Getting 'Gone' on the big screen once again

It was to be the grandest of the grand, a landmark motion picture so perfectly realized that it would cast a giant shadow over the sweep of film history.

Producer David O. Selznick wanted the screen adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" writ as large as could be in the public mind. More, he wanted a movie that would look as "absolutely modern" in the future as it would in 1939.

Selznick, as legendary for his obsessiveness and chronic disorganization as for his spendthrift ways, had filmmaking in his bones. He knew precisely how to get what he wanted. Money was no object. The fact that he "stole" the rights to the book in 1936 for a mere $50,000, a comparatively modest sum even then, didn't stop him from lavishing a mammoth budget on the production, one of the largest and most elaborate film shoots before or since.

The question enthralling Hollywood was, "Can he pull it off?"

In those days, the cost of a top-of-the-line "A" movie — costume epics such as Selznick's own "David Copperfield" and "Prisoner of Zenda" — was $1.5 million. But the 37-year-old Selznick's vision for "GWTW" was that of "the longest picture ever made," bequeathing fervent audiences "as much of the book as it is endurable at one sitting." He did exactly that for a record-shattering $4,250,000.

Sixty-nine years on, it still casts that shadow — for length, innovation, technique, photography, impeccable casting and performance. In fact, for excellence in every department of the art of the film. Few movies can rival it for audience devotion, generation after generation. That it was achieved at the very apex of Hollywood's Golden Age — its Oscar competitors that year included "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "Stagecoach," "The Wizard of Oz" and "Wuthering Heights" — lends "GWTW" even greater luster.

All this despite early production problems, a host of different screenwriters, wrangling over historical accuracy and the usually unsettling crisis of a change in directors, Victor Fleming (Clark Gable's hunting buddy) being the fourth and final artist assigned to take the helm.

For the first time in an estimated 34 years — sources differ, and the 1998 big-screen reissue oddly failed to appear in Charleston — "Gone With The Wind" returns to the cinema for a one-week engagement Friday through June 19 at the Terrace Theater.

"We had wanted to run the movie and wondered how long it had been since it had been seen in a Charleston theater," says Terrace owner Mike Furlinger. "We consulted locally with Mark Tiedje and John Coles, who operate the historical Web site www.scmovietheatres.com, and they said they thought the last time was in 1974.

"Why play it now? Because in the next couple of years you will see the end of literal film — physical prints on reels — because theaters are going to digital (delivery). And real movie buffs want to see a film like 'Gone With the Wind' on real 35 mm film, not on DVD or some other digital means. Either prints won't be available in the years to come or there will be few theaters able to play them."

Apart from Friday's 2 p.m. premiere screening — frankly, my dear, already sold out — the opening night showing at 6:30 doubles as a benefit for the Gibbes Museum of Art, held in concert with the museum's current exhibition, "Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art." The screening will be preceded at 6 p.m. by live music from the Mark Sterbank Jazz Trio. Tickets are $25 for Gibbes members and $35 for nonmembers. All proceeds benefit education and outreach programs at the Gibbes.

For the remainder of the run, show times will be at 2 and 7:15 p.m.

The Gibbes' exhibit is a comprehensive exploration of plantation images in the American South that also contains original "GWTW" artifacts on loan from the Atlanta History Center.

By December 1940, "GWTW" had been playing in theaters for a full year, had captured a then-record 10 Oscars and had grossed $14 million. Box office is no real measure of artistic caliber, but if the income earned over the years by "GWTW" was adjusted for inflation, it would rank well ahead of "Star Wars" and a fraction behind "Titanic."

Selznick, who had micromanaged every decision, would be beaming. The romanticism and excesses of the movie matched his own. It was even he who wrote the prologue, of a "land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields," now vanished, of a "Civilization gone with the wind."

Let it blow back into your imagination.

Trivia

1. What actress holds the distinction of turning down the role of Scarlett O'Hara twice, even before Seiznick had purchased the rights?

2. What was Margaret Mitchell's answer when reporters asked her for her choice to play Rhett Butler?

3. How did MGM finally persuade Clark Gable to accept the part of Rhett Butler despite his reservations?

4. Early in the production, who said, 'It is really very miserable and going terribly slowly. I am such a fool to have done it.'

5. Before shooting, who complained the story was a 'terrible lot of nonsense. Heaven help me if I ever read the book.'

6. When the first director, George Cukor, was fired, he immediately accepted David Selznick's offer of another assignment starring four actresses who had vied for the role of Scarlett. What was the film?

7. Who did not get to say the following line upon Rhett's departure: 'He'll come back. Didn't I say that the last time? He'll do it again. I always know.'

8. Which principal player was present in Atlanta at the time of the film's debut, but chose not to attend?

9. How many lines of dialogue were in the film, and how many script scenes?

10. How many costumes do Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable wear?

Answers

1. Bette Davis walked out on her Warner Bros. contract just as they were considering buying the book for her. When asked to reconsider because 'they had bought a hot new novel called 'Gone With the Wind' for her, she declined. Later, when the studio wanted producer David O. Selznick as part of a package deal with Errol Flynn as Rhett, she nixed the idea because she thought the swashbuckling star was miscast.

2. Groucho Marx.

3. They paid the settlement his second wife demanded before she'd grant him divorce, freeing him to marry Carole Lombard.

4. Vivien Leigh.

5. Leslie Howard.

6. 'The Women,' a classic featuring Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Paulette Goddard and Joan Fontaine.

7. Mammy (Hattie McDaniel), when the producers opted instead for Scarlett's 'Tomorrow is another day.'

8. Director Victor Fleming, who boycotted the ceremonies because he felt Selznick was taking too much credit for the film's success.

9. There were 20,017 words of dialogue, 685 script scenes.

10. Leigh, 44; Gable, 36.

Reach Bill Thompson at bthompson@postandcourier.com or 937-5707.