vitality. I was taken with her immediately. We started dating, and within two months, we were married.
There was no time for a honeymoon. The studio was starting to cast Suddenly It’s Spring and Dore urged me to get my rewrites finished quickly.
Regretfully, in less than a month, Jane and I realized we had made a mistake. Our interests and personalities were totally opposite. We spent the next nine months trying in vain to make the marriage work. When we finally decided it was impossible, we agreed to a divorce. The pain was devastating. The day we got the divorce, I went out and got drunk for the first time in my life.
If things were disastrous at home, they were going very well at the studio. I had finished the script.
David Selznick called me to his office. “We sent your script to Cary Grant.”
“Oh? What—what did he say?”
Selznick paused dramatically. “He’s crazy about it. He’s going to do it.”
I was thrilled. “That’s fantastic!”
“We’ve also signed Shirley Temple and Myrna Loy.”
It was a perfect cast.
“Irving Reis is going to be the director, and Cary Grant wants to meet you.”
Cary Grant was always everybody’s first choice for a comedy. There was no second choice. If you could not get Cary, you dropped down several levels.
I liked Cary immediately. Besides being incredibly handsome, he was intelligent, with a quick, inquiring mind. Unlike some of the stars I worked with later, Cary had absolutely no sense of vanity about himself.
Cary was born Archibald Alexander Leach into a lower-middle-class family, in Bristol, England. He had started in the circus as a stilt walker in Coney Island and broke into vaudeville as a bit player.
When Archie Leach was nine, his mother was sent to a mental institution. They told Cary that his mother had gone to a seaside resort. He did not see her again until he was in his late twenties.