Gone With The Wind - Part One

Gone With The Wind (aka - GWTW), of course, won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1939. There's enough material about the making of GWTW, to make a movie (or at least part of one)!! Moviola (written by Garson Kanin) was made into a big budget, made for TV miniseries back in 1980. It was divided into three parts: (The Silent Lovers, about Garbo and John Gilbert and the coming of sound; The Scarlett O’Hara Wars, about the search for the perfect actress to star in Gone With The Wind; and This Year’s Blonde, about the rise of the movie icon, Marilyn Monroe).

The story of casting for the role of Scarlet started not long after David O Selznick bought the rights to the book. There have been stories circulating that soon after getting the rights for the movie, Selznick became aware of Vivien Leigh for the part of Scarlett O'Hara, but put off even testing her for a number reasons and all seem to be connected.

One reason was that Selznick (who was an Independent Producer) had just signed, in 1936, a 2 year contract with United Artist to release all of his films. The problem with this was that Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM Studios (and Selznick's father-in-law) would only allow Clark Gable to play the part of Rhett Butler if MGM had distribution rights to GWTW. Selznick needed a stall tactic to keep the public's interest in the movie for 2 years. Thus the search!!

Also, Selznick thought it wise to test a number of American actresses, particularly those from the South, so as not to insult them by immediately casting a British actress.

Thirdly, Vivien Leigh was under contract to Alexander Korda, a noted Hungarian born, British producer and director. Initially, Korda was hesitant about lending out Miss Leigh, but eventually gave in.

David Selznick was well know for sending out memos on every thing. So much so, that a book was published in 1972 entitled "Memo from David O Selznick". The largest chapter of the book is devoted to memos sent and received on GWTW. There is note at one particular part of this chapter that several memos are missing and quite possibly are related to the finding of Vivien Leigh early on in the search.

It was was approaching the end of 1938 and Selznick needed to start some sort of filming (by this time MGM had distribution rights and Selznick had his Rhett Butler). It was decided to film the fire scene (often referred to as the Burning of Atlanta and Railroad station). This scene also provided the demolition of several old sets to make way for the replica of Tara. It was during the filming of this scene that David's brother, Myron, who was a talent agent, came with Vivien Leigh on his arm. He then said to his brother, "I'd like to present to you, Scarlett O'Hara (this is not a direct quote, but basically what transpired).