What are some flaws with 'Gone With the Wind' the movie?

Ashley is not fuckable.

Not sure. Better send the Age Of Innocence purists over to this thread to trash this film too.

False depiction of history

That's not fair R3. It was adaptation and it was done in the 30s.

When Scarlett's mother says in front of the family that Jonas Wilkerson is the father of Emmie Slattery's illegitimate child. A woman of her class would have never spoken of such things in the presence of her unmarried daughters!

Do you mean historical anachronisms, OP, or other kinds of flaws?

Leslie Howard is miscast as Ashley, both in terms of age (he should only be a few years older than Scarlett, not over a decade older) and in terms of temperament (he should at least be a viable alternative to Rhett, but he's such a milquetoast that you don't understand why Scarlett pines for him).

The film becomes too rushed in the last 30 minutes or so, trying to hit all the major narrative bumps before coming to an end; the first half of the film is much better than the second half.

Oh, and racism.

They left out the rapture-under-the-magnolias scenes -- I wanted to see Uncle Peter slamming into Aunt Pitty-Pat while that rooster said, "cocka-doodle-do!"

The screenplay betrays the central conundrum of the Rhett and Scarlett relationship by, within the first hour of the film, having Rhett tell Scarlett he loves her.

Rhett knows he never can tell her that because she's "cruel" and takes the love others have for her and "holds it over their head like a whip." Scarlett, stubborn and bullheaded, ignores her own intuition that tells her she loves Rhett instead of Ashley.

Rhett, in the novel's final chapter, alludes to this dilemma after both come clean about their love for each other by saying to her that they've always been at "cross purposes" and now, it's of no use to try and stay together. Then, of course, he leaves her.

As for the racism, I think GWTW should be required reading in high school exactly because Margaret Mitchell approvingly describes the cruel attitudes that reinforced slavery and by doing so, she provides the reasons why race relations in the US are still, in 2014, the central, unresolved issue of our time.

Interesting observation Della.

In one scene, Scarlett asks one of her former slaves walking down the road where he's going and he tells her, "yes, Miz Scarlett, we be fighting for the South!" Why would slaves fight for a system that enslaved them?

[quote]Leslie Howard is miscast as Ashley, both in terms of age (he should only be a few years older than Scarlett, not over a decade older) and in terms of temperament (he should at least be a viable alternative to Rhett, but he's such a milquetoast that you don't understand why Scarlett pines for him).[/quote]

I was shocked to learn the actor was almost 50! He still looked good but any red-blooded women would have chosen Rhett in a heartbeat. They should have cast Gary Cooper who was in his prime.

I watched the movie before a read the book and was surprised at the casting of Leslie Howard. He must have has some kind of pay or play deal or something. Why else would he have been cast?

I don't think Leslie Howard was bad a choice. Sure, he wasn't all that hot, but Scarlett didn't think about things like that. She thought about Southern charm, society, gentility, and breeding, not fucking him. After all this is the woman who was willing to give up sex to keep her figure.

Howard was too old, but other that that he was her perfect catch, and he was brilliant as the complete opposite of Gable. To cast anyone with more sex appeal or personality in that role would have muddied the water. The last thing they wanted was half the women in the audience thinking "good, frankly I don't give a damn either--now she's free to catch that hunk Ashley."

The one who bothers me is Ward Bond as the Yankee Captain. He kills every scene he's in, and you keep wondering what John Ford picture they borrowed him from.

I just wish that Jane Darwell and Hattie McDaniel could have had a scene together. Those two sniping at each other would have been fantastic.

Scarlett O'Hara goes from lightning rod to curtain rod in a single hour of bad draping.

[R5] Wrong! Ellen does not discuss the illegitimate child in front of the girls. She speaks to Mr. O'Hara privately. When he wishes to discuss it further she says that they will talk about it later. After that, the girls come downstairs and no mention is made to the girls about Emmy Slattery.

r11 I agree. That scene was pure fantasy. Or the scene where mammy is visibly pissed at the presence of the newly free black men in the streets. She even has them move so Scarlett can walk through. Even the worst black self hater in the 19th century didn't do these things.

Actually, the book makes it clear that the slaves didn't fight for the South, but they were used to dig the defensive trenches and other fortifications used by the Confederate troops during the final battle.

He says that line in the book, and it confuses Scarlett for a second until she realizes what they're really marching him off to do.

The biggest flaw is the casting of Bonnie Bell. The child actress is so obnoxious and whiny that everyone wants to laugh or applaud (or both) when she tumbles off the horse.

the slaves aren't as pretty as Lupita

Prissy actually was a midwife and the movie made her look like a darkie simpleton.

No idea what you're talking about, R21. Prissy is as silly and incompetent in the book as she is in the movie. Her line, "I don't know nuthin' about birthin' no babies" comes straight from the book.

The biggest flaw in the movie is that the second half proceeds too quickly and eliminates too much of the story. Even at nearly four hours, the movie is still too short to do full justice to the novel. It would be neat to see an eight-to-ten-hour TV mini-series if it were done properly.

I agree there's a problem with the ending of the movie. Rhett's a basket case in one scene, and his charming old self the next -- presumably within days after Bonnie's death. The story just seems chopped off.

R19. "Whah's mah pony? Ahh wanna go see MAH PONY!"

R22. I was kidding. :).

Love this movie, always have. The BIGGEST flaw for me was when Metro decided to blow this up to 70mm in 1967. Even though the reissue was a success, the 70mm didn't work for that original screen ratio. Heads were cut off in some scenes, particularly Gable. And the picture was too grainy and the stereo conversion was muddy. The next reissue wisely went back for the standard framing ratio.

In high def you can really see the poor little stunt midget go shooting off that horse.

Melanie's pregnancy lasted a lot longer than nine months.

What do you mean, r28? It lasted from December 1863 to September 1864.

True R27!! Lol

Ashley -- in the book he was very handsome and maybe 5 to 7 years older than Scarlett. Leslie Howard didn't even attempt a Southern accent and his British accent sometimes broke through.

I expected him to begin talking about the heather and the moors when he waxed on about the Old South.

Scarlett restores her plantation, but what happens to the Wilkes plantation? Is it discussed in the book? Do they keep it?

"In one scene, Scarlett asks one of her former slaves walking down the road where he's going and he tells her, "yes, Miz Scarlett, we be fighting for the South!" Why would slaves fight for a system that enslaved them? "

I'm sure that slaves of that time were used to telling the white people whatever they wanted to hear, and the smarter white people knew when they were being bullshitted. Not that the self-absorbed Scarlett would pay any attention to such things, I just wish the movie had shown a slave showing some honest emotion, but the fiilmmakers did pander to white southerners.

The exception to that is Mammy, I can believe a person could behave that way. Senior servants to the aristocracy can get so used to bossing their peers around that they come to think of themselves as honorary members of the upper class. Mammy the bigger-snob-than-her-masters seems to be such a person.

It's too long for a start.

Me too R26. Wouldn't it be something if we were there the same day. I was 15.

The casting of Leslie Howard was the biggest mistake of the film. At the beginning of the novel Scarlett is 16. The Tarleton twins are 19. Ashley is around that same age, maybe 19 or 20. Howard was decades older than the character.

Of course, the book is much different from the novel. Many interesting characters are left out: Honey Wilkes, Wade Hampton Hamilton, Ella Kennedy, Will Benteen, Grandma Fontaine, Archie.

In the book, when Scarlett and Mammy come back to Atlanta, the town is full of insolent freed slaves; Mammy has distain for them and makes them get out of their way. That was totally in character for her; Mammy took no guff from anybody.

I believe the line in the novel was "digging holes for the white gentlemen to hide in". I doubt if that was a subtle dig though.

Leslie Howard would've been perfect if he'd been the age he was during Petrified Forest.

I dispute your statement that Wade Hamilton and Ella Kennedy are interesting characters, r36! I actually think the depiction of them may be one of the only flaws in Mitchell's otherwise staggeringly great novel (well, putting aside the racist worldview, if you regard that as a flaw).

In that scene where Melanie and Scarlett are tending to wounded soldiers, their shadows are seen enlarged on the wall behind them to help create a sombre affect. However, it is obvious the shadows are created by different actresses because the movements do not follow the movements of Leigh and OdH.

It should have had more of Scarlett yelling at people and slapping the shit out of anyone who got in her way or disagreed with her. It always makes me laugh when anyone goes on and on about how romantic it is when the real interest in the movie lies in Scarlett's ferocious drive.

No Will Benteen first of all, great character, No Dilcy either. They gave Mamie will and Dilcy's good lines.Pork was much more sophisticated in the book. And they didn't include the Fontaines.

The novel had 500 pages to show why Ashley was wrong for Scarlett. It would have been a disastrous move to cast someone as hot and sexy as say, Joel McCrea in the role.

I saw GWTW in a cinema recently and the audience response was amazing- many people were seeing it for the first time. There was a round of applause at "I'll never be hungry again" and "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" (And this is Australia, where audience reaction/participation, compared to the US, is basically nil).

The set design/decoration is never used to make points about the characters. In the novel Mitchell frequently uses decor for characterization.

The character development of the Tarleton Twins is non-existent.

[quote] the fiilmmakers did pander to white southerners.

The film was set in the south. It was not made to please Southern audiences.

Moreover, there were black soldiers who fought for the confederacy or otherwise worked for the confederate army, so that's not actually an inaccuracy in and of itself.

[quote]Prissy actually was a midwife and the movie made her look like a darkie simpleton.

Prissy's mother, Dilcey, was the midwife. Prissy was just an idiot.

Twelve Oaks was burned to the ground in the novel and never mentioned again. I assume it was seized by the government for unpaid taxes.

I also agree with the point that Butler revealing his feelings for Scarlett early on was a mistake.

Another flaw... I thought they went matte painting crazy. Some of the sets looks incredibly fake even for the standards of the day. Esp. that illustration that was supposed to represent the exterior of Scarlett and Rhett's horrible house in Atlanta.

Huh. I thought the mattes were great!

Horrible inaccurate and racist view of slavery. After "12 years a slave" I'll never watch GWTW again.

So are we supposed to assume that Rhett raped Scarlet the night he carried her up he stairs and the next morning she was smiling and singing to herself in joy. WTF would a woman author right that kind of shit. Even in those days I'm sure rape wasn't fun, at least for the woman.

There is some bad "looping" when a character is heard speaking a line but their mouth is not moving. Always annoys me to see.

Umm, the entire movie?

r44 - No, the movie used both sets and costumes for characterization. Note the difference between Scarlett's bedroom in Tara and Mrs. Rhett Butler's room. See the dresses Scarlett wears at different points in her life - esp. the business-like dresses during Frank's marriage.

r46 - You are correct. It was not made to pander to white Southerners. David O. Selznick took out references to the Klan in the shanty town raid. Big Sam's description of a trench was a dig in my opinion. Moreover, the whole movie (& book) ridiculed the Lost Cause mythology.

r50 - If you read the slave narratives, you realize that slavery varied by slave owner. Some slave owners were more or less dominated by their slaves, in much the same way Uncle Peter ran the Hamilton household. In Virginia, freeing slaves was common because tobacco farming became less profitable. In Northern Georgia, where Mitchell was raised, most holders had few slaves and worked along with them in the fields.

Not to excuse Mitchell, who knew exactly what happened in the large plantations in S. Carolina or Mississippi.

r51 - I don't understand this either because Mitchell was raped by her first husband - ended up a week in the hospital. In the novel, it is implied that Scarlett experienced her first orgasm that night - surrender and all that.

"Moreover, the whole movie (& book) ridiculed the Lost Cause mythology."

Oh, you mean like in the "There was a land of cavaliers and cotton fields" written prologue in the movie?

I've always thought that prologue was a stupid touch that was totally against the spirit of Mitchell's novel.

I thought the book vacillated between ridiculing and romanticising the "Lost Cause" mythology. The movie was more straightforward. And there was less Klan rah-rah-rah-ing.

r55 - I forgot about the prologue. You're right.

r56 - Rhett's speeches make clear that the Confederacy deserved what it got, having started a fight it couldn't win. Both at the barbecue and - in a very powerful scene - waiting for the casualty lists from Gettysburg But, you are right, it did vacillate because he joined up after Atlanta burned and went back to Charleston at the end.

In the beginning, Scarlett is 16 (she ages through 28 years old at the end) and Ashley is 18. In real life, he was 48 and she was 25 when it was filmed in 1939.

The chapter in the book about the Tarleton Twins and their gay, incestuous love was stirring. It was a real flaw that they left that out.

A bit of overacting.

It's cartoonish depiction of blacks and slavery.

A woman in the mid-1800s made up like a common whore.

When I said that Selznick "pandered to white southerners", I did not mean that he was making a film exclusively for them, I meant that he took pains to avoid offending them.

