originally published on the long-defunct mdgpundit.com 2014

extensively revised 2025

I turned the television to TCM on Saturday night. Gone with the Wind was about to begin, and I figured I’d watch the start of the movie, as I usually catch it in medias res, and, thus, have seen the end far more often than the beginning. Perhaps predictably, I stuck with the movie from overture to exit music, missing only a portion of the intermission music when I used the intermission for, well, its intended purpose.

Watching Gone with the Wind for its 238-minute running time, I was struck anew by how wonderful it is. I can count myself as a member of the last generation to have experienced the movie for the first time on the big screen, as, prior to 1976, it was never shown on television, and one had to depend upon theatrical re-releases to see it in its glorious entirety. My mother was a huge fan of the movie (she was fond of reading the grandiloquent titles aloud), and, so, when the final re-release rolled around in 1974, my parents deemed it important that I see it. I recall going with my mother to a matinee at the cinema on Beverly Drive and Wilshire Boulevard (which has long been gone with the wind itself), fascinated by the notion of a movie with an intermission. I was so taken with the movie that I believe a trip to an also gone-with-the-wind Pickwick Books on Beverly Drive to purchase the novel ended the day’s festivities.

As there’s nearly four hours of it, each viewing of Gone with the Wind makes you aware of a different aspect of the movie. The one which struck me the most this time was that, in it, our young country (it was younger still when Margaret Mitchell’s novel was first published in 1936) has one of its true epics. In school, when we first learned about epics in general, M. Girard, our teacher, argued that the Western was the American national epic, and, while I don’t disagree with the premise, Gone with the Wind constructs a national mythology of its own. It certainly is the epic of the Old South, but it’s also a national epic: the Yankees may be the bad guys in the story, but the struggles and indomitable courage of Scarlett O’Hara are a glorification of a uniquely American spirit, regardless of the character’s Southern belle trappings. The enormous success of the book and movie throughout the country proves that beyond any imaginable doubt.

A curiosity is that the Gone with the Wind that is perhaps one of the foremost American epics isn’t Margaret Mitchell’s novel, but, rather, the 1939 movie. Millions and millions more have seen the movie than have read the excellent book with its definite nods to Tolstoy and other masters of the historical novel. The movie itself is mythological in length and the myth was reinforced by its having been kept off of television for so long. To younger Americans with access to TCM and home video, that aspect of the movie’s cachet is, of course, lost, but, until recently, there was something definitely unique about Gone with the Wind.

If the movie is to be read as an epic, it does so with the anomaly of having an epic heroine in place of an epic hero such as was typical of the Old World texts that it emulates. Scarlett O’Hara embodies both the heart of the Old South and the indomitable American spirit. She’s Odysseus or Aeneas, the protagonist and survivor of a series of adventures, which (just as in Virgil) define the bedrock of a civilization, with Tara (or, rather, Tara Regained) filling in for Rome. Yes, the last line of the movie is “tomorrow is another day,” but the last image of the movie is Scarlett overlooking the rebuilt Tara, and the last thing we hear is a triumphant restatement of Max Steiner’s immortal Tara theme.

When I first saw the movie, I was duly caught up in the romance of the Old South as bottled by those grandiloquent titles my mother used to like to read. Older, and having developed a political conscience, I must now admit to some unease with the way in which Gone with the Wind glorifies a society that was built with and on slave labor. The objective fact is that the O’Haras and the Wilkses are morally reprehensible people who deserve to be reviled rather than glorified. Philosopher Ashley does say in the second half of the movie that he would have freed his slaves upon his father’s death, but, certainly, Scarlett shows no remorse with regard to forced labor even in the Reconstruction era when she engages convicts to work at her lumber mill.

Given that Scarlett O’Hara is one of America’s greatest epic figures, it is curious that her portrayal onscreen should be as unsatisfactory as it is. Yes, I am going to criticize Vivien Leigh. Her performance’s sacrosanct status was no doubt confirmed by her having been awarded that year’s Best Actress Oscar. TCM showed Dark Victory and Love Affair following Gone with the Wind, allowing me to consider the other nominees in the category. Dark Victory is, I’m afraid, rather tedious (I fell asleep halfway through, although I was sure to wake up in time for Love Affair), and, despite some fine moments, Bette Davis did better work elsewhere. I am a fan of Love Affair, however, but, while charming, Irene Dunne’s performance is hardly the stuff of immortality. Were I a member of the Academy in 1939, I might have voted for Greer Garson’s brief but enchanting turn in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, were it not that the last Best Actress nominee in that annus mirabilis was Garbo for Ninotchka. I find it preposterous that Vivien Leigh received the Oscar over one of the greatest performances by one of the screen’s greatest actresses. In Ninotchka, Garbo transcends even her own considerable self, and really and truly acts; as Scarlett, Leigh poses, preens, and never really gets to the heart of the matter.

