Entrepreneurial producer David O. Selznick formed a parnership with director George Cukor at RKO which resulted in Katharine Hepburn’s first screen role, A Bill of Divorcement (1932), followed by the hugely successful Little Women.  In 1933 the pair moved to MGM where they made the Jean Harlow film Dinner at Eight, which earned Cukor his first Oscar nomination.  Cukor himself gained a reputation for women’s pictures, and for being able to handle the industry’s ‘difficult’ leading ladies.

The pair’s next project was David Copperfield and its success was important in several ways.  It firmly established both director and producer in the top bracket of filmmaking and allowed their careers to progress to even greater heights.  It solidified Hollywood’s obsession with transferring classic novels to the screen, even those of seemingly impossible length and complexity, and it served as a warm-up for Gone with the Wind, which Selznick and Cukor would collaborate on five years later, although the latter would be pushed off the project during production by Clark Gable.

Halliwell gave George Cukor this dedication in the Filmgoer’s Companion:

‘For adding to Hollywood a sense of light culture; and for his discretion in handling a score of the film colony’s more temperamental ladies.’

Year: 1934