Four days after the Atlanta premiere, Gone With the Wind opened in New York at the Astor (left) and Capitol theaters.
The crowd roared its approval when one of the opening frames announced “Margaret Mitchell’s Story of the Old South.” The mood was light as Scarlett O’Hara flirted and schemed her way through the opening scenes and met her match in the dashing Rhett Butler.
Audience members were not shy in expressing their Southern sympathies. At the Atlanta Bazaar, when Dr. Meade announced that Gen. Robert E. Lee had swept the Yankee army from Virginia, the cheers in the theater drowned out those onscreen. As the tide of war turned, quiet gasps and sobs could be heard as Scarlett searched for the doctor among the hundreds of wounded Confederate soldiers. In the second half, when the word “Sherman!” flashed on the screen, the audience hissed “like a pit of angered snakes,” a reporter noted, and when Scarlett shot the Yankee deserter at Tara, the cheers shook the roof.
An Atlanta crowd welcomed stars Evelyn Keyes (Suellen O’Hara) and Ona Munson (Belle Watling).
Tears flowed freely when Scarlett and Rhett’s beloved daughter was thrown from her pony and killed, and again when Melanie died. Finally, Rhett walked out the door with his declaration that he didn’t give a damn and Scarlett collapsed on the stairs, seemingly defeated. As she was roused by voices reminding her of Tara and the camera moved in on her tear-stained face, the music swelled to a crescendo. The audience rose to its feet with a thunderous ovation.
As he had hoped, Selznick conquered Atlanta. And Atlanta had out-Hollywooded the film capital itself when it came to throwing a premiere party. Now, it was on to New York, where the movie had a twin Broadway opening at the Astor and the Capitol theaters on Dec. 19, and then to Los Angeles, where it showed Dec. 28 at the Carthay Circle — just under the wire for qualifying for the 1939 Academy Awards. •
John Wiley, Jr., is author of Gone With the Wind: Atlanta’s Film, Atlanta’s Night.
From the Critics
“The players give impeccable performances: Vivien Leigh in particular, as the selfish, high-spirited, passionate, green-eyed minx of a heroine, richly deserves her Academy Award. There are action and spectacle in plenty, and not too much sentiment.”
— The Guardian (U.K.), May 28, 1940
Gone With the Wind
Behind the scenes of America’s best-loved film
The Scarlett Letters coming in October 2014 — order now!
One month after her novel Gone With the Wind was published, Margaret Mitchell sold the movie rights for $50,000. Fearful of what the studio might do to her story, the author washed her hands of involvement with the film. However, driven by a maternal interest in her literary firstborn and compelled by her Southern manners to answer every fan letter she received, Mitchell was unable to stay aloof for long.
In this collection of her letters about the 1939 motion picture classic, readers have a front-row seat as the author watches the Dream Factory at work. Her ability to weave a story, so evident in Gone With the Wind, makes for delightful reading in her correspondence with a who’s who of Hollywood, from producer David O. Selznick, director George Cukor and screenwriter Sidney Howard, to cast members Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland and Hattie McDaniel.
As Gone With the Wind marks its 75th anniversary on the silver screen, The Scarlett Letters, edited by Mitchell historian John Wiley, Jr., offers a fresh look at the most popular motion picture of all time through the eyes of the woman who gave birth to Scarlett.
AVAILABLE FROM YOUR FAVORITE BOOKSELLER OR WWW.ROWMAN.COM.
“John Wiley, Jr., is the world’s greatest authority on Margaret Mitchell. If you think Scarlett O’Hara is fascinating, wait until you meet Margaret Mitchell in these pages — she is laugh-out-loud funny, honest to a fault, often exasperating, and a brilliant judge of character.”
— Pamela Roberts, producer/director of Margaret Mitchell: American Rebel for PBS
1939
JANUARY
JAN. 5
Aviator Amelia Earhart is officially declared dead. Her plane had disappeared in 1937.
JAN. 27:
Adolf Hitler orders Plan Z, a massive expansion of the German Navy. Hitler intends to build a fleet that can destroy the British Navy.
FEBRUARY
MARCH
MARCH 3:
The strange craze of goldfish swallowing reaches a high point when Time magazine devotes an article to Harvard’s Lothrop Withington, who swallowed a goldfish to win a $10 bet.
MARCH 28:
Dictator Francisco Franco assumes power in Spain. He rules Spain until 1975.
APRIL
APRIL 14:
John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is published. It is the best-selling book of 1939.
MAY
MAY 1:
Batman makes his first appearance in a comic book. The May issue of Detective Comics sold for a dime.
MAY 2:
Lou Gehrig, baseball’s Iron Horse, sits out a game, ending his consecutive game streak at 2,130. In June he is diagnosed with ALS, and on July 4, he gives his famous farewell speech, calling himself “the luckiest man on the face of this earth.”