He did want to sell tickets in the Jim Crow South and lots of them, so he toed the pro-slavery racist tone of the book. It made economic sense to do so, as few white people of the time objected, and black movie-goers weren't enough of an economic force to be considered, but it's still disappointing. Would ONE black character objecting to being enslaved have been too much to ask?

r62, I think you're sort of asking Selznick for the impossible. I think it was less that he was pandering to white Southerners and more that he was pandering to (to spin it negatively), or honoring (to spin it positively), those who had enthusiastically and passionately loved the book, whose numbers were obviously (judging by the sales figures) legion. The only significant ways he was willing to change anything was just the unavoidable task of cutting characters and events because they couldn't fit in a four hour running time; he wasn't interested in taking the most popular novel of all time and making the major tonal shift you're advocating for.

Because I think a major tonal shift is what it would have to have been. Clearly the movie, like the book, implicitly acknowledges that lots of the African-Americans at Tara objected to being enslaved, since out of however many dozens of slaves the O'Haras had, all but three flee their enslavement when given the opportunity by the arrival of the Union forces. But if what you're asking for is for Scarlett to have had to ENGAGE with a black character's objections to being enslaved - for one of the black characters she had a relationship with to confront her with what the experience of enslavement was really like from the other side - I think you're asking for a different piece than the one Selznick was adapting.

I'm not saying your request is not a good one, nor am I denying that both book and movie operate from a racist worldview - I'm just saying your request is more one for Mitchell than for Selznick.

Clark Gable talks like a Yankee.

Gable and Howard refusing to do Southern accents is a big flaw.

As brilliant as VL I see her as being the same age entire movie. Also Rhett says the war changed her but to me she was always the same she would stop at nothing to get what she wants...

[quote]Scarlett O'Hara goes from lightning rod to curtain rod in a single hour of bad draping.

She just HAD to have it!

Ona Munson deserved the Academy Award for best supporting actress. That she wasn't even nominated showed the depth of homophobia in Hollywood.

I read once that a scene they were worried about was the one at the bridge when Big Sam has the audacity to just jump up into Scarlett's buggy and sit down on the seat next to her. Mighty uppity.

I'll admit I watch that scene and ponder just how bad his BO must be after living in the woods during an Atlanta summer.

LOL R69

That beautiful red gown she wore to Ashley's birthday party! That scene, for shots of that dress alone, should have been a bit longer.

I wonder if the 70mm prints are stored in some vault somewhere or if MGM destroyed them?

True R48 That scene showing guests arriving at the Wilkes plantation for the barbecue still bothers me. One man on a horse just disappears into thin air as he rides through the gate. Another bad match. Ashley and Melanie running towards each other when he comes home from the war.

What happened to all her kids she had from the book. She had one with her child-husband and one or two with Frank? If I recall she wasn't that great a mother.

[quote]If they wanted to include everything from the book, they would have needed at least three movies.

Say, there's an idea. Does New Zealand look anything like Georgia?

"What happened to all her kids she had from the book. She had one with her child-husband and one or two with Frank?"

They were expendable, both in story terms and to Scarlett herself. She never gave a crap about them, all they did was make her look bad, because yes, she was a terrible mother to them.

And their absence gives the Bonnie Blue episode more impact.

[quote]In the beginning, Scarlett is 16 (she ages through 28 years old at the end)

The title should have been La Vie de Scarlett.

I disagree that Hecht was wise to add that prologue, r80, because it first nostalgically lionizes the Old South with "Here in this pretty world gallantry took its last bow" as "Dixie" is played slowly and wistfully on a violin, and then immediately follows that with "Here was the last ever to be seen of knights and their ladies fair. Of master and of slave."... which is a jarring note because suddenly it prompts a reaction of "Yes, and wasn't it GOOD that that was the last of master and slave? Isn't that something to be glad about instead of associated with wistful nostalgia for prettiness and gallantry?"

I just feel there's no need for an editorial commentary at the beginning, and especially not one that forces you to confront a depth of ambiguity about the characters and society about to be depicted that the movie is not prepared to fully deal with.

It's a movie people.

It is a classic of it's time.

Times have changed but as a MOVIE it stands up.

[quote]Of master and of slave."... which is a jarring note because suddenly it prompts a reaction of "Yes, and wasn't it GOOD that that was the last of master and slave?

Maybe in 2014 that's a given, but at the time this movie was released, large parts of the country would have disagreed with that statement.

I've always found it odd that GWTW and other movies like Song of the South are vilified for the way they portray Blacks, but Westerns get a free pass when it comes to Native Americans.

The casting of Oivia de Havilland. The way she delivers her lines in that breathy, saccharine way makes you cringe. She ruins every scene she's in.

I only liked her in "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte", when she played herself.

True, in many ways Leslie Howard is miscast, except that he's perfect.

Ashley is gayer than Richard Simmons' glitter farts.

I TOLE YOU I'S GWAN, AND GWAN I IS!

[quote]The way she delivers her lines in that breathy, saccharine way makes you cringe.

It's better than the vocal fry we keep hearing today.

The portrayal of the KKK as the saviors of white women from "them" played too heavily to Confederate and racist apologists. Of course it was the only way to soften, humanize and explain the behavior of the characters who take the ride (and make a widow of Scarlett, again), but even in 1939 such treatment was disgusting.

Also, in a related if tangential way, it was a flaw of Margaret Mitchell not to look both ways before crossing a street.

I watched it the other day on TCM, and what struck me was how the movie spent almost no time or dialogue explaining anything.

They talked about the shelling of Fort Sumter and the Southern States seceding from The Union in passing during the BBQ, and then there were references to the naval blockade, the death rolls from an unnamed battle in Pennsylvania, and the final siege of Atlanta, but probably no more than two dozen lines of dialogue covered slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction.

Just imagine how a modern film maker like Spielberg would feel the need to spoon feed us all that information. Although I guess you don't need to imagine--just sit through Lincoln.

They do specify that that scene of casualty lists is from Gettysburg, r91 - the scene leading into it ends with Rhett saying the battle is going on in "some little town in Pennsylvania - called Gettysburg".

But I think your general point is a good one.

Get your full line of sassy GWTW merchandise here!

"It ain't fittin'.....it jest ain't fittin'"

I too must take issue with the casting of Miss Ashley Mc'Fussyboots.

If he was the hot twinkie he was supposed to be in the book PERHAPS it might have been interesting to see how the war aged and changed him - though I don't remember him taking any such personal journeys in the book. But then it's been decades since I read it.

Oh and, the whole point and underlying irony of the whole menage'a'trois, was that Scarlet didn't ever really want Ashley, she wanted to get HER WAY, and the more unavailable he became, the more determined she was to have him.

I blame Gerald.

Also I don't remember either book or movie ever ridiculing or even condemning slavery, the attitudes of people living in the '30s (Very much still Jim Crow in the south,) Rhett's objections were solely based on the silliness of the agrarian south (noble though it was) going to war with the industrial (populous) north - if he ever once condemned slavery I don't remember it.

I don't see why we must of necessity assume that the people who made the mover were all that sensitive about accuracy concerning slavery or what Black Americans might actually think about the subject. How much of America was an Apartheid state in 1939?

It wasn't rape-rape, r51.

r51, you just don't understand women.

Ashley is exactly the kind of man that Scarlett was raised to think that she wanted. Rhett was the man she needed. In terms of the movie, Leslie is the perfect contrast to Gable.

I think that the war did change Scarlett. Her illusions where smashed and she coupled her self-centeredness with ruthlessness.

Of course the most interesting relationship is the one between Scarlett and Melanie - two women with iron wills who express it in different ways

[quote]I only liked her in "Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte", when she played herself

Have you seen "Lady in a Cage"? It's a fabulous Livvie De Havilland camp fest - plus you get Ann Sothern, James Caan and Scatman Crothers as a bonus.

Joan Fontaine at R85.

Olivia was great. One only has to look at the other Melanie screen-tests to see how great she was. The others are simpering, eyebrow-fluttering, mealy-mouthed ninnies. She understands the role - and plays it - perfectly.

Leigh did a wonderful job conveying Scarlett's growing respect, admiration and ultimately love for Melanie.

Clark Gable's breath.

When I was a kid and first saw this, I thought Melanie was a wet dishrag and could not stand her. Over the years, I was able to see how really strong that character was

[quote] I don't see why we must of necessity assume that the people who made the mover were all that sensitive about accuracy concerning slavery or what Black Americans might actually think about the subject. How much of America was an Apartheid state in 1939?

I have no idea how much it concerned him, but in 1939 there were hotels and clubs all across America that would have refused service to David O Selznick because he was Jewish, and he was certainly aware of the little dust-up going on in Europe. I don't think he gets a pass for anything in GWTH.

You know what always bothered me? Just how judgmental Belle Watling was even though she was A FUCKING WHORE!!!!! She sold her gash for $ and always thought she was better than some.

What is wrong with a whore?

The whole second half of the picture is a flaw. Jesus Christ, the last forty minutes is insane, with someone collapsing or dying in EVERY SCENE. It's worse than a soap opera, and Scarlett is really unappealing--at least in the first half you can sort of admire her spirit, and her will to live through things and recover, but the shit she pulls in the second half is so irritating and selfish it just makes her seem hateful. If it weren't for Gable bringing the sardonic humor, there'd be no watching it.

And really, the first half is technically impressive, but hardly a deep or searching work of art.

[quote]What are some flaws with 'Gone With the Wind' the movie?

tl;dw

True piece of trivia on the movie...

During the burning of Atlanta, the horse-cart they're riding in front of the collapsing wall of fire?

They burned the set of the King Kong movies, filmed a few years prior, to create the fire.

The final few scenes, between Bonnie's death & Melanie's....it seemed like it would have only been a day or two.

I would think that Rhett & Scarlett would still have been so prostrate with grief, it would have been a screamfest. Yet, there they both are, cool, calm & collected while sitting in Melanie's house, waiting for her to die.

Mitchell came from a Klan family. I know this firsthand as an exes' mother was related to her (either as a first or second cousin, his mom was a Mitchell) and his dad complained about going to Mitchell family reunions because the family was so heavily into the Klan. I haven't read the book since I was a kid but I'd be surprised to find Mitchell was in any way critical of the South. Certainly the movie doesn't play that way even with Rhett's speeches. He still proclaims himself a loyal southerner, when push comes to shove.

"I agree there's a problem with the ending of the movie. Rhett's a basket case in one scene, and his charming old self the next -- presumably within days after Bonnie's death. The story just seems chopped off."

You're not remembering it correctly. There is no scene after the death of Bonnie where Rhett returns to his "charming, old self."

I agree that the film works better if Ashley isn't hot/sexy in the same dynamic way that Rhett Butler is. That said, Howard is still horrendous casting for the part, because he's SO old and so unremittingly British that you never or a moment believe he's really the character. On the contrary, he comes across as some old British actor who's very uncomfortable in the role, which he himself stated. Apparently, he only accepted the role on the condition that Selznick would let him direct and star in INTERMEZZO.

In the boom shot above all the bodies in the street, there's a light bulb in a lantern. In the scene of two women praying, their long shadow on the wall is doing different things than the women.

[quote]Leslie Howard would've been perfect if he'd been the age he was during Petrified Forest.

PETRIFIED FOREST came out only 3 years before GWTW when Howard was 43, still 20 years too old for the part. As others have pointed out, Ashley is not much older than Scarlett who is 16 at the start of the novel.

Think about it, when Howard was Ashley's age (in 1913) it was still the Edwardian Era and women were still wearing floor-length skirts and corsets.

But not only was he too old, but he seemed bored. I think I read that he only took the part in exchange for doing another movie. He just sucks the energy out of every scene he's in.

In the movie Melanie just collapses and is next seen on her death bed. There's no explanation for her condition; she's just "dying." In the book Scarlett is in Marietta with Prissy and Wade and Ella when she gets a telegram from Rhett: "Mrs. Wilkes ill. Come home immediately." Leaving Prissy and Wade and Ella in a hotel, she rushes back to Atlanta on the next train. Rhett is in a carriage waiting for her and tells her that Melanie has had a miscarriage. Scarlett says the doctor told her having another baby would kill her. Rhett says "it has killed her." When they get to Melanie and Ashley's house, Rhett does not come in with Scarlett.

Melanie dies from medical complications that arose from a miscarriage. You couldn't say "miscarriage" in a movie back then. In the book before Scarlett falls down the stairs Rhett says to her "cheer up, maybe you'll have a miscarriage." In the movie he says "accident" in place of "miscarriage."

I always though Melanie's mystery death was a flaw in the movie. In the book it's revealed that she so wanted to have another baby that she convinced Ashley that it would be ok if they had sex, that the doctor was wrong and that everything would turn out alright. Melanie was quite an idiot. Because of her ridiculous desire to have another baby despite the doctor's warnings, she ended up dead.

[quote]In the movie Melanie just collapses and is next seen on her death bed. There's no explanation for her condition; she's just "dying."

That's the complaint I have about the 2012 LES MISERABLES movie and musical it's based on. The people who are not shot, mainly Fantine and Valjean, just die. There's no explanation given.

r115, I think it's clear enough that the movie wants you to assume that she's dying because of some sort of complications from the pregnancy.