The near-epic search for a screen Scarlett is well documented, and, with every female star in Hollywood at his disposal, Selznick chose not to choose, and brought in a virtual unknown to fill what may have been the most coveted role in the history of the American cinema. And therein lay his mistake: Americancinema, American epic…and a British actress?? Scarlet O’Hara is the very heart and soul of the Old South, and, on a larger scale, the very heart and soul of the American spirit, and, bottom line, only an American actress could truly fathom and embody the role. The fascinating tests made by Paulette Goddard have acquired some currency, and show what would have been a much tougher, less sympathetic Scarlett, closer to the character depicted in Mitchell’s novel. Goddard, one feels, would have stressed Scarlett-as-survivor rather than Scarlett-as-Southern-belle. Leigh is too preoccupied with being a lady, while Scarlett is in reality a hard-drinking murderess.

TCM’s Star of the Month for January was Joan Crawford, and I sat up into the wee hours last Thursday watching her painful last movies. I thus had her in my mind’s eye watching Gone with the Wind two nights later, and I found myself wondering whether Crawford would have made a better Scarlett than Leigh. True, at 35, Crawford was simply too old to play the young Scarlet of the movie’s first three-quarters of an hour, but thereinafter she’d have given the kind of no-nonsense, strong but subtle performance she could give when afforded a role worthy of her considerable talents.

Looking at the rest of the Oscars for 1939, I still can’t believe that Robert Donat walked away with the Best Actor statuette. Goodbye, Mr. Chips is certainly an enjoyable movie; perhaps the make-up and playing Chips over a 50-year period are what impressed Academy voters. As a result, Olivier’s potently sexy Heathcliff was snubbed, along with Mickey Rooney in Babes in Arms, although, there, the mystery is how he got nominated in the first place. Also snubbed was Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and, to my mind infamously, Gable’s Rhett Butler. The fact is, however, that Gable’s performance makes Gone with the Wind: he doesn’t even attempt a Southern accent and was allegedly half-drunk throughout shooting, but he simply is Rhett Butler.

Perhaps the biggest oddity about Gone with the Wind is that one of its five leading performances should be so catastrophically wrong. Leslie Howard’s woeful miscasting as Ashley doesn’t sink the movie, but it does make nonsense of two absolutely key plot elements. The first is Scarlett’s infatuation with Ashley: how on Earth could anyone harbor a decades-long love for this middle-aged milksop with a receding hairline when she has Clark Gable at her feet? Howard is, simply, not attractive, in what, when you think about it, is the movie’s glamour role. Ashley also represents all that was “honorable” in the Old South, and maintains its ideals (minus the slavery) into Reconstruction. Perhaps someone thought that lofty ideals would sound loftier when presented in a British accent; rather than lofty, Howard simply sounds lost, and, when he preaches honor and grace, he’s sounds as though he’s talking about manners at afternoon tea. As with Leigh, the idea of casting a non-American in a part that personifies a completely American (and, in Ashley’s case, Confederate) ideology is ridiculous.

I read somewhere (I no longer remember where) that the role had originally been intended for Robert Taylor. Se non è vero, è ben trovato. This time through the movie, I made a mental effort to imagine Taylor in place of Howard’s frankly terrible performance (small wonder that he was the only principal not to have been nominated for an Oscar), and the results were interesting. Taylor would obviously have looked spectacular, and his Apollonian beauty would have made a perfect contrast to Gable’s more Dionysian looks. Taylor’s beauty have befitted the angelic idealist in Ashley, and would in and of itself have explained Scarlett’s infatuation with him. (Just imagine how he’d have looked in the uniform. QED.) He’d probably have worked on a Southern accent, and, I believe, would have given a performance which would have settled the question Howard’s impossibly wishy-washy performance leaves unanswered: does he really love Scarlett? The great ironic twist of the movie is that he doesn’t, but Scarlet learns it too late. Howard is so weak that, even when he finally reveals himself, it doesn’t ring true. Taylor’s innate decency would have shown that Ashley and Melanie belong together—and that Scarlett harbors a tragic delusion for nearly four hours. Not seeing that coming (as is the case in the book) would have made for more effective storytelling.

One can see why Taylor ultimately rejected the role, assuming it had been offered to him in the first place. He most probably didn’t want to fall into the trap into which Robert Montgomery and Franchot Tone fell, that of playing second banana to Gable, and as a result not getting the girl (who was Joan Crawford more often than not.) Taylor was rapidly emerging as MGM’s new leading man and had been put over the top as a sex symbol by his performance in A Yank Goes to Oxford the year before. Even in the most lavish movie ever made, Ashley was still a second lead, and, by 1939, Taylor was too important an actor with too much of a reputation to uphold to assume the role.

