Gone with the Wind

Of original screenplay writer Sidney Howard, film historian Joanne Yeck writes, "reducing the intricacies of Gone with the Wind's epic dimensions was a herculean task ... and Howard's first submission was far too long, and would have required at least six hours of film; ... [producer] Selznick wanted Howard to remain on the set to make revisions...but Howard refused to leave New England [and] as a result, revisions were handled by a host of local writers, including Ben Hecht..."^[10]

Selznick replaced the director George Cukor three weeks into filming and then had the script rewritten. He sought out Victor Fleming, who, at the time, was directing The Wizard of Oz. Fleming was dissatisfied with the script, so Selznick brought in famed writer Ben Hecht to rewrite the entire screenplay within five days."^[11] The popular play Moonlight and Magnolias by playwright Ron Hutchinson, is about this dramatic episode when "Selznick literally locked himself, Fleming and screenwriter Ben Hecht in a room for five days to completely redo the script."^[12][13]

By the time of the film's release in 1939, there was some question as to who should receive screen credit," writes Yeck. "But despite the number of writers and changes, the final script was remarkably close to Howard's version. The fact that Howard's name alone appears on the credits may have been as much a gesture to his memory as to his writing, for in 1939 Sidney Howard died tragically at age forty-eight in a farm-tractor accident, and before the movie's premiere."^[10]

Selznick, in a memo written in October 1939, discussed the film's writing credits:

[Y]ou can say frankly that of the comparatively small amount of material in the picture which is not from the book, most is my own personally, and the only original lines of dialog which are not my own are a few from Sidney Howard and a few from Ben Hecht and a couple more from John Van Druten. Offhand I doubt that there are ten original words of [Oliver] Garrett's in the whole script. As to construction, this is about eighty per cent my own, and the rest divided between Jo Swerling and Sidney Howard, with Hecht having contributed materially to the construction of one sequence.

According to Hecht biographer, William MacAdams, "At dawn on Sunday, February 20, 1939, David Selznick ... and director Victor Fleming shook Hecht awake to inform him he was on loan from MGM and must come with them immediately and go to work on Gone with the Wind, which Selznick had begun shooting five weeks before. It was costing Selznick $50,000 each day the film was on hold waiting for a final screenplay rewrite and time was of the essence.^[14]:199

Hecht was in the middle of working on the film At the Circus for the Marx brothers."^[14]:199 Recalling the episode in a letter to screenwriter friend Gene Fowler, he said he hadn't read the novel but Selznick and director Fleming could not wait for him to read it. They would act out scenes based on Sidney Howard's original script which needed to be rewritten in a hurry. Hecht wrote, "After each scene had been performed and discussed, I sat down at the typewriter and wrote it out. Selznick and Fleming, eager to continue with their acting, kept hurrying me. We worked in this fashion for seven days, putting in eighteen to twenty hours a day. Selznick refused to let us eat lunch, arguing that food would slow us up. He provided bananas and salted peanuts....thus on the seventh day I had completed, unscathed, the first nine reels of the Civil War epic."^[14]:200

MacAdams writes, "It is impossible to determine exactly how much Hecht scripted...In the official credits filed with the Screen Writers' Guild, Sidney Howard was of course awarded the sole screen credit, but four other writers were appended ... Jo Swerling for contributing to the treatment, Oliver H. P. Garrett and Barbara Keon to screenplay construction, and Hecht, to dialogue, so it would appear Hecht's influence was not insubstantial."^[14]:201

Filming

Principal photography began January 26, 1939, and ended on June 27, 1939, with post-production work (including a fifth version of the opening scene) going to November 11, 1939. Director George Cukor, with whom Selznick had a long working relationship, and who had spent almost two years in preproduction on Gone with the Wind, was replaced after less than three weeks of shooting. Olivia de Havilland said that she learned of George Cukor's firing from Vivien Leigh on the day the Atlanta bazaar scene was filmed. The pair went to Selznick's office in full costume and begged him to change his mind. Selznick apologized, but refused.^{[note 1]} Victor Fleming, who was directing The Wizard of Oz, was called in from MGM to complete the picture, although Cukor continued privately to coach Leigh and De Havilland. Another MGM director, Sam Wood, worked for two weeks in May when Fleming temporarily left the production due to exhaustion.^[15]

