Gone with the Wind premiered during the Christmas Season of 1939, just 74 years after the end of the “War Between the States” and December 15, 2009 marks the 70th anniversary of that wonderful-classic movie that begins with:
“There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind.”
Gone with the Wind won 8 Oscars for 1939, including Best Picture, and;
Hattie McDaniel, the first Black American to win an Academy Award, expressed her heart-felt pride with tears of joy, upon receiving the 1939 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her memorable role as “Mammy.” See her acceptance speech at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3hpmgn7Q30
Victor Fleming won the Academy Award for Best Director and even though Max Steiner did not receive an award for his excellent music score, the “Gone with the Wind” theme song has become the most recognized and played tune in the world.
Vivien Leigh, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a leading role, humbly and eloquently summed her appreciation by thanking Producer David O. Selznick which you can view at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaPMpD4oxDA&feature=related
And, who can forget Olivia De Havilland as the pure-sweet Melanie Hamilton, Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes and Clark Gable as Rhett Butler.
Friday, December 15, 1939, was an icy-cold day in Atlanta but people warmed to the excitement of the world premiere of “Gone with the Wind”--The Selznick International Pictures “Technicolor” Production of the Metro Goldwyn Mayer Release of Margaret Mitchell’s novel about the Old South at the Loews Grand Theater.
We remember Thomas Mitchell who played (Gerald O’Hara) telling daughter Scarlett:
“Do you mean to tell me, Katie Scarlett O'Hara, that Tara, that land doesn't mean anything to you? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it's the only thing that lasts.
And, we cried when Bonnie Blue Butler, the daughter of Rhett and Scarlett—played by Cammie King, was killed in a pony accident.
The cast of Gone with the Wind stayed at the historic Georgian-Terrace Hotel.
Anne Rutherford, who played Scarlett’s sister Carreen, took time to visit the Confederate Veterans at the soldier’s home and the stars toured the famous “Cyclorama” at Grant Park.
The festivities surrounding the premiere of Gone with the Wind included a parade down Peachtree Street with three hundred thousand folks cheering the playing of “Dixie”, waving Confederate flags and shouting Rebel Yells.
And, many witnessed the lighting of the “Eternal Flame of the Confederacy”, an 1855 gas lamp that survived the 1864 Battle of Atlanta. The lamp remained for many years on the northeast corner of Whitehall and Alabama Streets. Mrs. Thomas J. Ripley, President of Atlanta Chapter No. 18 United Daughters of the Confederacy, re-lit the great light with Mr. T. Guy Woolford, Commandant of the Old Guard by her side.
My Mother remembers the great spot lights lighting up the night sky.
The house where Margaret Mitchell wrote “Gone with the Wind” is still standing. See information at: http://www.margaretmitchellhouse.com/
Time Magazine wrote:
“The film has almost everything the book has in the way of spectacle, drama, practically endless story and the means to make them bigger and better. The burning of Atlanta, the great "boom" shots of the Confederate wounded lying in the streets and the hospital after the Battle of Atlanta are spectacle enough for any picture, and unequaled.”
Read entire article at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,952044,00.html#ixzz0XFQVmsTD
The 70th Anniversary of “Gone with the Wind’ was recently celebrated with a re-premiere showing at the beautifully restored Strand Theater located on the square in Marietta, Georgia. Read information at: http://www.earlsmithstrand.org/
Merry Christmas and May God Bless!
Lamh Foistenach Abu! Although fanciful it seems to depict Union “Preservation” efforts in and around Atlanta, utilizing the torch for maximum effect. Yankees had a keen sense of winning “Hearts and Minds”. Confederate solders were arrested for looting and pillaging, Yanks got promoted..
Made the mistake of watching Gone With the Wind for the first time pregnant, at 11 pm at night, whilst my husband was away on a business trip. By 2am I was a bawling wreck. I still rewatch it, though. It’s a feat of moviemaking, right up there with Ben Hur.
Have never managed to finish the book. Without Vivien Leigh’s vivacity to distract me, the urge to slap Scarlett becomes overwhelming, and I end up throwing the book against the wall halfway through.
Mrs. Springman and I saw GWTW on the Big screen on the 60th Anniversary.
That is the the way that movie should be seen!!!!
Everytime I think of GWTW I think of this guy:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001366/
Why?
After fighting in WWI and starting a fine movie career, he went home to help his nation in WWII:
“He died in 1943, when the KLM plane he was in was shot down by German fighters over the Bay of Biscay.”
They don’t make them like that anymore.
I love this book and movie! Many may not know that this movie was actually screened prior to it’s showing in Atlanta - in my hometown - Riverside, CA. Screened at the Fox Theater: http://www.riversideca.gov/arts/fox.asp
Which is now undergoing a transformation.
