A Private View, written by Irene Mayer Selznick, published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1983

Irene Mayer Selznick's autobiography is aptly titled for she was indeed a private, dignified woman raised in the disciplined shadow of her father, famed MGM mogul, Louis B. Mayer. She was also the wife of the producer, David O. Selznick, who won an Academy Award for his 1939 production of Gone With the Wind. Irene and David divorced after fifteen years of marriage. David later married Jennifer Jones and enabled her stardom in Duel in the Sun and other films. Irene’s sister, Edith, was married to 20th Century Fox producer William Goetz. Arguably, nobody had better connections or knew more people in Hollywood than Irene Mayer Selznick.

Once she was divorced, Irene became a theatre producer in New York City, most notably bringing Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire to the stage under the direction of Elia Kazan. She also produced John van Druten’s Bell, Book and Candle and Enid Bagnold’s The Chalk Garden. Years later, during the House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings, Kazan approached Irene while they were working together on the Broadway production of Flight into Egypt and revealed that he had once been a Communist. As Selznick explains it, there were essentially three alternatives if called to testify: take the Fifth Amendment; defy the subpoena and risk a jail sentence for contempt of Congress; turn informer and name names. Kazan elected to name names, a choice that distressed Irene and irrevocably strained their relationship.

Not that Irene Selznick lacked companionship. Her friends included Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Janet Gaynor, Rosalind Russell, Moss Hart, Tennessee Williams, Graham Greene, George Cukor, Claudette Colbert, Rex Harrison, Bill Paley, Clifford Odets, and Katharine Hepburn, just to name a few.

When Irene stopped producing Broadway plays, she retired to her apartment at the Pierre Hotel in New York City where she lived until her death in 1990 at the age 83.