Some of the Goddard tests were made with another possible Ashley, the indubitably handsome Jeffrey Lynn. Lynn would have definitely been preferable to Howard, with youth, looks, and the ability to appear Southern on his side, but producer Selznick took a dislike to Lynn, who, unlike Taylor, would have jumped at the role had it been offered to him.

Although Howard wasn’t nominated for Best Supporting Actor, two actresses from Gone with the Wind were nominated for Best Supporting Actress: Olivia de Havilland and Hattie McDaniel. Although the other nominees included Maria Ouspenskaya for her transcendent turn in Love Affair, the Oscar went to Hattie McDaniel’s pretty much perfect portrayal of Mammy. If she plays up the stereotypes of the time, and even stoops to a few elements of shtick, she nonetheless becomes the character in a way which is beyond unforgettable. Her utterances are inimitable and yet quotable: I often speak of a “bilin’ pot” when making chicken soup, and “I ain’t never seen hair that color in my life” and “it ain’t fittin’, it just ain’t fittin’” have become part of our American lexicon. McDaniel never leaves us in doubt that, although a slave, Mammy is wiser and simply worth more than either Scarlett or Rhett. Were Gone with the Wind one of the Old World epics, McDaniel’s Mammy would be some combination of Minerva and Erda She personifies Tara’s conscience, and has a goddess-like way of knowing more than everyone else. The movie is unthinkable without her.

McDaniel’s well deserved and ground-breaking Oscar frequently eclipses the fact that De Havilland was nominated as well. Her Melanie has long been the object of derision: Carol Burnett’s pushing Dinah Shore’s head into the punch bowl because the latter needed more sugar shows how De Havilland is often dismissed as a simpering goody-goody. Although that’s precisely how Scarlett describes her, recall that Mammy, not Scarlett, is the moral arbiter of the movie. On my recent viewing of the film, I realized more than ever before just how wonderful De Havilland really is. Good is much harder to play than bad, as it affords so little to sink thespian teeth into, and fewer easy moments on which to hang an interpretation. Melanie is the complete and nearly divine embodiment of goodness and generosity, and De Havilland communicates that without being cloying. That’s quite a feat of good acting.

The greatest acting in Gone with the Wind comes towards the end of the movie, when Mammy calls in Melanie to intercede with the mad-from-grief Rhett following the death of Bonnie. McDaniel describing Rhett’s near-insanity in a long take as she ascends the stairs with De Havilland probably won her the Oscar It’s some of the finest acting ever captured on film. Although it didn’t win her an Oscar (and it doesn’t quite trump McDaniel’s ace), De Havilland’s short scene with McDaniel after she’s talked to Rhett is also a masterpiece of simplicity and sincerity, and makes Melanie’s goodness heartbreaking even before she faints.

The movie also benefits from a flawless supporting cast. Everyone has their favorites, and mine start with Laura Hope Crews’ deliciously scene-stealing Aunt Pittypat. (“Yankees in Georgia? How did they ever get in?” was a line oft-quoted in my family.) The supporting performance of true greatness, though, comes from Ona Munson as Belle Watling. Selznick had apparently announced Mae West for the role as a publicity stunt, and it had been offered to Tallulah Bankhead, who rejected it. (That’s if Wikipedia is to be believed.) He lucked out with Munson, who plays the “dyed-hair woman” (as Mammy describes Belle) with a straightforward sincerity even more heartbreaking than that which De Havilland brings to her role. Although Munson’s Belle clearly doesn’t mind doing what she does professionally, she also communicates a poignant ache to be accepted by society. Belle is every bit as good and generous as Melanie, and Melanie acknowledges it (after Mammy’s scene on the stairs, I find the scene between Munson and De Havilland in the former’s carriage to be the most moving scene in the movie), but Belle knows that her fate is to be marginalized by “polite” society.

(Raving about Ona Munson requires mention of her mind-blowing performance—and coiffure—in a totally insane Josef von Sternberg movie, The Shanghai Gesture. It’s on YouTube several times over and well worth seeking out.)

Gone with the Wind is perhaps an unlikely national epic, but we’re a young country that is still sorting out its mythology. There’s no doubt in my mind, however, that the historicized adventures of Scarlett O’Hara will always be part of that mythology. Leigh (no matter what I think), Gable, De Havilland, McDaniel and Munson gave performances which are the stuff of myth, and the movie is one of the greatest ever to have been made. Perhaps the best testament to Gone with the Wind’s greatness is my experience last Saturday: I’d planned to watch just a bit of the movie, and the next thing I knew, it was four hours later.