However, even as people see Selznick mostly as the producer of Gone with the Wind, the fact is that he did produce many popular films before and after that release, and managed to get some good stars involved. A good example is 1939's Made for Each Other, a romantic melodrama starring Carole Lombard (who was in Selznick's Nothing Sacred) and Jimmy Stewart, who was just at the cusp of stardom at this point when Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington came out the very same year.
Made for Each Other is prime 1930's romance, and is very interesting because it manages to be both melodramatic and rooted in a certain form of believability. Stewart plays a lawyer who struggles to become more than just an assistant, but to actually become a junior partner in the law firm, and as the film begins he returns from an assignment which ended up becoming a whirlwind romance ending in marriage with a woman played by Lombard. This part of the relationship is kind of strange, because you wonder what would have happened to make this couple become a married one only about two days after meeting each other. It would have made a very interesting two days, but, unfortunately, all we get out of it is the fact that the two met when Stewart helped Lombard get something out of her eye.
The marriage gets off to a bit of a rocky start, because this impulsive act throws a wrench into a number of slightly more consistent things, most notably Stewart's job. The honeymoon is ruined because Stewart's co-worker catches the couple as they are settling in on their cruise and tells Stewart that he has to return to argue a case, a case Stewart had thought would be put off until he returned from the honeymoon. As well, there is the ever-durable element of the mother (or mother-in-law, depending on which spouse you are), who, before she is actually told the truth about the marriage, tells the woman that she shouldn't get involved in marriage too quickly, or else destroy any dreams that she might have had of being an independent woman.