I remember going to the Fox to see movies in the 50’s and 60’s during hot summers. Loved to sit up in the balcony.
“The Rest of the Story” from an article by Wes Pruden November 1994. I can’t find it online so I’m pasting it from where I typed it into a Word Document years ago.
The Scarlett story that will not die
There actually was a Rhett Butler, and a real Scarlett O’Hara, and their lives - particularly Rhett’s - were actually lived pretty much as Miss Mitchell described them.
Rhett’s real name was Rhett Turnipseed. The Turnipseeds, like the Rhetts and Ravenals and the Pinckneys and Middletons, were and are a fine old South Carolina family, with many tributaries flowing in unusual ways to many interesting places. Rhett was a Pinckney on his mama’s side and has kin who live in Washington to this day. He was a brevet colonel in Hampton’s South Carolina Legion, which for a time was attached to Hood’s Texas Brigade. This may be confusing today, though it was not then, because Confederate regiments were often transferred hither and yon, and the Texas Brigade, Lee’s favorite, included regiments from several other states. The regiment that actually made the Texas Brigade famous, in fact, was the 3rd Arkansas, which left a goodly number of its men in Bloody Lane. The scene in Atlanta, where he finally dispatched Scarlett, whose real name was Evelyn Louise Hannon, actually happened, too. Once in uniform, Col. Turnipseed struck up a friendship with one of the officers of the 3rd Arkansas, and this friendship stood him in good stead, as we shall see.
After the War, Rhett went to New Orleans, where he ran a crap game in a private room above the old Claiborne Oyster House, and later drifted through the mean, hard places in the Reconstruction South. Nursing a dreadful hangover, he stumbled into Nashville on Easter Sunday morning 1871 and was converted in a Methodist revival meeting at the Ryman Auditorium - the Ryman Auditorium that would become the mother church of country music.
He stayed in Nashville to take divinity studies at Vanderbilt University and became a Methodist preacher, assigned to a riding circuit in rural Western Kentucky. Late in the decade - some Turnipseed family historians put the date as late as 1878, when Evelyn-cum-Scarlett would have been in her late 30s - Rhett the circuit-riding reverend rode into St. Louis to retrieve a young woman from his flock who had run away to seek employment in an Olive Street seminary for young ladies.
You can imagine his astonishment when the madam turned out to be, yes, the same Evelyn Louise Hannon. Naturally, being the spiteful Scarlett everyone of a certain age came to know and love, she refused to hand over the girl, the most popular in the house. Rhett Turnipseed (a.k.a. Butler) challenged Scarlett to a game of cards, putting up as his stake the recipe for barbecue sauce given him by his old friend in the 3rd Arkansas.
The parson held a royal straight flush, drawing an ace, a king, a queen, a jack and a 10 in a suit of spades. This hand has not been seen since in either St. Louis or on the river, but the story has a good end. The girl became the matriarch of a leading family of her state. Scarlett got religion, too, and opened a home for half-breed foundlings in the Cherokee Nation, and died there in 1903. There is a marker in the Methodist cemetery in Tahlequah. Lying next to Scarlett is a stone of Batesville marble inscribed “Unknown, 1832-1901.” Spread beneath the dates is an engraving of a royal straight flush.
Wonderful movie. I confess though I’ve never read the book. I thought Scarlett was so tragic and wonderful. Later in life I read a biography of Vivien Leigh to find that her own life was tragic. Melanie was great but I liked the conniving Scarlett but she was a dang fool. Too bad they don’t really make “big screen” movies anymore.
Other than that, if you ever watch the screen tests for Scarlett, there is no comparison. Vivian Leigh was hands down the best they auditioned and the role came out as the went along.
And Max Steiner's best theme, IMO, was composed for "Captain Blood."
The first time I ever saw this movie I was all of 4 or 5. I remember having to be taken to the bathroom during the burning of Atlanta!
I first read the book at the age of 9 and it gave words to the feelings first stirred by the movie even at that tender age.
Of course being raised by a mother who was born in Arkansas of family that came there straight from Georgia after the War of Northern Aggression, some of my love of the South is in the blood.
I grew up near where Margaret Mitchell spent her summers and based the novel Gone with the Wind (in the very real city of Jonesboro).
Just last year we went to Fox Theater and I would walk around that grand place and think “Just imagine, Rhett and Scarlet were HERE! Maybe where I’m walking right now!”
Of course I know that isn’t their real names, but even though I’d been to the Fox so many times, for some reason it just struck me at how magnificent that must have been.
The best movie ever! I first saw it in the late 60’s I believe and have the movie on DVD and STILL watch it when ever it’s on TV.