Cinematographer Lee Garmes began the production, but after a month of shooting what Selznick and his associates thought was "too dark" footage, was replaced with Ernest Haller, working with Technicolor cinematographer Ray Rennahan. Most of the filming was done on "the back forty" of Selznick International with all the location scenes being photographed in California, mostly in Los Angeles County or neighboring Ventura County.^[16] Tara, which for many Americans is the iconic Southern plantation house, existed only as a plywood and papier-mâché facade built on the "back forty" California studio lot.^[17] For the burning of Atlanta other false facades were built in front of the "back forty"'s many abandoned sets, and Selznick himself operated the controls for the explosives that burned them down.^[4]:20 Estimated production costs were $3.85 million;^[18] only Ben-Hur (1925) and Hell's Angels (1930) had cost more.^[19]

from the film's trailer

Showing at the Queen's Theatre, Hong Kong in 1941

When Selznick was asked by the press in early September how he felt about the film, he said: "At noon I think it's divine, at midnight I think it's lousy. Sometimes I think it's the greatest picture ever made. But if it's only a great picture, I'll still be satisfied."^[22]

On September 9, 1939, Selznick, his wife, Irene, investor Jock Whitney, and film editor Hal Kern drove out to Riverside, California with all of the film reels to preview it before an audience. The film was still unfinished at this stage, missing many optical effects and most of Max Steiner's music score. They arrived at the Fox Theatre in Riverside, which was playing a double feature of Hawaiian Nights and Beau Geste. Kern called for the manager and explained that they had selected his theatre for the first public screening of Gone with the Wind. He was told that after Hawaiian Nights had finished, he could make an announcement of the preview, but was forbidden to say what the film was. People were permitted to leave, but the theatre would thereafter be sealed with no re-admissions and no phone calls out. The manager was reluctant, but finally agreed. His only request was to call his wife to come to the theatre immediately. Kern stood by him as he made the call to make sure he did not reveal the name of the film to her.

When the film began, there was a buzz in the audience when Selznick's name appeared, for they had read about the making of the film for over two years. In an interview years later, Kern described the exact moment the audience realized what was happening:

"When Margaret Mitchell's name came on the screen, you never heard such a sound in your life. They just yelled, they stood up on the seats...I had the [manually operated sound] box. And I had that music wide open and you couldn't hear a thing. Mrs. Selznick was crying like a baby and so was David and so was I. Oh, what a thrill! And when Gone with the Wind came on the screen, it was thunderous!"

In his seminal biography of Selznick, David Thomson wrote that the audience's response before the story had even started "was the greatest moment of his life, the greatest victory and redemption of all his failings."^[23] When the film ended, there was a huge ovation. In the preview cards filled out after the screening, two-thirds of the audience rated it as excellent, an unusually high rating.^{[citation needed]} Most of the audience begged that the film not be cut shorter, and many suggested that instead, they eliminate any newsreels, shorts and B-movie feature.

One million people came to Atlanta^[4]:24 for the film's premiere at the Loew's Grand Theatre on December 15, 1939. It was the climax of three days of festivities hosted by Mayor William B. Hartsfield, which included a parade of limousines featuring stars from the film, receptions, thousands of Confederate flags, false antebellum fronts on stores and homes, and a costume ball. Eurith D. Rivers, the governor of Georgia, declared December 15 a state holiday. The New York Times reported that thousands lined the streets as "the demonstration exceeded anything in Atlanta's history for noise, magnitude and excitement".^[24] President Jimmy Carter would later recall it as "the biggest event to happen in the South in my lifetime."

Hattie McDaniel and the other black actors from the film were prevented from attending the premiere due to Georgia's Jim Crow laws, which would have kept them from sitting with the white members of the cast. Upon learning that McDaniel had been barred from the premiere, Clark Gable threatened to boycott the event. McDaniel convinced him to attend.^[25]

In Los Angeles, the film had its premiere at the elegant Carthay Circle Theatre. From December 1939 to June 1940, the film played only advance-ticket road show engagements at a limited number of theaters, before it went into general release in 1941.^[26] It was a sensational hit during the Blitz in London, opening in April 1940, and played for four years.^[27] It replaced The Birth of a Nation as the highest-grossing film of all-time,^[28] holding the position until 1966, when it was finally overtaken by The Sound of Music.^[29]