There have been multiple previous references in the script to the extreme risk another pregnancy poses to Melanie's health. Dr. Meade says something to Scarlett during Melanie's first pregnancy about "She shouldn't even be having a baby", and then Scarlett references both to Ashley (in their post-war Tara kissing scene) and Rhett (in the scene where she denies him sex) that Melanie can't have any more children, or Dr. Meade says she can't have any more children. Then when Melanie reveals to Rhett towards the end that she's gonna have another baby, Rhett says, "No, Miss Melly, you mustn't risk it. It's too dangerous." (Side note - I always wondered - what does he expect her to do? Get an abortion? Wouldn't that have been even more dangerous? I remember the novel has a list of things advertised in the Atlanta newspaper and includes abortifacients, which sort of shocked my childhood self when I read it.)

Anyway, I think it's clear enough that you're supposed to read between the lines, as you always had to in films of that era when it came to sex or pregnancy, to infer that when a pregnant Melanie collapses and eventually dies, it's because of the pregnancy.

r104, Selznick actually wrote in a letter to Walter White, the executive secretary of the NAACP, "I feel so keenly about what is happening to the Jews of the world that I cannot help but sympathize with the Negroes and their fears, however unjustified they may be about material which they regard as insulting or damaging."

Clearly he had some concern about what African-Americans, and non-racist whites, would think, in that the screenplay did not include the book's use of the N-word and deleting the characters' membership in the Klan. But obviously it's fair to think he should have had more concern.

"The final few scenes, between Bonnie's death & Melanie's....it seemed like it would have only been a day or two.

I would think that Rhett & Scarlett would still have been so prostrate with grief, it would have been a screamfest. Yet, there they both are, cool, calm & collected while sitting in Melanie's house, waiting for her to die."

I agree, r110. This time compression was definitely a change for the worse (in the novel, I think months go by between the two events).

Interestingly, this also affects the question of "Did Scarlett ever get Rhett back?" The film has him leaving Scarlett just days after their child has died, and also portrays it as being prompted by Scarlett tearfully going to Ashley when she emerges from Melanie's deathbed, which prompts Rhett to walk out of the house. Both those things, I would say, tend to make his action of packing up and leaving her seem impulsive, and therefore something that you could conceive him changing his mind about when his emotions have settled down and he's had some time. (It was just a few days before, on the terrace immediately preceding Bonnie's death, that he was optimistically trying to convince Scarlett of ways to make their marriage work.)

I seem to remember in the book, though, his walking out seeming like much more of a deliberate thing, that he'd thought through and had a long time to come to a decision on... which therefore indicated it would be much more of an uphill climb (and possibly hopeless one) for her to conceivably win him back.

There's sort of a bleakness to the ending in the book, and to her final "Tomorrow is another day". The movie makes it triumphant with the booming "Tara's Theme" music (which I think was pretty much the right choice, and the only way that movie could have ended)... but the way I experienced the last two pages of this book was with an almost creepy (and therefore, very cool) ambiguity of "Is this woman a triumphal all-conquering survivor, or a pathetic and deluded figure?"

Rhett claimed to love Scarlett from the minute he laid eyes on her, told her he admired how much alike they were & how her strong will, deviousness & ruthlessness turned him on.

He even recommended they marry, even if they didn't love each other, as they were such kindred spirits.

After they're married, much later on in the movie & he wants a divorce, it's based 100% on the fact that she's a strong willed, devious & ruthless harpy.

"Melanie was quite an idiot. Because of her ridiculous desire to have another baby despite the doctor's warnings, she ended up dead. "

In the book, it's clear that Melanie is supposed to be some sort of Embodiment Of Southern Ladyhood, including being so inbred her reproductive organs barely function. Ashley and Melanie are cousins and the product of "The Wilkses always marry their cousins", and they're both feeble in their ways. Mitchell knew that the southern "aristocracy" was doomed from within and without, that was one of the ways she showed it.

And if some of you don't get it, one of the reasons the Scarlett-Ashley-Rhett tangle lasted so long is that all three knew that Ashley wasn't getting any at home, and he was too honorable to visit a hooker or anything.

Actually he was just a big 'ole MO and would have dropped to his knees for Rhett in a heartbeat.

That and he wanted to wear Scarlet's Scarlet Woman outfit really really badly.

Mitchell was pro-slavery, or at least pro-benevolent-slavery. She wrote that while brutality and inhumanity happened in other parts of the south, in her invented part of Georgia the masters were benevolent and the slaves were grateful. Like when Gerald O'Hara's butler Pork married a house slave from the next-door plantation, Gerald bought her so that Pork and Dilcey could live together. And Mitchell had both slaves being forever grateful, staying dedicated to the O'Hara family long after they were freed, and Dilcey nursed their white babies out of sheer gratitude.

Can you believe it?

It's like in "Game of Thrones", where a certain character conquers a stronghold, slaughters the defenders and kills anyone whi displeases him. And he's constantly asking his minions why the conquered aren't grateful to him, because he could treat them so much worse. That guy has a lot in common with Mitchell.

Superman didn't wear his cape. Or, if he was playing Clark Kent, he wasn't wearing glasses. Either way, enormous flaw.

r83 That is because black Americans are vocal about anti-black stereotypes.

Although the US was still an "apartheid state" in 1939, the NAACP and other black organizations were still very active. Plus the north while still racist had some standards.

She was obsessed with not getting what she wanted, and the moment she could have it, she lost interest.

A tale as old as time.

[quote]PETRIFIED FOREST came out only 3 years before GWTW when Howard was 43, still 20 years too old for the part.

Thanks r114. It's been decades since I've seen it. Maybe it was the crappy print, or the vaseline on the lens that made him look younger.

So I just looked it up. He was 43 when he played Romeo in R&J. Clearly his forte was being cast as a younger man.

I thought Howard's performance was pretty good- he's not supppsed to be this dashing, exciting guy. He lives in a world of books and dreams. Scarlett has the passion for life that he lacks.

Leslie Howard didn't even look his age. He looked older. He was cast by male studio executives who thought that he was what women should be romanced by.

But then the public didn't have the info about the stars like they do today...

[quote]I thought Howard's performance was pretty good

Are you the one who once bumped up three GWTW threads here to praise Howard's awful performance?

Ashley isn't supposed to be Rhett.

He isn't supposed to be Leslie Howard either.

About the question as to whether Scarlett got Rhett back...the answer is NO. Unequivocally no. Romantics always assume that Rhett and Scarlett got back together (and they did, in the execrable sequel "Scarlett" by Alexandra Ripley) but at the end of the novel it's pretty obvious that Rhett finally laid it on the line: he once loved her passionately, but he no longer loved her and didn't care what she did anymore. And he meant it. Scarlett tells herself that she can get him back. But that's just Scarlett being Scarlett; she never gives up, no matter how hopeless the situation is. She'll try to get Rhett back...but she won't. How can anyone think otherwise? But lovers of romance always think the hero and heroine will end up together, even if the hero tells the heroine he'd done with her and that as far as she's concerned "I don't give a damn."

"The set design/decoration is never used to make points about the characters."

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art this past summer they had superb exhibitions of Civil War Photography and Paintings. They specifically included some vintage photos used for by the GWTW Art Directors to get the "period" look just right.

To the person who asked earlier about 12 Oaks, the book made it clear it went to the government for back taxes.

The carriage scene with Melanie and Belle Watling was a unique little scene, which never gets discussed. I like to think the "son" she talks about away at school was Rhett Butler's offspring.

Belle was a "Mrs", wasn't she? I always thought either she was a widow or her husband was a ratbag who ran off.

R134, no I'm not.

The first time I read the book, during the summer between 8th and 9th grade, I knew Scarlett was kidding herself, they'd never get back together.

What r135 said. The relationships, opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.

12 Oaks, the plantation of John Wilkes, Ashley's father, did not survive. The Yankees burned it.

It's one of the first homes that Scarlett arrives at on her long trek back to Tara from Atlanta. In the book, Scarlett is described as overcome with memories and how at one time. she had hoped to live there as Ashley's wife.

I can't help but think that, based upon some of the posts here, some of you did not read the novel and are informed only by the film.

I'll readily admit I'm not a fan of the film, however, I urge you to, if you haven't, READ THE NOVEL.

While not my favorite work of popular fiction, (that would be "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn") it is, nevertheless, the most entertaining, educational and appalling work I've ever read and should continue to be read today precisely because of Mitchell's and Southerner's attitudes on race.

oops- In relationships, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.

Is Scarlett a better human being in the novel? Because in the film she is an asshole of the highest order, and Rhett is actually the hero of the story.

She is an asshole, R141. And she ends up alone and unhappy on her precious Tara.

But we find assholes compelling.

I do not find her compelling because there is nothing to redeem her at all. At least there isn't in the film, which is why I asked about Novel Scarlett.

Rhett might be considered by some to be an asshole himself, and certainly makes many remarks about how little honor he has. But he does have plenty of integrity where it counts, so even though he isn't Melanie, he is redeemable and compelling.

I'm glad you didn't write the book, R143. I shudder at the thought of a 'redeemed' Scarlett O'Hara.

For me, one admirable thing about book Scarlett is her gumption and go-getter attitude. She gets things done. I wish I were more like that in real life.

But other than that, she truly is a despicable person. In the novel, she has one child with each of her three husbands whom she marries for dubious reasons -- Melanie's brother Charles to spite Ashley, her sister Suellen's beau Frank Kennedy to pay off the taxes on Tara, and Rhett simply to live a wealthy, luxurious lifestyle.

She doesn't care for her children with Charles and Frank. In fact, she bitches that they've ruined her 16-inch waist and totally neglects them. After Melanie gives birth, Scarlett dotes on the boy because he's Ashley's son. She even seems indifferent to Bonnie (her kid with Rhett) but not as bad as with the first two.

There's no drama without assholes.

She is a pure bitch, callous and unfeeling, and that gives the movie its drive.

It's way too long, Leslie Howard has zero charisma... It's heavy and slow, like sponge cake, in a bad way.

Scarlett has some positive qualities. She has courage and fortitude. She's a clever, if unscrupulous, businesswoman. She can be very vivacious and charming. She's a good dancer. She's a good card player. I think that's it for the positive qualities.

Here are some of the bad. She's an incredible liar. She's conceited and vain and shallow. She has no empathy; she has no understanding of the feelings of others at all. She's spoiled and willful and goes into rages when she can't have things her way. She steals other girl's beaus even if she doesn't really want them; her ego is such that she wants every man to be in love with her. She barely mourns for her poor husband Charles and gets right back into the social circuit, ignoring her infant son and behaving like a carefree belle. She's vindictive and does things deliberately to hurt other people. When she comes back to Tara after the Yankees come through she is insufferably rude and nasty to the others in the household, but keeps telling herself that once she's financially comfortable she'll be nicer to people and become a great lady like her mother (she never does). She treats her second husband, poor Frank Kennedy, like dirt and her reckless behavior is the reason he eventually ends up getting killed. She's a terrible excuse for a mother. She never stops trying to steal Ashley away from Melanie and treats Melanie, who loves her unconditionally, like dirt also. After marrying Rhett and becoming rich she flaunts her wealth unashamedly. After her beloved Bonnie Blue's death (Bonnie is like a clone of Scarlett; charming, pretty and a spoiled brat) she blames Rhett, who is already crushed with grief, for Bonnie's death.

One critic said that the heroine of Gone With The Wind appeared the have the characteristics of a "psychopath." I think so too.

She didn't use the curtain rod to make big shoulders in her dress.

Well I didn't say that I thought she ought to have been redeemed; that wasn't my point exactly. I was simply wondering if she was characterized differently (as a better person) in the novel.

"If I recall she wasn't that great a mother."

Why, a cat's a better mother than Scarlett.

Well, R152, cats )and animals, for that matter) generally have maternal instincts. Scarlett had none.

I don't know if she's a better human being at the end but she is wiser one. She understands at the end the mistakes she made, although its left ambiguous if she can do anything about them.

She was a spoiled, stubborn, vain child at the start of the novel. By the time she returns to Tara after the Yankees have come through, her mother is dead and her father's lost his mind, she is elevated to head of the place. At this point, albeit with total resentment, she's stuck by the pregnant Melanie when she could have fled. She does resolve, though by her own peculiar code of ethics, that she won't see her family turned over to relatives on charity and she won't lose the family home. She is determined to survive and she goes about it, at any cost. But she has a few moments of human feeling. She admires Melanie (in the book) after they save the place from burning down. She is kindly to her father in his declined state.

The key to her comes later in the novel, after Bonnie has died and she realizes everything in the world is wrong but she cannot figure out why. Mitchell makes a point in most of the novel of demonstrating that Scarlett is quite literal minded... at this point, she observes that Scarlett is unable to analyse... even Rhett says something to her at some point about how she wouldn't understand because she can't understand anything except money. She has limited ability to think in terms of human feeling or emotion because she is so literal minded.

