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
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