Gone With the Wind is one of the most enduringly popularfilms from Hollywood’s golden era, and one of the most controversial. Thescreenplay, based on Margaret Mitchell’s bestselling novel, presents a disputedversion of antebellum Southern life populated by happy slaves. Like manyHollywood movies from before the 1970s, the tone is curiously Confederate.
As noted in Steve Wilson’s The Making of Gone With the Wind(University of Texas Press), the controversy already began before the camerasstarted to roll. Producer David O. Selznik was receiving protest letters asearly as 1936, accusing Mitchell’s novel of being anti-black, pro-Klan—a storythe Nazis cold enjoy with no discomfort. Selznik’s office prepared a formletter in response, and the producer communicated directly with NAACP andJewish leaders, assuring them that the film would not be another Birth of aNation.
Like a good Hollywood producer of the era, Selznik wanted tooffend no one and make everyone happy. Despite the ongoing ripples ofcriticism, he came close to achieving his goal. By any measure, Gone With theWind was one of the great box office successes of all time and continues toshape the popular imagination of the South and the Civil War.
Wilson’s book is informative on all aspects of Gone With theWind’s production. As curator of the University of Texas at Austin’s filmcollection, he also has an eye for artifacts and collects excellent images forthis beautifully produced coffee table book. Along with photographs of thestars, stills, production shots and reproductions of call sheets, memos andother paperwork are full-color painted and drawn storyboards—vividlyImpressionistic sketches for scenes that would be etched in memory on film. Theburning of Atlanta never looked more gorgeous.
As Turner Classic Movie’s Robert Osborne points out in hisforward, Selznik was determined to “get everything right.” Gone With the Windwas a prestige project of the first order and the producer spared no expense.The result is a classic that probably endures more for its story of eroticattraction between incompatible protagonists than its account of Americanhistory.