At the end, she understands this. The scales fall away as Melanie dies and she realizes how she depended on Melanie and regrets how she treated her over the years. Bear in mind, too, that in the novel Butler never tells her he loves or loved her until he is about to leave. She never got him, either, until it was too late.

So as I say I don't think it's clear she becomes a better human being, but she's definitely the wiser at the end of the novel.

Even Mammy leaves her.

[quote] Well, [R152], cats )and animals, for that matter) generally have maternal instincts. Scarlett had none.

She was all about maternal instincts.

She fed and protected her family and home.

She had survival instincts, not maternal.

R157 - what do you think maternal instincts are?

r158, Maternal instincts are to nurture and fight for the off-spring.

Survival instincts are related to one's own survival.

"When the boat sank, her maternal instincts were stronger than her survival instincts: she perished saving her children."

I thought she came across as having a little more depth in the book (she was still selfish, vain, conniving etc.) R154 says it well, in the book the family depending on her to survive is a little more apparent. A lot of what she does is selfish, but she also does some of these things to not only save Tara but her family. Sue Ellen would have married Frank, settled comfortably in Atlanta and let the rest fend for themselves. You see the family really rely on her at post-war Tara.

Even though Scarlett does not realize it until the end, in the book you do see a more gradual growth of her relationship with Melanie. There are signs that she starts to view her positively. Inversely, there are signs in the book that her crush on Ashley has been fading over the years. Also, I think Ashley might give her more mixed signals in the book. It is a little more understandable to think why she holds on to hope that they will be together.

In the book you are literally in Scarlett's head for 1000 pages, so you see her motivations pretty clearly, and while they are still selfish, she comes off a little more complex. It has been a long time since I have read the book, so I might not be remembering everything clearly.

[quote] Maternal instincts are to nurture and fight for the off-spring.

Fight for off-spring as in provide them shelter and food? Fight as in protect them in the aftermath of a devastating war?

[quote]She has limited ability to think in terms of human feeling or emotion because she is so literal minded.

Isn't this just called Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

What happens when Mammy leaves her? (What reason is given, perhaps I should say.)

Scarlett isn't entirely self-absorbed, she extends her survival instincts to her entire family - including immediate family, in-laws, and servants. She may not feel any affection for them (especially her children), but she really does save them from homelessness and poverty, as long as she is around they'll never be hungry again. She may not be maternal, but she is clannish.

In the book Mitchell points out that while the True Southern Aristocracy may be better mannered and a bit more ethical that Scarlett, they're absolutely useless when stripped of their slaves and plantations. Scarlett is the only member of Clay County society that can not just survive the war, but save others. So she's far from a nice person, but IMHO this is an actual redeeming quality, and a very interesting one.

R152 was quoting a line from the book/movie.

It is spelled out plainly in the book that Scarlett does not care much about her two older children. She didn't love either of their fathers and the children are mostly burdensome annoyances to her. She provides for them sufficiently, but more out of duty than love. Rhett is far more devoted parent to Bonnie Blue than Scarlett is. Scarlett is too much of a narcissist to provide for anyone else's emotional needs.

r163,

After Bonnie and Melanie die, Mammy tells Scarlett she wants to return to Tara. Scarlett begs her to stay with her in Atlanta, but Rhett gives her the money to go home to Tara.

He tells Scarlett something like, "Let her go. Why would anybody want to be here now?"

Iirc, the reason she gives Scarlett isn't really a reason. She tells Scarlett something like "Looks like my work here is done." But Rhett is right. After Bonnie dies the atmosphere in the Butler home is just awful and Mammmy wants to escape it.

Rhett drinks heavily and his looks go to pot.

I now I'm repeating myself, but really, if you haven't read the novel, put it on your must-read spring-summer reading list. It's long, but worth the time.

You'll find out about Ellen's love tragedy, Will Benteen, Scarlett's children, how the Civil War was fought,you'll just fall head over heels in love with Rhett and so much more.

Most significantly, Mitchell's attitudes about race will explain why race relations are as they are now because those attitudes, of course, still exist in 2014.

r165 Rhett is far more of a father than Scarlett is a mother to Wade and Ella, too.

As bad as GWTW bad, it was not half as racist as D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation."

[quote], but IMHO this is an actual redeeming quality, and a very interesting one.

But the motivation for it is entirely selfish, r164. That's why I don't find it redeeming. Sure, she feeds her two/three remaining servants and the only person keeping her in touch with the man she "loves". There is something in it for SCARLETT to do those things. She could not have survived -- OR, more importantly (to Scarlett) have retain/regain her place in high society -- entirely on her own.

They could have taken some scissors to it, way too long...

R169, I didn't say that Scarlett is selfLESS, far from it. But the fact is her "selfish" actions provide her nearest and dearest with a comfortable lifestyle they never could have achieved on their own, and that she's much better and providing for her people than anyone who's nice and good. That's what makes her *interesting*, not angelic.

"I'll never be hungry again, no, nor any of my folk."

Look, as for her motivations being "entirely selfish", well, that's what survival instincts are! When people hit rock bottom and get truly desperate, well, not everyone thinks of everyone in their household. Scarlett does.

And when she meets with Ashley while he's chopping wood and they share a passionate kiss - afterward he says he'll take Melanie and Beau and leave Tara, move up north and become a teacher maybe. She says "I won't have you all starve because I've thrown myself at your head. It will never happen again." But she's not just saying it to keep Ashley around; I think this is when she starts to become disillusioned with his "love."

Ashley wasn't nineteen, like the Tarleton twins. He'd both graduated from university and gone on the then-three-year Grand Tour. So he was, say, at least twenty-four or so when he returned to Georgia and said to Scarlett, who was then fourteen, "So you've grown up."

Leslie Howard and Clark Gable both, vehemently, did NOT want to appear in GWTW. Gable was uncomfortable working with so-called "women's director" George Cukor, who knew about Gable's rent-boy past. David O. Selznick got Gable because the latter was desperate to divorce his wife-of-the-moment and marry Carole Lombard; he was paid enough to buy off his estranged wife.

Howard got more money than Vivien Leigh (quite a lot more), plus a cushy directing gig.

I understand the reasons for snipping out characters, but the two I really missed were Prissy's half-Cherokee mother, Dilcey, and Will Benteen, a Georgia "cracker" who arrived at Tara unconscious with pneumonia; when he recovered, he managed Tara's transformation from plantation to two-mule farm overseen by a man that loved the land.

Both Dilcey and Scarlett's mother, Ellen O'Hara, were written as domestic saints who always, always put others first. There was no way that their daughters, Prissy and Scarlett, could ever measure up, and that thread underpins the entire book, start to finish.

While I really loved the book I found getting through the passages written in black dialect almost impossible. Had they continued much more I wouldn't have made it through. But it was very much worth it. I adore the movie as well.

Both book and movie give the impression that there "big houses" dotting every hill in Georgia, all teeming with slaves. Yet in reality, only about 1 southerner in 100 had one slave while 1 southerner in 1,000 had more than 10 (and when you see the prices for prime field hands, you'll know why).

Ashley also talks easily of freeing all his slaves "when father dies", yet the laws against manumission were very strict; for an entire plantatio';s worth, virtually impossible.

The surviving Tarletons and Fontaines were shown to be as resilient as Scarlett and their plantations made it through the war and later prospered. I would have liked to see the Tarletons, Fontaines and Calverts in the movie, but I can see why running length ruled against their inclusion.

Beatrice Tarleton was a great character.

Even if Ashley wasn't 19 he still wasn't 40.

Hmmm, I don't buy the family Scarlett. I still say she didn't get her shiny bauble and had several hundred pages of snit.

Then lost interest the moment she got it.

Didn't Cathleen Calvert have to marry a Yankee servant and become a cracker?

Cathleen married their former overseer because she wanted someone to take care of her brother Cade, who was dying of TB (I think?) he picked up during the war, and nobody in her own social class had any money. When Scarlett sees her next, at Gerald's funeral, Cathleen is wearing dirty clothes and already looks "shiftless, slovenly, trifling."

"Scarlett isn't entirely self-absorbed, she extends her survival instincts to her entire family - including immediate family, in-laws, and servants"

Her largesse towards her family is merely a matter of pride. When she gets home to Tara after the Yankees have gone through, she realizes that they're destitute and what are they going to do? She plans on shipping Melanie off to live with some of her cousins. As for Suellen and Careen, well, Ellen's relations would have to take them, whether they wanted to or not. And Scarlett figures she and Gerald can go live with Gerald's brothers James and Andrew. Then she thinks about it: an O'Hara a poor relation? Oh, never that! The O'Haras take care of their own, and would never rely on charity like poor white trash. So she makes a determination to care for her family no matter what. Scarlett has no particular feelings for most of her family. She "doesn't like" Suellen and "did not particulary love Careen...she could never love anybody who was weak." When she gets rich she sends money to Ellen's sisters in Savannah, but has no affection for the disapproving old ladies. Her motives for taking care of her family financially are, as usual, selfish ones. She just doesn't want the name of O'Hara to get sullied in any way.

Yes, poor Cathleen Calvert, who had more beaus than anyone else in the county besides Scarlett, ends up married to her family's Yankee white trash overseer. At then end of the war, her father and brother are dead. Her surviving brother is dying of illness. Her Yankee stepmother takes her own four children back North, leaving Cathleen alone with no one except her dying brother and the overseer. She marries because...what else can she do? When she attends Gerald's funeral she looks so slovenly and unkempt that Scarlett is shocked: "Good lord, what a comedown!" Comparing herself to Cathleen, she figures she hasn't done so bad, forgetting that she lied to get Frank Kennedy as a husband and essentially ruining his life. Later, when Scarlett comes to visit Tara, she's told that Cathleen's no-good husband mortgaged the plantation and lost it, so they have to vacate it. No one knows what became of poor Cathleen Calvert after that.

Thanks, Della.

[quote]Look, as for her motivations being "entirely selfish", well, that's what survival instincts are! When people hit rock bottom and get truly desperate, well, not everyone thinks of everyone in their household. Scarlett does.

She "thinks of them" because she needs them to help maker her rich again, though. So she's not really thinking of them, so much as using them as a means to an end. And it isn't just in times of desperation and hitting rock bottom that she treats people that way, either. I think that's everyone's point. She really is pretty sociopathic.

I don't buy the theory that Scarlett's pride was rooted in selfishness. She didn't give a damn what anybody else thought - and Rhett made her even worse, in a hilarious way - but Scarlett just didn't deal in emotions or the abstract. She was capable of emotion: she loved both her parents and she loved Mammy and she loved Bonnie.

Her big problem was she asked to survive without a lot of insight into human nature. Perhaps that is how she both survived and, materially, thrived. But to her credit she never left her extended family to fend for themselves and I always thought it was more out of resentful duty than concern about what people thought. It worried her, but it never stopped her once.

Mitchell said this: "About the only good qualities Scarlett had were courage and a refusal to admit defeat. But on the other side she was selfish, vain, almost illiterate, a bungler in her dealings with other people, a person with shoddy tastes and a fondness for cheap companions. She neglected her children and she was the ruination of every man who loved her. She stopped at nothing in her grasping determination to make money, including cheating, swindling, and cruel abuse of the helpless convicts she hired. She committed murder, she stole her sister's sweetheart with a lie, and she offered her body for sale at a price."

You don't buy it even though Mitchell outright tells you r181?

I think the first line of the book is about Scarlett not being good looking and then they cast Vivian Leigh, which I guess was Hollywood's idea of unattractive at the time.

Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charms.

R80 What could her family(An ailing,mentally doddering father,2 sisters recovering from typhoid,a sister in law who was very ill after childbirth,3 children,one a slaves baby,and 4 adult slaves2 of wich were older) do to make her wealthier? She held onto to them and didnt let them starve because in her own hard way,she loved them.Scarlett was complex,as most humans are,and she did everything the social mores of the day prohibited,but she NEVER let her family(even extended ones like her elderly aunts) do without.Read the book a few times,then youll get Scarlett.

"...as the Tarleton twins were," R184.

I'm really enjoying this thread. It is like a book club discussion. Speaking of which has anyone participated in an online bookclub? Any recommendations?

"She held onto to them and didnt let them starve because in her own hard way,she loved them"

NO, she didn't. She didn't love her sisters. She actively dislikes Melanie. She didn't love the servants, with the possible exception of Mammy. She even tells poor loyal Pork, when he balks at doing work better suited to a field hand, that if he doesn't want to do it then he can just get out. She doesn't love her aunts. She doesn't love her children Wade and Ella. She provides for her family simply so the reputation of the name O'Hara will remain intact and not end up like the Calverts. "It's the end of the Calverts!" Melanie exclaims after Cathleen informs she and Scarlett that she is going to marry Jonas Wilkerson, the overseer. There is no "love" involved; only pride.

And I HAVE read the book a few times, so I DO "get" Scarlett.

