Selznick International Pictures

In its short existence the independent studio produced two films that received the Academy Award for Best Picture—Gone with the Wind (1939) and Rebecca (1940)—and three that were nominated, A Star Is Born (1937), Since You Went Away (1944) and Spellbound (1945).

Selznick raised the initial funding of US$400,000 in Los Angeles, with half of that amount coming from his brother Myron Selznick, a Hollywood agent, and the other half from MGM production chief Irving Thalberg and his wife actress Norma Shearer.

[2] He raised an additional $300,000 from "small" investors in New York, and then the final $2.4 million from Jock Whitney and his family.

Because Whitney and his cousin Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney also owned Pioneer Pictures, an independent studio they formed in 1933 on facilities rented at the RKO studios, Pioneer was informally merged with Selznick International Pictures in 1936.

Selznick International assumed Pioneer's contract to make at least six pictures in the new full-color Technicolor process, of which the Whitneys owned a 15 percent share.

"[1]: 6 Selznick intended to produce a few features each year, a plan which he hoped would allow him to be as picky and careful as he liked and to create the best films possible.

[39] Selznick died in 1965, and the following year, his estate sold the rights to 26 of his features to ABC,[40] which owns most of them today (via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures).

Turner Entertainment Co., which purchased the pre-May 1986 MGM library in 1986, now owns the film with distribution currently held by Warner Bros.