Jane Eyre (1943 film)

David O. Selznick hired John Houseman in February 1941 while Houseman was directing Philip Barry's play Liberty Bell. Houseman's first assignment for the producer would be writing the script to Jane Eyre.[5]^{:475, 478} [6]

Houseman later said "I foolishly believed I would then produce the film because Selznick had just made Gone with the Wind and Rebecca and I believed he was going to take a rest from producing for a while and let me do the producing for his studio. This was one of the reasons I went to work for him. But I didn't know David Selznick! It was absolutely out of the question that he would dream of letting anybody else do anything."[7]

Houseman says he started work on the screenplay during rehearsals for the Mercury Theatre's Broadway production of Native Son. Robert Stevenson, a British director Selznick had under contract, was sent to New York City to work with him.[5]^:478

After the play's March 24 premiere, Houseman and Stevenson flew to the West Coast and completed the screenplay over the next five weeks. According to Houseman, Stevenson did most of the work. "We finished it and presented it to our leader, only to discover that he had not the slightest intention of producing it," Houseman wrote.

Aldous Huxley also contributed to the screenplay, rendering the character of Mrs. Rochester unseen—assuring that she would be more menacing, and circumventing British censorship regulations on the depiction of madness. Other contributors to the script include DeWitt Bodeen and playwright Keith Winter.[8]

(Houseman - who had nothing to do with producing the final film - says when he saw the movie he was unhappy and asked for his name to be taken off, but they refused, so his credit stayed.[7])

Selznick executive Daniel O'Shea began to offer the production as a package that included the services of Stevenson as director, Joan Fontaine as star,[5]^:478 architect William Pereira as production designer and George Barnes as cinematographer.[8] The price was so "fabulous", Houseman wrote, that it took a year to find a buyer.

In the midst of the war boom[5]^:478 in November 1942,[8] Selznick finally sold the package to William Goetz at 20th Century Fox, which Goetz was running in the absence of Darryl F. Zanuck.[2]

It was part of an overall deal where Selznick sold the rights to several projects - and talent he had attached. Other film projects included The Key to the Kingdom and Claudia, and talent contracts with Stevenson, Alfred Hitchcock, Dorothy McGuire, George Barnes, Stanley Cortez, Gene Kelly, Alan Marshall, Ingrid Bergman and Joan Fontaine. Of all the projects, Jane Eyre was the one closest to being realised, but Selznick had been frustrated by his ability to get the right leading man.[9]

Selznick had always wanted Orson Welles to play the role of Edward Rochester, but despaired of ever getting him because of his contract with RKO Pictures. When Welles was signed for Jane Eyre in December 1942, he was no longer with RKO,[10]^:358 and was eager to earn money to purchase, develop and cut the footage he had shot for It's All True, an ill-fated project for the U.S. government for which he had received no payment. He hired himself out as an actor—the first of many times that Welles would support his own film projects by acting in more conventional films.[11]^:257

Welles was also struggling to retain his place in Hollywood as a producer, and he negotiated a role as the associate producer of Jane Eyre as well as top billing.[11]^:258[12]^:112–113 He was paid $100,000—the same amount he received for his multiple responsibilities in Citizen Kane.[11]^:257

Welles had already adapted Jane Eyre twice for radio.[13] The Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast of September 18, 1938, is lost because Welles used the acetate original to prepare the film and the recording was irreparably damaged.[14]

In early December 1942, Selznick wrote Goetz that he and Welles agreed on the importance of casting character actors who were new to motion pictures. He offered to be present at a casting meeting, and asked that Welles be there, as well—"because I know few people in the history of the business who have shown such a talent for exact casting, and for digging up new people."[15]^:325–326 Mercury Theatre players from stage and radio who appear in Jane Eyre include Agnes Moorehead, Erskine Sanford,[13] Eustace Wyatt[16] and Edith Barrett;[17] but the character roles generally went to familiar Hollywood performers, many of them with British stage credits.[10]^:359

Welles and Selznick persuaded 20th Century Fox to hire Bernard Herrmann to compose the score for Jane Eyre.[15]^:329

When the film's co-producer with Welles, Kenneth Macgowan, asked Herrmann what work he had done before, the composer angrily replied, "Well, I never hearda you, either!"[18]^:107 Herrmann based his score for Jane Eyre on the score he had written for "Rebecca" (December 9, 1938), the first episode of Welles's radio series, The Campbell Playhouse.[18]^:67[lower-alpha 1] Alfred Newman, head of the Fox music department, admired Herrmann's work for RKO and gave him the rare privilege of conducting his own score—the first of many that Herrmann wrote for the studio.[18]^:106[lower-alpha 2]

Jane Eyre was in production from February 3 until mid-April 1943.[20]

On April 8, The Hollywood Reporter noted that Welles would receive an onscreen credit as associate producer.[8] In an April 17 memo to Goetz, which he blind-copied to Stevenson, Selznick protested that such a credit would be unfair to the director, "who pretty clearly took up the responsibility of producer where I left off."[15]^:331

You know as well as I do that Orson is such a personality that if he is credited as a producer, Stevenson's credit is likely to degenerate into something of a stooge status, as has occurred with Norman Foster on Journey into Fear—and, mind you, on Journey into Fear, Orson chose not even to have his own name appear in connection with the production ...[15]^:331

Three months later, in a letter to 20th Century Fox, a Selznick attorney agreed to Welles receiving a producer credit if he wanted it:

We have only just learned that Mr. Welles did a great deal more producing on the picture than we had previously known. We have been informed by people from your studio that Mr. Welles worked on the sets, changes in the script, in casting, among other things, and that he had charge of the editing ...[1]^:175

Although the associate producer credit was stated in his contract,[11]^:258 Welles chose to waive it. "Certainly I did a lot more than a producer ought to, but Stevenson didn't mind that," he later said, adding that they got along very well on the picture. "And I don't want to take credit away from him, all of which he deserves."[1]^:175–176 No producer credit appears on the screen or in the Screen Achievement Records Bulletin of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[8]