Her reputation?!? She shredded her reputation before the war was even over! Scarlett didnt give a toss what others thought of her,so there was nothing to be gained from having a reputation.She did it out of a sense of clannishness she got from her father,and residual traces of her mothers influence.It may seem a twisted form of love,but love it was.

why didn't Rhett wear a condom?

R188: incredibly useless "Wind" trivia: Cathleen Calvert marries Hilton, the Calvert's overseer. Jonas Wilkerson was the O'Hara's overseer, and he marries white trash Emmy Slattery.

r189 you do not seem to have met any rich people, nor know what actual love is.

'Mr. Hamilton's' chin-less profile. Eww! Gross!

She was turned on by rape apparently.

At the Bazaar, Scarlett has on her widow's veil and all. Margaret Mitchell said, "Even Scarlett wouldn't have been tacky enough to wear a hat to an evening party," but Selznick thought it was picturesque and so that's how they dressed her.

Melanie was the Queen of Denial.

R194, Scarlett is absent from our view for a long time after Rhett dashes up the stairs with her in his arms. We assume she gave her consent, if only silently to herself, at some point in the proceedings. Her glorious contentment upon waking allows us to believe she was more invigorated than brutalized.

The stereotypical "Dumb Darkie" voice repeating after the carpetbagger, "Forty acres? And a mule? Gee!" is obviously dubbed in and irritatingly racist. It causes the movie to lurch briefly into Early Bugs Bunny-ville.

[quote]...Scarlett not being good looking and then they cast Vivian Leigh, which I guess was Hollywood's idea of unattractive at the time.

There was no way they would cast anyone other than a beautiful woman for the role of an alluring young woman who is on screen ninety per cent of the time in a movie nearly four hours long.

"Her reputation?!? She shredded her reputation before the war was even over!"

It's not about "her reputation." It's about the O'Hara family name. She didn't want her father's name besmirched, hence she did everything she could to prevent herself and her family members from descending into whitetrashdom like the poor Calverts. There was no "love" involved, only a desire to keep her relations from being looked upon as poor whites.

Scarlett O'Hara is one of the most loveless characters in literary history. No one that self-absorbed and narcissistic could ever really love anyone.

"incredibly useless "Wind" trivia: Cathleen Calvert marries Hilton, the Calvert's overseer. Jonas Wilkerson was the O'Hara's overseer, and he marries white trash Emmy Slattery."

Oh, that's right, it was Hilton. I got those overseers mixed up. They were both awful, despised white trash characters. It's been a while since I've read GWTW. That book had an incredible of slew of major and minor characters. No wonder I mixed them up.

"you do not seem to have met any rich people, nor know what actual love is."

You seem to be a moronic ass.

Fascinating thread--I'm really enjoying the contributions.

I haven't read the book since I was a teenager many years ago, so much of the detail it was lost on me. Scarlett of the movie is considered a great romantic heroine; the sweep of the movie makes it impossible, I think, to see her as the conniving, self-absorbed bitch described in this thread. Leigh and Gable are too pretty and compelling, and the narrative drive of the movie doesn't allow for much reflection on their motives.

Scarlett idolized her mother. She frequently said she wanted to be "a great lady" like Ellen but she was her father's daughter.

The story of Cathleen Calvert horrified me when I first read the book. To go from the belle of the county to: "I came to tell you that I'm going to be married tomorrow, in Jonesboro — and I'm not inviting you all to come."

And then this: "Cathleen Calvert Hilton stood alone...her faded sunbonnet hiding her bowed face. Scarlett saw with amazement that her percale dress had grease spots on it and her hands were freckled and unclean. There were even black crescents under her fingernails. There was nothing of quality folks about Cathleen now. She looked Cracker, even worse. She looked poor white, shiftless, slovenly, trifling."

"She'll be dipping snuff soon, if she isn't doing it already," thought Scarlett in horror.

Scarlett was a bitch from the word go, but she was much more interesting than a conventional book or movie heroine.

Vivien Leigh was certainly more beautiful than Scarlett, but she embodied her physical type perfectly: fair-skinned, black hair, green eyes. She really was the perfect Scarlett.

R205, Vivien Leigh had curly brown hair and blue eyes, nothing like Scarlett's straight black hair and green eyes.

But she was so perfect for the role that nobody cared that she looked nothing like Mitchell's description of the character.

When I read the book I did not see Scarlet as a great romantic heroine.

Frankly, I'm surprised they didn't change Scarlett into a great, romantic heroine for the movie. Especially in those days they were wont to drastically change a book when adapting it into a movie. But I'm glad they stuck with the bitchy, narcissistic, selfish Scarlett. Maybe that's why they didn't give her a happy ending. By that point the Hays Code dictated that an unredeemable character got their comeuppance.

This discussion of what motivates Scarlett to feed, clothe and put a roof over her relations head is fascinating.

I think both can be true- that she did it out of basic decency AND she did it for selfish reasons, too- to prevent the O'Hara name from being besmirched by accepting charity.

Recall, however, the scene in the novel after Bonnie is born where Beau is moping around alone with nobody to play with because everybody but him had been invited to a birthday party for one of his friends who belonged to a family of "the Old Guard."

Rhett (bless him!) comforts Wade but then, out of newly realized fear that Bonnie would be excluded, too, he says (paraphrase), "You've been a fool Scarlett, not to have ensured a position for your children. You didn't even bother to keep what position you had."

While I agree that Scarlett wanted to uphold the O'Hara name ( aside- "You're father was nothing but a smart Mick on the make."- Rhett)Rhett is right- all of her money could not maintain her place among the Old Guard.

In photos I've seen of Vivien Leigh her eyes do look green and her hair is dark enough to be called black. I've seen pictures of her with curly hair, but it doesn't look like they came naturally, they look like they came from rollers.

Scarlett was a hussy. I am not.

In "Rhett Butler's People" (an awful book, btw) the author takes it as a given the Melanie always knew that Ashley and Scarlett were, at one time, in love with each other.

Wtf? In my repeated readings of "GWTW," I never got that idea, especially because of Melanie's death bed moment where Scarlett momentarily believes that Melanie knew all along about her and Ashley, but then when she looks into her eyes, Scarlett sees no accusation in them, which to me reinforced the notion that Melanie never knew.

Anyway, now I'm 2nd guessing my reading comprehension. Did any of you out there think that Melanie always knew about Ashley and Scarlett?

But, Della, remember that Gerald was not considered a worthy match for Ellen. Although Clayton County society was newer and rougher than the coastal cities, and Gerald was respected by his neighbors, it's not like the "O'Hara name" was a big deal. The Robillard name was, of course.

That's the source of Scarlett's conflict: the canny survival instincts of her father - who, don't forget, was a wanted criminal across the Atlantic, and won his plantation in a card game - mixed with the blue Savannah blood of her mother. It was a conflict of cultures with the war as a catalyst; she prospered but sacrificed any claim to gentility.

Excellent point, r213.

The workings of the Southern Aristocracy fascinated me while reading "GWTW."

Come to think of it, your post made me realize that Rhett Butler's parents both were aristocrats so, when he married Scarlett and because of Gerald O'Hara, Rhett was marrying down.

Ellen marries Gerald, a man she doesn't love, to get away from her family, who she blames for driving away the only man she ever loved, her cousin Phillipe Robillard (all that cousin love...ugh). Her father doesn't like the idea but it's preferable to Ellen becoming a nun, which is what she said she'd do if she didn't marry Gerald. Her father goes along with it; after all, all that was wrong with Gerald was his "lack of family", that is, he did not come from the upper classes. So Ellen marries him and leaves Savannah forever, never to return, wanting to leave forever anyplace and anybody that would remind her of "him."

I don't think Rhett "married down" when he married Scarlett. He came from a good family; she came from a good family. Bu they were both the black sheeps of their respective families, so of course they were a good match.

As awful as Scarlett was, her sister Suellen was pretty much her equal when it came to be reprehensible. Of course Suellen is majorly screwed by Scarlett when she steals Frank Kennedy away but that was no excuse for what she did to her poor father. Suellen is as money-grubbing as Scarlett. She hatches a plan to get the addled Gerald to sign a piece of paper saying he was a Union sympathizer so he can get a pile of money compensating him for all the losses he suffered when the Yankees came through. Cathleen's rotten husband is in on the plot. Suellen drags Gerald out to Ellen's grave and tells him she's crying in her grave about the deprivation herdarling daughter had to endure and it's all HIS fault, which causes Gerald to weep in agony. She drags him off to town, gets him drunk and he almost signs the paper. But the whisky somehow makes him more alert and when he realizes what's happening he tears the paper up and throws it in her face and tells her "you're no daughter of mine!" Then he jumps on a horse, rides off, and gets thrown while trying to jump a fence, breaking his neck and dying instantly. Gerald's demise was all due to the greed of Suellen.

Suellen has a happy ending of sorts. A sick soldier who was nursed back to health at Tara marries her. His name is Will Benteen, and he loves Careen, but since she will never forget Brett Tarleton, he settles for Suellen. Will is eternally mild and unflappable; he's hard-working and honest and is a great help at Tara. It's a marriage of convenience. Will wants to stay at Tara, the only real home he's ever had, and Suellen is desperate to get married, and he figures they have to get married anyway since Careen is leaving to become a nun and Melanie and Ashley intend to leave and they'll have to get married just to keep people from gossiping about them. Will is well-liked but he's a "Cracker", and by the standards of the day, Suellen is coming down in the world. Actually, the good, kind Will is too good for the awful Suellen. But since nothing seems to bother him, he'll probably be able to put up with his nagging, complaining wife.

"Feeleep! Feeleep!"

Scarlett thinks she wants to be like her mother, but doesn't understand a damn thing about her. Ellen O'Hara lost the love of her life, and spent the rest of her life being joylessly dutiful, and no power on Earth would ever make Scarlett do the same.

Ironically, Melanie was very similar to Ellen O'Hara, and Scarlett disliked Melanie for behaving the same way her mother had. Like someone said above, Scarlett was very unperceptive about people.

"You're father was nothing but a smart Mick on the make."

Della, I think you made that up. I don't recall that line in the book, and I read it frontwards and backwards in high school.

"You're father was nothing but a smart Mick on the make."

Actually, that IS in the book. Scarlett and Rhett are arguing over the upbringing of Bonnie. He comments on "my Bonnie, with her Butler blood and Robillard strain" and Scarlett, offended, sputters "the O'Hara's" and Rhett counters "the O'Haras mught have been kings of Ireland once but your father was nothing but a smart Mick on the make." He wants Bonnie to associate with fine people, respectable families, instead of the "Irishmen on the make, Yankees, white trash, Carpetbag parvenus" that constitute Scarlett's social set.

"Do you think I'd let her (Bonnie) marry any of this runagate gang you spend your time with? Irishmen on the make, Yankees, white trash, Carpetbag parvenus - My Bonnie with her Butler blood and her Robillard strain-

Scarlett- "The O'Hara's-"

"The O'Hara's might have been Kings of Ireland once but your father was nothing but a smart Mick on the make. And you are no better- But then, I'm at fault, too..."

oops, beat me to it, r219.

Rhett would have never given Mammie a Chrysler. As much as he loved her....purple Cadillac, BABY!!!

Vivien Leigh had naturally curly hair, R210. She wore wigs in most of her films, she hated letting movie hairdressers torture her hair.

And R212, it's entirely possible that Melanie knew about Ashley and Scarlett's feelings for each other, but held no resentment. She knew that Ashley returned her deep love, and would never commit adultery. And that she'd beaten Scarlett in a contest over a man, so she could afford to be magnanimous.

Of course Melanie knew.

India Wilkes, that vindictive gossipy spinster, was her sister-in-law!

From the book... Scarlett's connections to her children and extended family were more than just pride:

"And Wade isn't ever going to know what it means to do without the things he needs Never! He's going to have everything in the world. And all my family, they aren't ever going to be hungry again."

By Margaret Mitchell's view, Melanie knew nothing. The character simply could not conceive of, per the book, 'dishonor in anyone she loves.'

As a consequence of this damn thread I ordered from Amazon and am reading a book called Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind: A bestseller's odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood. I really only ordered it because apparently, somewhere in the damn thing, the author's claim there's a letter or something from Mitchell where for once she actually does indicate in her mind whether Scarlett and Rhett reunited or not. Her usual answer was the story reached its right and proper conclusion and she had no idea.

Actually I find Margaret Mitchell (and her husband) increasingly unlikable as the book goes on. Stubborn, secretive, high strung, difficult... they are not an appealing pair and I've yet to decide if they were just damned hard dealers in business or eccentrics and that's how it manifested. Either way, I find them hard to like or root for, even when they get screwed, which they sometimes did in contracts etc.

Thank You, r227. You've restored my faith in my reading skills.

Your post reminded me that after Scarlett and Ashley are busted by India, Archie and, was it Mrs. Meade? for that non-sexual embrace, Rhett tells Scarlett something like, "Even if she (Melanie) saw it, she wouldn't believe."

