home.”
From the Critics
“Is it the greatest motion picture ever made? Probably not, although it is the greatest motion mural we have seen and the most ambitious film-making venture in Hollywood’s spectacular history.”
— New York Times, Dec. 20, 1939
The mayor read a cable of greeting from Leslie Howard, who had returned to England after war broke out with Germany, and then introduced “the man who, by national acclaim, from start to finish, was, is and always will be Rhett Butler.” Gable stepped to the microphones to tumultuous cheers: “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. You know, as I started down here this evening, your mayor told me that the population of Atlanta was three hundred thousand. I have seen myself tonight, coming from the airport, three million people!”
After a cocktail party for the press in the hotel ballroom, the visitors changed clothes and headed to the city auditorium for the Atlanta Junior League’s Gone With the Wind ball. Gable, Leigh and de Havilland wore evening clothes, while the rest of the cast members arrived in costumes from the film. A local orchestra played Southern melodies, including “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny,” “Old Folks at Home,” and, of course, a rousing rendition of “Dixie.” Later, with a large façade backdrop of a white-columned mansion, a choir from the city’s African-American Ebenezer Baptist Church performed spirituals such as “I Want to Walk With Jesus” and “Come Along, Children, and Be Baptized.”
The stars were introduced in their box seats and spotlights picked them out as they rose to take their bows. Shortly after 11:00 p.m., the program was turned over to band leader Kay Kyser and the audience began dancing, allowing the stars to slip out and return to their hotel.
Mitchell briefly addressed the crowd before the premiere, saying, “This is a very happy and exciting day for me.”
A White House Showing
In early December 1939, David O. Selznick wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt and invited him to attend one of the upcoming premiere screenings of Gone With the Wind. While the president’s secretary declined on his behalf, the producer’s offer to arrange a special showing at the White House was accepted. On the day after Christmas, about 30 people gathered at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., including the president, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, several of the Roosevelt children, the president’s mother and other guests. At the beginning of the fourth reel, just as Sherman began lobbing shells into Atlanta, President Roosevelt was called away by the secretary of state, according to a Loew’s projectionist sent to Washington for the occasion. The president did not return, but the others enjoyed the film “tremendously” and gave it “a really terrific and enthusiastic reception,” the projectionist reported.
A decade later, Eleanor Roosevelt, in an interview with the Associated Press, remembered a showing of Gone With the Wind — she did not say when — quite differently. As she recalled, the president fell asleep in the middle of the film. When he awoke and found the picture still running, he declared, “No movie has a right to be that long.”
Later that afternoon, at a private cocktail party at the exclusive Piedmont Driving Club, Mitchell finally met Rhett Butler.
Premiere day, Dec. 15, was cold. The city’s newspapers devoted their front pages to the events of the day before: “Rhett Butler at Five Points” and “300,000 Screaming Fans Acclaim Gable in Wildest Welcome in City’s History” were two of the headlines. Some of the actors visited the Cyclorama, the city’s famed circular painting of the Battle of Atlanta. After the Cyclorama tour, Selznick and Gable stopped by the governor’s mansion, where both men were named honorary Georgia colonels. Others attended a “Christmas at Tara” luncheon hosted by the Atlanta Better Films Committee. At the same time, Mitchell, who had kept a low profile, was honored along with other Southern writers at a lunch at Rich’s department store.
The day before the movie premiere, Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable and Olivia de Havilland visited the Cyclorama in Atlanta with George Simons, the city’s parks manager.
Later that afternoon, at a private cocktail party at the exclusive Piedmont Driving Club, Mitchell finally met Rhett Butler. The author and Clark Gable stepped into a private dining room and chatted briefly; Gable later told reporters that she was “the most fascinating woman I’ve ever met.” By 6:00 p.m., the guests began returning to their homes or their hotel rooms to prepare for the moment they had all been waiting for. Atlantans, after three and a half years, finally would see what Hollywood had done with their story.
WATCHING THE SHOW
The Selznicks escorted Mitchell and her husband, John Marsh, to the theater in a limousine. Five giant searchlights pierced the night skies and played across the front of the theater. At the urging of the master of ceremonies, the author stopped briefly before the microphones to speak to the spectators outside and to those listening by radio across the nation: “This is a very happy and exciting day for me, and at this time, I want to thank everybody in Atlanta for being so nice to me and my poor Scarlett. Thank you.”
Selznick, still hopeful of the South’s approval, came next: “Three years of effort have led to this moment. If Atlanta, which is the final judge, approves our efforts, these labors will not have been in vain.”
The two couples made their way into the theater as Gable and Lombard arrived. The actor paid tribute to the woman he had met just hours before: “Ladies and gentlemen, tonight, I’m here just as a spectator. I want to see Gone With the Wind the same as you do. And this is Margaret Mitchell’s night, and the people of Atlanta’s night. Allow me, please, to see Gone With the Wind as a spectator. Thank you.”
Clark Gable and his wife, Carole Lombard, led a procession of convertibles with other stars through Atlanta.
Mitchell and her husband were seated between Gable and John Hay Whitney, chairman of the board of Selznick International Pictures, while de Havilland sat on Whitney’s right. Leigh sat in the row ahead of them beside the governor of Georgia. The lights dimmed and composer Max Steiner’s overture began. The curtains parted and his soaring “Tara’s Theme” signaled the start of a roller coaster ride of emotions for the audience, which featured, as the mayor had promised, visiting dignitaries from across the country, including World War I flying ace Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, Columbia Broadcasting System executive William S. Paley and cosmetics queen Elizabeth Arden.
From the Critics
“Technicolor (using a new process) has never been used with more effective restraint than in Gone With the Wind. Exquisite shot: Gerald O’Hara silhouetted beside Scarlett against the evening sky at Tara while he propounds to her the meaning of the one thing she has left when everything else is wrecked — the red earth of Tara.”
