GONE WITH THE WIND is 82 Today

I ran this post eight years ago, in 2011. How time flies!

As rumours seem to continue about a possible remake of the movie (starring Hugh Jackman is Rhett Butler, Yum!!), the interest in Gone With The Wind continues. –t.

Gone With The Wind, a romance movie staple, is 74 years old today.  How long since you watched it and sighed over the dresses and Scarlett’s pertness?

Actually, I love the movie for the dresses and I love reading the book for the sheer detail and fascination of watching Rhett Butler dash himself to pieces over Scarlett’s self-centered blindness, which shows up so much better in the book than it does on film.

There are a number of biographies about the stars of the movie out there, but have you ever read a biography about the making of the film?  I have…and it’s fascinating!  The casting and the making of Gone with the Wind was an epic of its own.  There were a number of occasions where the film nearly didn’t happen, or where the major cast members were going to be someone else entirely.  Then there were the scandals and stories that took place during filming.  For instance, Vivien Leigh was at that time having her still-secret and yet to be infamous affair with Laurence Olivier, while Clark Gable went through a messy divorce and married Carole Lombard in a quick civil wedding in Nevada, to the delight of the media.  (Carole Lombard died only four years later in a war-time air crash.)

Gone With The Wind won rave awards at the time, and has since been criticised for its lack of attention to real war time issues, such as the Klu Klux Klan, etc., but if you treat the movie simply as a lovely romantic escapade, it can’t be topped.

Why not blow the dust off your CD copy for its birthday?

Tracy