That's the evening Rhett says to Scarlett,"What a white-livered, cowardly little bitch you are." when she wants to avoid the party Melanie is throwing for Ashley after they've been busted.

Gee, why wasn't that sentence in the screenplay?

Hayes Office is why.

That book is just some of the best writing I've ever read. Rhett Butler leaps off the page... he was modern in his insights into character. I like him better than her a lot of the time because he had a genuine kindness within him. She was elemental, and so highly watchable, but her lack of insight made even her redeemable moments hard to credit... whatever there was, really, inside of her, it was just beginning to emerge at the end of the book.

Even so, I liked her for her toughness and determination and loyalty, even if she took little pleasure or awareness in it.

Word for word with you, r230, especially your last sentence.

I love Rhett. He has a basic kindness and decency to him. Plus his trenchant observations about war are as pertinent today is they were when he said them.

I love the way Mitchell has Rhett deploy his education. He quotes Shakespeare, alludes to ancient Greek (or is it Roman?) warfare, and is just plain smart.

From the book... Scarlett's connections to her children and extended family were more than just pride:

"And Wade isn't ever going to know what it means to do without the things he needs Never! He's going to have everything in the world. And all my family, they aren't ever going to be hungry again."

Oh, give it a rest. Scarlett may have felt something like love for Ellen and Gerald (although that didn't keep her from behaving in ways that would have appalled both of them if they'd known her for what she really was) but she didn't really give a rat's ass about her family. She disliked Suellen. She didn't really love Careen, because Careen was "weak." She disliked Ellen's sisters, who criticized her for doing business like a man and being "unwomanly." She had contempt for the silly Aunt Pitty and disliked Melanie so much that she would have liked for her to have died in childbirth, so she could finally have Ashley. As for her own children, well, Rhett put it bluntly: "a cat's a better mother than you!" After Wade's birth he means so little to her that she often forgets that she even has a baby. Poor little brain-damaged Ella also means little to her; after Bonnie's death she wishes it had been Ella who was dead and not Bonnie. She had tender feelings for Bonnie but only because Bonnie was so much like herself: charming, pretty, spoiled, willful, fearless, an indulged little brat who throws tantrums until she gets what she wants.

Scarlett was not motivated by "love." She was motivated by her desire to be wealthy enough to do whatever she wanted and keep her family's position as "quality folks."

Scarlett was too self-absorbed and immature to truly feel love for just about anybody. Only at the end of the book, when Melanie dies and Rhett tells her he doesn't give a damn about her, that she comes to some kind of reckoning. The book ends leaving the reader wondering if her new self-realization will make her a better person or will she just keep on going the way she's always done: always out for herself.

Chill, R232. I never said she loved them but I think that pride is simplifying her motivation. No need to bust your corset strings.

The ultimate flaw in "Gone with the Wind"?

The belief that we humans are more like Melanie, when indeed, we are much more like Scarlett.

"...You done had a sucker, you aint never gonna be no 18 again..."

The one thing Scarlett loved wasn't a human. Scarlett loved Tara.

Didn't she love Mammy?

I also want to take issue with Rhett's prescience about the war. It's easy for Mitchell to write him with such hindsight wisdom, but I don't know if an actual Rhett in 1860 would have been all that much of an oracle.

Was Helen Hunt in this movie?

Actuallly Paulette Goddard for Scarlett and Jeffrey Lynn for Ashley were perfect, far superior to Howard and Leigh. The real miscast was Clark Gable, which caused the other miscasting.

"Didn't she love Mammy?'

I think she depended on Mammy. But I don't think she really loved her.

I can't tolerate Max Steiner's heavy scoring anymore. He wrote beautiful music and then pounded away throughout the picture, like in "Now Voyager". I understand why certain stars (like Katherine Hepburn) wouldn't become involved with films he was scoring.

r238 there were those of us who predicted what would end up happening in Iraq and Afghanistan prior to the start of the 2003 war and fought the drumbeat. We were severely in the minority, but if you were emotionally distanced enough from the nationalistic blood lust and peer pressure, you could see it. I am sure there were a few people just the same in Rhett Butler's time.

Goddard would have been good, but lacked the magic of Leigh.

Della at R231, Rhett certainly had an education, didn't he? Besides the examples you state, he knows about Indian burial customs (telling Scarlett abut the practice of suttee), Germanic mythology (he compares the end of the southern way of life to Gotterdammerung), and Swiss architecture (when he criticizes chalet-style Atlanta house). I expect Rhett's classical education was typical for a wealthy young man of the time.

Another character that senses Scarlett's motivation toward preserving the O'Hara family name and standing is Grandma Fontaine, a wonderful secondary character who is in the book, not the movie. She approves of Scarlett sucking up to the yankees and tells her "get what you can from them and then kick them in the teeth when they can't help you anymore."

Interesting that Grandma and Rhett both know that Scarlett is succeeding, but at the cost of her "honor". The surviving Fontaines and the Tarletons also prosper after the war, but adhere to expected standards of acceptable behavior, and so retain their honor (as do the Merriweathers and Elsings in Atlanta.) Scarlett has no time for such niceties (and too, the Fontaine boys survive the war while Scarlett had only herself.)

What r243 said. I was one of those who accurately predicted the sickening mess that Iraq became.

The book makes clear that Rhett was well traveled, well read and smart as a whip, to boot. I find it way more than plausible that he would accurately predict that "The Cause" was a lost one.

I loved Grandma Fontaine, Beetrice Tarleton, and Uncle Henry Hamilton. Mitchell could paint even a minor character richly. The movie's nice for the score, the sweep, to define Tara and Twelve Oaks and the opening title and As God is my witness are enduring moments in film... but the true genius and richness of Gone with the Wind are in that book. Even despite the retrospect racism of it, it'll be around as a classic another hundred years from now.

Yes to everything you wrote, r245.

Rhett's one profound weakness was Scarlett and, at Bonnie's death, in the words of Will Benteen upon Gerald's death, his "mainspring was busted."

I love this thread.

Here's a thing I always thought odd in the book and the movie: Suellen and her elderly beau Frank Kennedy, a shopkeeper.

Suellen was young, I assume fairly attractive (I don't think the book mentions otherwise) and yes, an unpleasant personality but I'm sure she made the effort to be gracious or flirty and would be able to conceal it. Her family had a good name and a large plantation, why was she "settling" for this fussy man in trade?

I realise it was set up for Scarlett to betray her sister, steal him, and use his money later on; I just didn't find it realistic that Suellen would be engaged to him before the war and that her family would approve of the situation and not think that she was marrying down.

(It has been a long time since I've read the book.)

Re: the Fontaines and accepted behavior, didn't one of them murder a black man and had to run off to Mexico? But then, the Fontaines had always been hot-headed ...

r250, Tony Fontaine killed a black man and an ex-overseer. He was either Jonas Wilkerson or it was the one Cathleen Calvert married.

r249, my impression of the Frank Kennedy Sue Ellen thing is that Kennedy, although, "in trade" was considered top drawer because he came from good family and was rich.

SueEllen wasn't in love with him; she was in love with the position she would hold as his wife.

Frank Kennedy, at the beginning of the book, is a wealthy man. He's also well-liked; he's a very kind, honorable gentleman. He's much older than Suellen, true. But the way the book describes the relationship it appears that they really care for each other.

Frank admits his love for Suellen when he asks Scarlett for her hand (by that time, Gerald is too out of it to make any decisions). And when Frank and some other confederates stop by Tara near the end of the war Suellen "was raised to the skies by having a beau of her own in the house again and could hardly take her eyes off Frank Kennedy. Scarlett was surprised to see that Suellen could be almost pretty, despite the thinness which had persisted since her illness. Her cheeks were flushed and there was a soft luminous look in her eyes. "She must really care about him", Scarlett thought in contempt. "And I guess she'd be almost human if she a husband of her own, even if her husband was old fuss-budget Frank."

Frank, due to a lack of confidence, doesn't ask Suellen to marry him for a long time. He also waits until he has some money put away before marrying (he lost all his money during the war). Scarlett finds out about the money when she is in Atlanta (her scheme to get money from Rhett falls through) and she tells him the lie that Suellen has jilted him and is going to marry Tony Fontaine. It crushes Frank and is ripe for the plucking. It's a testament to Scarlett's powers of persuasion that he slowly draws Frank into her web and gets him to marry her so she can get the tax money to keep from losing Tara. After their marriage, she maskes him very unhappy and her later action set in motion the events that will cause his death.

Frank Kennedy is one of the most sympathetic characters in the novel. He's a very good man, and his life is ruined by Scarlett. Both of Scarlett's husbands before Rhett were very nice, good men. And both met premature deaths.

I stand corrected, r252, about Suellen. After reading your post I realize I went too far in saying that she didn't love Frank.

Did any of you find it interesting how Mitchell broadly hints that Belle Watling's son belongs to Rhett but withholds from flatly presenting that as fact?

Well, I certainly missed that, Della. It never occurred to me until I read it in this thread. Now I wonder, in the back story, if Rhett knows it?

Thanks for the Frank Kennedy background. I'd forgotten he'd come from a good family and made a lot of money... although after the war, Scarlett didn't have a high opinion of his shop, it was cluttered and disorganized and he didn't go after the people who owed him money. It was a miracle he had any money at all according to her.

I wonder if that would have been too shocking for readers of the time, to have Rhett father an illegitimate child with a fallen woman? And that's why it was never spelled out in black and white, because readers couldn't accept him as the romantic hero if he'd been *too* scandalous.

Rhett also tells Scarlett that he once saw a woman (who was apparently a prostitute) die from an attempted abortion. Rhett had been around the block a few times!

R254, I think Rhett knows it because of his conversation with Wade Hampton on the day of Bonnie's birth. Rhett says, bitterly, "I understand little boys," and Wade, young as he is, still senses enough to ask "You haven't got any other little boys, have you?"

SPOILER ALERT! on "Rhett Butler's People", not that I recommend that you read it.

Here's a few items on what Donald McCaig does with GWTW storylines-

1. Ashley and Rosemary, Rhett Butler's sister, end up marrying each other.

2. Belle Watling's son doesn't belong to Rhett- he belongs to a ne'er-do-well childhood friend of his.

3. The black man that Rhett is accused of murdering in "GWTW" was actually a close friend of his that he knew from childhood. His friend had been wrongfully accused of raping a white woman, a mob assembled to torture him, and in a mercy killing that his black friend wants, he shoots his friend to death.

4. Belle Watling's son and Scarlett end up friends.

5, and drum roll... Rhett and Scarlett end up back together, not that you didn't know that even if you don't read it.

There's more but I won't torture you any longer.

I loved the relationship between Aunt Pittypat and Rhett. She was always vowing to turn him from the house, and he would always bring her presents.

She was the only one who stayed fat through the war and Reconstruction.

Probably the biggest flaw was that it depicted some of the slaves actually working.

As anyone with a Southern past knows, the impossibility of motivating and training them was a scourge and the costs of maintaining them was terrible. Their value as labor force (as opposed to their value as a stationary, salable asset) was very minimal.

Of course some of the problem was the psychological toll of Africans being enslaved, but, really, their inability to adapt and make the most of their reality strongly suggests that the true basis was one of capacity, laziness and simple bad attitude.

All of these factors combined to leave the pre-Civil-War system as a precursor to the modern-day welfare system. My own family largely divested itself of the burden of supporting a large cadre of do-littles, (some house staff was worth the bother) in the early 1850s.

So the ridiculous slave-based prosperity shown in GWTW is absurdly overstated.

r259, if your post is satire, I say well done because I do experience queasiness at approvingly posting about the writing skills of Mitchell, an incorrigible white supremacist.

If you're serious, I can only quote Lincoln- "As I would not be a slave, nor would I be a slaveholder."

Now, off to the KKK Book Club to continue your discussion of "Mein Kampf."

r259 is the big Woody Allen fanboy running around wishing death and disease upon Mia Farrow and her kids, and he's also the one who fears that he might have inherited the pyschopathy gene that he has discovered runs throughout his homicidal family (per his own thread). I have been FF'ing him, Della.

Oh.

Thanks for the info, r261.

R261 is another rabid hall monitor. At least the site people know you're nuts and ignore your stalking.

And as far as the post here, asshole, I was posting a parody because of the ridiculous notion that slavery and its treatment in this film somehow was okay.

The literalist, camp-free twats all over the DL nowadays neither understand the site's history nor the way gay people communicate their outrages. One wonders how the DL is surviving these uneducated creeps who lack any kind of transgressive spirit or experience with satire.

Della, you should know better.

Actually I have been here for over 10 years, you fucking freak. And you would not know satire if it slapped you in the face.

Clutch those pears, R264! Grab them hard gurl!

Here, R261/R264. The kind of post you crave. I hope you slip and fall from the drool your dribble from it.

Shove it, you insufferable clod.

Thanks for proving me right about you r266. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.

OH MY STARS!

Whoa, r263, I'll take a trip to the woodshed when I deserve it, but in this instance, I don't.