The film has made $400 million worldwide in theater receipts since its release,^[34] which Turner Entertainment estimate to be equivalent to approximately $3.3 billion when adjusted to 2007 prices.^[35] Other estimates place the adjusted gross between $3 billion and $5.3 billion at contemporary price levels, making it the highest grossing film of all time.^[36][37][38] After adjustments for inflation, Gone with the Wind is also estimated to be the highest grossing film of all time in the United States^[39][40] and the United Kingdom, where it is estimated to have sold a total of 35 million tickets.^[41][42]

The film made its television debut on the HBO cable network in June 1976, and its broadcast TV debut in November of that year in two parts on NBC, where it became at that time the highest-rated television program ever presented on a single network, watched by 47.5 percent of the households sampled in America, and 65 percent of television viewers. Ironically, it was surpassed the following year by the mini-series Roots, a saga about slavery in America. The film was later shown on CBS. The film was also used to launch two cable channels owned by Turner Broadcasting: TNT and Turner Classic Movies.

Rumors of Hollywood producing a sequel persisted for decades until 1994, when one was finally produced for television. It was based upon Alexandra Ripley's novel Scarlett, itself a sequel to Mitchell's book. Both the book and the mini-series were met with mixed reviews. In the TV version, British actors played both key roles: Welsh-born actor Timothy Dalton played Rhett while Manchester-born Joanne Whalley played Scarlett. Original plans were used for the reconstruction of a replica of the original Tara set in Charleston, South Carolina for the filming.

Photograph of First Archivist of the United States R. D. W. Connor receiving the film Gone with the Wind from Senator George of Georgia and Loew's Eastern Division Manager Carter Barron, 1941

In an attempt to draw upon his company's profits, but to pay capital gain tax rather than a much higher personal income tax, David O. Selznick and his business partners liquidated Selznick International Pictures over a three-year period in the early 1940s. As part of the liquidation, Selznick sold his rights in Gone with the Wind to Jock Whitney and his sister, who in turn sold it to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1944. Today it is owned by Turner Entertainment, whose parent company Turner Broadcasting acquired MGM's film library in 1986. Turner itself is currently a subsidiary of Time Warner, which is the current parent company of Warner Bros. Entertainment. The film is the favorite movie of TBS founder Ted Turner, himself a resident of Atlanta.

In 1989, Gone with the Wind was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 1998, the American Film Institute ranked it No. 4 on its "100 Greatest Movies" list. In 2007, the film had moved to No. 6 on the 10th anniversay AFI best film list.

Rhett Butler's famous farewell line to Scarlett O'Hara, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn", was voted in a poll by the American Film Institute in 2005 as the most memorable line in cinema history.^[43]

Leslie Howard's association to the screen character he most disliked, the winsome Ashley, later obscured his solid contribution to the British film industry and his fight to break the silence about the Holocaust.^[44]

In 2005, the AFI ranked Max Steiner's score for the film the second greatest of all time. The AFI also ranked the film No. 2 in their list of the greatest romances of all time (100 Years... 100 Passions).

After filming concluded, the set of Tara sat on the back lot of the former Selznick Studios as the Forty Acres back lot reverted to RKO Pictures and then was sold to Desilu Productions. In 1959, Southern Attractions, Inc. purchased the façade of Tara, which was dismantled and shipped to Georgia with plans to relocate it to the Atlanta area as a tourist attraction.^[45][46] David O. Selznick commented at the time,

Nothing in Hollywood is permanent. Once photographed, life here is ended. It is almost symbolic of Hollywood. Tara had no rooms inside. It was just a façade. So much of Hollywood is a façade.^[47]

However, the Margaret Mitchell estate refused to license the novel's commercial use in connection with the façade, citing Mitchell's dismay at how little it resembled her description. In 1979 the dismantled plywood and papier-mâché set, reportedly in "terrible" condition, was purchased for $5,000 by Betty Talmadge, the ex-wife of former Georgia governor and U.S. senator Herman Talmadge. She lent the front door of Tara's set to the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum in downtown Atlanta, Georgia where it is on permanent display, featured in the Gone with the Wind film museum. Other items from the movie, such as from the set of Scarlett and Rhett's Atlanta mansion, are still stored at The Culver Studios (formerly Selznick International) including the stained glass window from the top of the staircase which was actually a painting. The famous painting of Scarlett in her blue dress, which hung in Rhett's bedroom, hung for years at the Margaret Mitchell Elementary School in Atlanta, but is now on permanent loan to the Margaret Mitchell Museum, complete with stains from the glass of sherry that Clark Gable, as Rhett Butler, threw at it in anger.