U.S.
$400
million
The amount the film made. When adjusted for inflation, Gone With the Wind has made $3 billion to $5 billion, making it the highest grossing film of all time.
Gone With the Wind was featured on the covers of numerous magazines, including Photoplay, Ladies’ Home Journal, Family Circle, Glamour and Look. Vivien Leigh in Scarlett’s famous drapery dress made the cover of Time on Christmas Day 1939.
Gone With the Wind
The inaugural showing of Gone With the Wind was the biggest event in Atlanta since Sherman burned down the city.
War clouds gathered in Europe while Hollywood enjoyed a golden year.
The rights to the novel were sold to David O. Selznick after a long process.
The movie captures the spirit of the novel despite major changes.
Hollywood searched for the right actress before finally settling on Vivien Leigh.
Trivia about the cast and some of the people who vied to be in the film.
Journalist Sue Myrick made sure all things Southern were really Southern.
British actress Vivien Leigh was hardly a Southern belle, but she was the perfect Scarlett O’Hara.
Destined or doomed? The 10 stages of Scarlett and Rhett’s timeless love affair.
George Cukor and Victor Fleming share credit for shaping Gone With the Wind.
Georgia boasts several Gone With the Wind museums and historical sites and welcomes visitors.
One of the most important cities in the Confederacy, Atlanta paid dearly for its prominence.
After destroying Atlanta, the Union army moved South, toward Tara.
Key Players
Vivien Leigh/Scarlett O’Hara
Clark Gable/Rhett Butler
Olivia de Havilland/Melanie Wilkes
Leslie Howard/Ashley Wilkes
Margaret Mitchell
Cover: photo by Everett Collection
Back cover: top photos by Everett Collection
The World
Premiere
The inaugural showing of Gone With the Wind was the biggest event in Atlanta since Sherman burned down the city.
BY JOHN WILEY, JR.
In March 1937, eight months after David O. Selznick purchased the movie rights to Gone With the Wind — and almost two years before filming began — Atlanta Mayor William B. Hartsfield wrote to the producer, encouraging him to hold the premiere in Atlanta and to bring cast members along for the unveiling. Hartsfield said he had the backing of a large number of local leaders and businessmen and promised the city’s full cooperation to make the event “of nationwide importance.” He also noted it was the city’s intention to invite “leading citizens from all over the country ... and to give to it a vast amount of publicity, far more than the ordinary Premiere, on account of the great interest of Atlanta therein and the historical sentiment involved.”
Atlanta was, after all, author Margaret Mitchell’s hometown, and the entire story was set in and around the city. Local residents felt certain that the movie ought to premiere in the Gate City of the South.
WINNING THE PREMIERE
Over the next two years, as the search for Scarlett kept movie fans stirred up, Atlantans never lost sight of their goal. Filming on Gone With the Wind finally got under way in January 1939, and the interest in holding the first showing only increased. Thousands of her fellow Atlantans wrote and called Mitchell, certain she was their inside track to getting the premiere to Atlanta. The author patiently reminded them that she had no connection with the movie, and that Selznick, who had just begun to make the film, had