I make it plain in my previous post that if you're deploying satire, I commend it.

I stand by my previous post, including my last sentence there.

So sorry, Della (you are my favorite DLer, as I've said in other threads). I was so blinded with consternation and outrage I missed the nuances of your being thankful to the lunatic reporting her stalking to you like a good hall monitor does.

Salut!

And R268 is very funny, if a bit one-note.

So this is kind of a SPOILER having read the book beginning to end that I referenced in R227.

Apparently it was Mitchell's view there was no way Scarlett and Rhett could reunite... that for him to be so throughly disillusioned with her at that age and stage of life, he was gone and he wasn't coming back.

So while she firmly believed the story had reached it's proper conclusion she also believed she couldn't give people the sequel they wanted.

A point that struck me as far fetched in both book and movie is the fact that the characters felt such loyalty to their state (and to the south) that they would take up arms in her defense and engage in open rebellion against the United States.

Granted, for some of the characters it was to preserve their way of life, for others a pride in their state, and still others a push back against the government telling them what to do. (A point that resonates today with the Tea Party loons.)

Certainly, not everyone felt this way - Rhett felt it was a waste and Scarlett thought the "war talk spoiled every party this spring."

So - is this true? Do you feel such a sense of pride in your state that you would "fight with her" as Ashley does?

I think back then they were the state. This was the ruling class, threatened or vengeful.

It was truly tragic that Margaret Mitchell got killed in a stupid accident (she was hit by a drunk driver) and died at the age of 48. She wrote "Gone With The Wind"...can you imagine what other novels she might have come up with?

r272 are you serious? Large swaths of the south are STILL pissed off about losing that war. Re-fighting is the entire motive for the current incarnation of the Republican party. Why are we still afflicted with the 2nd amendment? Because these very nuts descended from the losers of the Civil War still think they're going to get a second chance at it.

R274, Mitchell took the view that if you wrote one great novel, you might have had one or two more in you... but that's it. She also thought about writing something that fleshed out some of the minor characters from GWTW, like the Tarletons. I think she was a terrific writer... I doubt she would have topped GWTW but I imagine once everybody got over the fact her next book wasn't GWTW they would have admired the skill of her writing.

This is a long thread, but hopefully it's been pointed out numerous times that the way it sanitizes slavery is absolutely disgusting.

R277, it's a movie not a lesson in history.

What are we supposed to think of the spate of modern movies that show slaves defeating the Old South or Jews defeating the Nazis? Does their PC violent wish-fulfillment make them tolerable despite their historical inaccuracy?

Nobody has mentioned the fact that Erica Kane is a complete rip-off of Scarlett O'Hara.

R275 you really are an idiot.

" hopefully it's been pointed out numerous times that the way it sanitizes slavery is absolutely disgusting. "

Oh yeah, the wrongness of her racial views get extensively bemoaned every time we have a thread about GWTW.

IMHO there's a certain historical value to her naked, clueless racism. I saw the movie for the first time when I was about twelve, and had already learned about the civil war, Jim Crow, and the civil rights struggle in school. I'd always wondered how the fuck the southern white morons could justify their behavior to themselves, GWTW helped me understand, in ways the author never intended.

"It was truly tragic that Margaret Mitchell got killed in a stupid accident (she was hit by a drunk driver) and died at the age of 48. She wrote "Gone With The Wind"...can you imagine what other novels she might have come up with?"

I feel pretty certain she would never have written another novel. She lived thirteen years after the publication of GWTW and never even started one; if it was gonna happen, it would have happened by then. I don't know where she fell on the spectrum from being utterly terrified/paralyzed by the pressure of trying to write something that wouldn't be judged a letdown after GWTW to just being somebody who had one story to tell and she had told it.

But I do seem to remember, from reading the book of her collected letters, that she generally used as an excuse for not writing another book that the demands on her time that GWTW continued to generate made writing impossible. (I'm not doubting that the demands on her time were real, but obviously if she actually wanted to be writing, she would have found a way to do it.) Relating to the person who posted earlier that reading about Mitchell made her seem increasingly unlikable, I know what you mean. From reading that book of her letters, I think you sense that, while she certainly could be a charming, funny, warm person, she also had sort of a chip on her shoulder and a bitterness just below the surface that increasingly took over as time went on. You get the sense that she ended up primarily seeing herself as a victim of GWTW's success rather than a joyful beneficiary, and sort of wallowed in the victimhood. She felt put upon in things small (acquaintances wanting her to address their teas or luncheons and guilt tripping her if she turned them down) to large (pirate editions being published in foreign countries without paying her royalties). It seems as if she was sort of consumed with the pirate edition thing - which, granted, I think any author would be right to feel outraged about and pursue all legal remedies to stop. But, rather than trusting her lawyers to handle it, Mitchell really seems to have invested a lot of energy in all the twists and turns of it and her sense of grievance about it.

And, just to play armchair psychologist for a minute... I also think it's interesting that, if I remember correctly, she never expresses in the letters any bad feeling about the thing that was really the costliest to her - having sold the film rights to Selznick soon after publication for a relative pittance that turned out to be far, FAR less than they were worth. God knows how much she could have made by waiting a few more months or even a year, when the mammoth books sales would have had the studios in a bidding war offering her mammoth sums, or even a percentage of the film profits. (Did any authors of source material - novelists, playwrights, etc. - get percentages of the film profits at that time? Whether they did or not, I think the unprecedented GWTW sales would have given Mitchell the power to demand whatever she wanted for the rights - and think how much that percentage would have ended up raking in!) But of course, that costly decision gave Mitchell nobody to blame - she made it of her own free will, so expressing bitterness about it would only have been blaming herself. So I sometimes wonder whether her huge personal investment in the piracy fight might have been somewhat related to unexpressed (maybe even repressed?) regret about how much money she had lost out on from the film rights - that perhaps it infused her with an exceptionally burning passion to make sure every dollar she was entitled to from the book made its way to her, to make up for all the money that didn't come her way from Hollywood.

This is pure, idle hypothesizing, though!

R282, I posted that she seemed hard to like - which I still hold - she was very high strung and her husband wasn't far behind. But I read that book I referenced in another post and many of your observations intersect.

First, the lot of them were bitter about the movie sales (though she later received a subsequent $50,000 from Selznick and Jock Whitney as a thank you.) But they acknowledged nobody forced them to sign the contract.

Second, part of the thing that prohibited her from really settling on writing was that they did take on so much of the copyright policing themselves... but in her defence, the contract wtih MacMillan gave her ownership/responsibility for the foreign rights and her contract with Selznick obligated her to enforce copyright/protect her foreign interests to protect the value of his interest.

Part of her problem was in the 1940s (and this is before the war complicated things) most publishing companies were independent... even if they shared the same name. So she contracted with MacMillan in the US, in Canada, in the UK and MacMillan wasn't everywhere in the world, so she had to deal with other publishers. Even more, and this point is made quite clearly in the book, there weren't a lot of US based law firms with experience or affiliates in international copyright law. Funnily enough, that the US would not sign the Berne Convention (governing international copyright etc.) was also a major source of problems for her as the person contractually obligated to protect/police copyright.

It's quite fascinating to read something and realize, in our age of global everything (like law firms and publishing companies), that not all that long ago it was almost a country by country business environment for almost every service or enterprise.

Would an Irish immigrant like Scarlett's father really have been accepted into Southern society so easily? Is this touched on more in the book? Not a flaw, but just something I've been curious about. I guess he either converted to a Protestant denomination, or was one of the few Irish that weren't Catholic.

R284, the majority of Irish immigrants to the USA were Protestant. In the Old South, Protestant Irish outnumbered Catholic Irish by about three to one.

Gerald O'Hara, however, was supposed to be a devout Catholic. I think his wife converted to Catholicism. The O'Hara girls were raised as Catholics and Careen ended up becoming a nun. Southern plantation society presumably cared more about wealth than religion.

No wait, wasn't Ellen Robillard a French Catholic? That would explain a certain lack of scandal over her marriage to Gerald O'Hara.

Gerald and Ellen were both born and raised Catholic. r284, your questions are extensively answered in Chapter III of the book, which is devoted to Gerald and Ellen's backstory. It basically has to do with a big thing of Mitchell's that the screenplay doesn't really try to convey - that the North Georgia areas of Clayton County and Atlanta are younger, fresher, more rough-around-the-edges, and less staid and stuffy and tradition-bound than Savannah or Charleston. So it's a place where Gerald could be accepted into society. (If I'm remembering correctly, the Wilkeses are supposed to be descended from Virginians, which explains their "other"-ness and intellectualism compared to the rest of Clayton County.)

Scots-Irish didn't self-identify as Irish.

Yes, the Wilkeses were Viriginia... at least long dead Mrs. Wilkes was... and on the basis she made you or broke you in Clayton County society... she pronounced Gerald a gentleman and he was in.

[quote]This is a long thread, but hopefully it's been pointed out numerous times that the way it sanitizes slavery is absolutely disgusting.

If only Uncle Tom's Cabin weren't such a chore to get through!

Even had Margaret Mitchell taken a harsher view on slavery, Gone With the Wind is nothing more than a literary box of bonbons. It shouldn't be taken seriously as history.

Never seen it, Is it good?

If you're talking about the book and slavery, Mitchell's portrayal of slavery wasn't historically accurate. It was a nostalgic racist revision of history popular in the South at the time.

If you go back and read actual accounts of women living on plantations in the Ante Bellum South, they are much more ambivalent about the subject.

The slaves are far too intelligent.

Are you kidding, R240? Jeffrey Lynn was a void who sucked the life out of every movie he was in. He nearly ruined "Four Daughters".

[quote]while she certainly could be a charming, funny, warm person, she also had sort of a chip on her shoulder and a bitterness just below the surface that increasingly took over as time went on.

Hmmmmmm.

FLAW: The Tarleton Twins, though they had a sense of humor, should nevertheless have projected physical attractiveness. The guys who play them in the movie, though attractive men, look goofy in the wigs and sound goofy in the line readings and end up seeming more like a joke, not like people Scarlett would find it amusing enough to toy with. And even more pressure is on sinfe Rafe and Cade Calvert and Joe and Tony Fontaine are cut from the film. So we lose the whole Clayton County community of the hot frat/jock studs, which is then essential to understand why it is so unusual, and discouraged, that Scarlett, who has so many horny frat/jock studs to choose from, chooses the dreamy outsider of the society.

If you want to know why Leslie Howard was a popular choice to play Ashley, check out PYGMALION, which he made only a year before GWTW. Of course a man who is old enough to play Henry Higgins is too old to play Ashley. But Howard is much more handsome and sexier than Rex Harrison. You can totally see why Eliza would pick him over Freddy (which she does in the film, though not in the play.) Howard was one of few leading men in 1939 who could play a dreamboat who was also an egghead. He'd have been perfect for Ashley if he were twenty years younger.

r79 That is not true at all. One of the reasons westerns are no longer popular is because of the depiction of native Americans. I realize this is a late response, but this comment is simply false.

I'd say a flaw was not having Judy Garland play Scarlett's sister Careen.

They had wanted her to play this rather smallish role, and she would have been excellent, and part of the two biggest films of the year if not of all time. Alas, she was already too busy with "The Wizard of Oz", and "Babes in Arms" that year. Still, I wish they had been able to squeeze her in!

[quote]Ona Munson deserved the Academy Award for best supporting actress. That she wasn't even nominated showed the depth of homophobia in Hollywood.

Wasn't Hattie McDaniel, who won the Supporting Oscar for GWTW, a lesbian/bisexual?

A big flaw for me is that there are no battle scenes like in the book. It would've been cool to see Ashley and Rhett in battle, and also some action would've relieved us from the tedium of the hoemfront scenes.

I don't know why people get upset when people note that the film was white southern racist propaganda.

I am black and I still enjoy the film, but I am not pretending that the movie was not racist just because I love the film. And simply having nice or heroic black characters doesn't make the film less racist. If anything it makes it MORE racist.

And just because it is from the perspective of a white woman doesn't mean they had to depict the slaves -- or servants as they called them (another problem)doesn't justify anything.

And the idea that it should be read in schools for historical purposes is histeriacal. Its only value historically speaking is that it was a best seller.But in terms of understanding race relations, there really is nothing to learn unless you are trying to get your students to understand how deluded rich white southerners are.

I don't know if it is because it is in color, but the film doesn't seem like it was made in the late 1930s. It feels very modern. One of the reasons why it is still loved today.

[quote]And the idea that it should be read in schools for historical purposes is histeriacal. Its only value historically speaking is that it was a best seller.But in terms of understanding race relations, there really is nothing to learn unless you are trying to get your students to understand how deluded rich white southerners are.

The battle sequences in the book (which were left out of the movie) are very en pointe. Mitchell painstakingly researched each significant skirmish, so at least that aspect is a good way to teach about the Civil War. When you read the book, you also get the history lesson of each battle.

"there really is nothing to learn unless you are trying to get your students to understand how deluded rich white southerners are. "

FYI, I saw the movie and read the book as an impressionable teenager, and that is EXACTLY what I learned from it.

I'm white and grew up in suburban California, there was no consciousness of this stuff in the local culture.

r114, I think they should have cut Bonnie from the movie altogether and just had Scarlett's miscarriage (which Rhett basically caused) be the final tragedy which tore the couple apart. That way, Melanie's death straight after Bonnie's doesn't seem so tacked on.

What's sad is THEY STILL ARE DELUDED, the pack of them.

Leslie Howard was SO miscast as Ashley. At the beginning of the novel he is the same relative age as the Tarleton twins: 19 or 20. A very young man. Howard looked nothing less than middle-aged. Ashley was "southern gentleman" through and through...and he has a British accent? Howard hated playing Ashley; he knew he was totally wrong for the role. Actually, all the young men in the movie looked much older than the ages they were supposed to be. The Tarleton twins, who were 19, look at least 30.

In the book Melanie does not die immediately after Bonnie. Some time elapses; at least three months. That's how far along Melanie is when she miscarries. Indeed that is what kills her: a miscarriage. In the movie she just collapses and next time you see her she's on her deathbed. But no reason for her imminent death is given, maybe because you could not even SAY the word "miscarriage" in a movie back then. On the stairs Rhett says to Scarlett "cheer up...maybe you'll have an accident." In the book he says "cheer up...maybe you'll have a miscarriage." The word was obviously forbidden.

Poor Cathleen Calvert. Her fiance is killed at Gettysburg. Her father and brother also die in the war. After the surrender all that's left of her family is her brother Cade, who is dying of illness. Her Yankee stepmotfher doesn't give a damn about her; she takes her children (Cathleen has four half-sisters) and goes back North. With Cade dying, Cathleen marries their Yankee white trash overseer Jonas Hilton; it seems like her only option left. There is no one to take care of her but him. After Cade dies, Cathleen sinks into the level of "poor white"; she comes to Gerald's funeral looking unkempt and completely changed from the pretty belle she used to be. Later Hilton mortgages her family home and loses it. They have to leave and nobody knows where they go to. The downfall of the Calvert family, particularly Cathleen, is one of the saddest episodes in GWTW.

I didn't have any issue with Leslie Howard, i thought he looked 30-32 and had no idea he was 40. I don't see what others do.

I see the bump 3 year old threads troll is back.

And what is wrong with bumping old threads if someone wants to make a comment?

Why are the reply numbers backwards upthread?

If only George Cukor had been given the chance to finished all of it.

R205, On Melanies deathbed, Scarlett you...you and Ashley. She may have been simple milquetoast and naive, but she was No fool.

In the book Rhett does not want a divorce, but will come back from time to time for appearances sake.I'm sure on one of those visits,after both had mellowed, SHE GOT HIM BACK. DAMMIT.

Not enough car chases. What's the point of going to a movie if there are no car chases? That movie sucked.

"On Melanies deathbed, Scarlett you...you and Ashley. She may have been simple milquetoast and naive, but she was No fool.

In the book Rhett does not want a divorce, but will come back from time to time for appearances sake.I'm sure on one of those visits,after both had mellowed, SHE GOT HIM BACK. DAMMIT."

Melanie said "Ashley and you" not because she knew they had the hots for each other. She said it in connection with her promise from Scarlett to "look after" him, that is, make sure his business doesn't fail. "Ashley isn't practical", she said. She also said "don't ever let him know." That is, don't ever let him know that she's watching out for him; it would hurt his masculine pride.

Scarlett is certainly going to TRY and get Rhett back but as Molly Haskell, her book "Frankly, My Dear", questioned how “inveterate hopefuls among Mitchell’s fans and the best-selling sequel to the contrary, can anyone over the mental age of fifteen believe that the star-crossed lovers will ‘get together’ one day?" If there was one aspect of Rhett Butler's personality that was undeniable it was his honesty. He always told it like it was. And he told Scarlett his love for her "wore out (like hers for Ashley did) " and that it was over. He didn't care about what she did or where she went. And he definitely was never going to have sex with her again. He said that even before he told her 'I don't give a damn." Rhett Butler meant what he said. Only silly romantics think Rhett and Scarlett got back together. But it was definitely over. Of course Scarlett being Scarlett she doesn't accept that and plans to go to Tara to get her bearings and plot a "campaign" to get Rhett back. But it's not going to happen. That is so very plain.

Other than when that town burned down, the CGI effects were terrible.

Leslie Howard was too old to play Ashley, but they needed someone to be so bland in the film. Scarlett only wanted him because he was basically the only eligible bachelor in the county who didn't fall to her charms. Every other bachelor basically turned to mush when she batted her eyes at them. She wanted what she couldn't have. She then began to make him into her prince charming, just like any teenaged girl does. She overlooked the fact that they had nothing in common, he was dull as watching paint dry, he was always talking about honor, dreaming, etc. Scarlett was a pragmatist and didn't understand sitting and dreaming about stuff. She got shit done. I think towards the end the book, Scarlett realizes that she basically fantasized about Ashley, wasting a lot of time on someone who she basically couldn't stand (once she took her blinders off).

Ashley didn't really change after the war. He was really unsuited to be a businessman, he was bred to be a southern gentleman. I think he could maybe handle being a teacher or professor. He didn't have a practical bone in his body.

Scarlett realized also that losing Melanie was like losing her mother all over again. Melanie had a stabilizing effect on Scarlett; Melanie always had Scarlett's back. When Scarlett killed the Yankee soldier at Tara, Melanie was right there to help her. Melanie wasn't as lost after the war as Ashley, but she maintained the polite attitude of a southern lady. Scarlett had all those people who depended upon her and did what she needed to do to keep the wolf at bay. I think deep down Scarlett knew she wasn't a "real lady" like Ellen or Melanie, but having money she could act like lady of the manor. Ellen and Melanie could live in squalor and still act like ladies; Scarlett could not. I think she also rejected Rhett because clearly he wasn't a gentleman, and she didn't want the reminder that they were two of a kind. He was fun until he called her on her own shit, then she acted offended because she really wanted to be thought of as a grand lady (without actually having to act like one or do the things that grand ladies did).

Scarlett keeps having a dream in the book, where she's running in a cold, dense fog. I think it's the way of showing she's desperately searching for something - perhaps real love. She wants to love someone, but she doesn't really know how. I think she loved her father. She idolized Ashley, had some sort of adoration for her mother. Perhaps because her mother had repressed all her feelings (I think someone said she was joyless but dutiful) after Philippe, her true love died, maybe that made Scarlett all that more needy. She had to have all the men in the county wanting her, she had to have the most beautiful house, clothes, etc.

Not enough gay people.

Scarlett and her sisters don't really look alike. I read somewhere that Elizabeth Taylor was briefly considered to play one of the sisters and I'm not sure if that's true or not but looks-wise it would have been convincing.

Actually I'm just googling now and I never realized how beautiful Ann Rutherford was too.

She would have been another sought after beauty at the picnic as well.

Elizabeth Taylor was born in 1932 and would have been too young.

Yeah, I remember that was pretty much the problem R314. That and maybe she would have been too beautiful?

I should have googled before I posted, because it seems people wanted her to play the role of Bonnie Blue, but E's mother wouldn't let her audition.

About V. Elizabeth said, "Vivien Leigh was my heroine. She was innocence on the verge of decadence, always there to be saved."

Actually, Rhett does admit before the end that he loves Scarlett - the night of Ashley's party when she comes home and he is drunk (the night he raped her or whatever). He goes on and on about how right they are for each other and how miserable she would be with Ashley and admits then he loves her. Again, in the book, the next morning when Scarlett wakes up and he is gone, she remembers the night before and at first is mortified that no lady could hold her head up after spending such a night, a hint at how great it was and the passion she feels. She also remembers that Rhett told her he loved her and that now she had him where she wanted him, which is exactly what he was worried about. He is gone for three days and when he returns, he tells her he has been with Belle Watling and makes it seem like what happened between them was just one of those things. He can tell she is not going to tell him she loves him. At the final scene when he tells her his love wore out finally he admits that when he returned that day he was shaking in his boots and hoping for some sign for her that she felt the same way but she did not give one.

The end was rushed since Melanie's death occurred at least a year after Bonnie died. The biggest flaw in the book for me was the portrayal of how happy slaves were and that the North and Reconstruction ruined their relationship with their masters (gag). Mitchell even has a line in the book that "the better class of them scorned freedom and suffered along with their white masters". Tony Fontaine (a character who did not make it to the screen version) complains about the rebellious blacks who have forgotten everything we have done for them". Lines like that make it impossible for me to read this book again. Also the justification of the Klan! Overall I would recommend people reading it anyway. For the most part it is a good read and the civil war battles and the condition of the South after the war are accurate.

" The biggest flaw in the book for me was the portrayal of how happy slaves were and that the North and Reconstruction ruined their relationship with their masters (gag). Mitchell even has a line in the book that "the better class of them scorned freedom and suffered along with their white masters". Tony Fontaine (a character who did not make it to the screen version) complains about the rebellious blacks who have forgotten everything we have done for them". Lines like that make it impossible for me to read this book again. "

It didn't depict "how happy slaves were." That's a misconception of GWTW. Some of the them stay with their masters, but most of them run off with the Yankees, so it's not like all the slaves were depicted as loyal and content. And the attitudes and ideas in the book come from the perspective of white Southern slave owers; of course they're going to think that the "better class" of blacks stay with their masters and in Tony Fontaine's case, believe that whites had done a lot for them for taking care of them.

But for some odd reason, people think GWTD is racist because it has people in it who think slavery is fine and view blacks as inferior. It was set in the SOUTH during the CIVIL WAR, for Christ's sake! The main characters are all white, well-off slave owners. Are they supposed to be in favor of civil rights, people of that type in that era? Really?

GWTW is a work of fiction, a very entertaining, engrossing novel. That's all it should be taken as. It's not a historical document. I can't believe that there are people who seem to think that it is.

I remember reading (although I've been unable to locate the reference) that after Alfred Hitchcock was shown the movie, he asked Selznick, about the Battle of Atlanta field hospital scene, why he didn't have Leigh wear a red dress, so she would stand out from the crowd as the camera slowly took in the enormity of the scene, and Selznick was horrified that something so elementary never occurred to him during the filming. Hitchcock was effective because he never forgot really simple details like that.

[quote]GWTW is a work of fiction, a very entertaining, engrossing novel. That's all it should be taken as. It's not a historical document. I can't believe that there are people who seem to think that it is.

At least y'all can actually buy that movie legally.

Ashley needs to be much more charming and handsome...why was Leslie hired? I don't know who should have been hired but not Leslie Howard.

Gone with the Wind, both book and movie, should not be perceived as historical fiction but a modern myth. The characters and their conflicts are mythical American versions of the Norse gods.

r317, do you agree that Bonnie should not have been included in the movie and instead, Scarlett miscarrying Rhett's baby after her fall on the stairs would have been enough to devastate him? Because as we have said, Melanie's collapse and death in the movie seems to happen before Bonnie's remains are even given a burial and then Rhett leaves, which doesn't make sense because the child hasn't yet been buried surely? Or did this happen somewhere in between? After Melanie's collapse, is the next scene of everyone at her bedside supposed to have happened some weeks later?

Some bad edits. Scarlett at the BBQ is supposed to be looking at Ashley and Melanie walking. It's badly edited. Same when Scarlett takes a nap and she says " Who cares" . It's badly edited from the scene just before.

The major flaw is, it was taken as non-fiction, when in fact it fiction...the fictionalized interpretation of the ante bellum south by a white woman. We are still paying for this major mistake !

It's an amazing movie. It just pulls you in... the actors, the aura, the energy. I can't deny it.

Careen ran off and became a nun, poor dear.

[quote]Leslie Howard would've been perfect if he'd been the age he was during Petrified Forest.

Petrified Forest was only 3 year before GWTW, I doubt it would have made a difference. He was 46 when he did GWTW, and 43 when he did Petrified Forest.

Too old for Ashley.

[quote] Why would slaves fight for a system that enslaved them?

Because some slave owners actually treated their slaves well and the slaves became attached to the family that owned them. Also, some of the slaves knew that if they were freed and turned out to survive on their own they would have a much worse time of it than they did under the slave system. They had no education, and on their own they would have no place to live, no money, no jobs. It's very similar in my opinion why some people like living in a communist system.

Ashley ruined the movie for me. No way would a woman like Scarlett fall for a man of his looks and temperament. He seemed like 20 years too old for the part.

I disagree, R330. Someone young and immature like Scarlett would fall for someone she viewed as intellectual and introspective. Sort of like the Arthur Miller/Marilyn Monroe dynamic.

I am 5 years too late, but I enjoyed this thread and hope folks are still interested.

There a few things that could be considered flaws when comparing the novel and movie. My first question was why the film left out Will Benteen. When he was deleted it obliterated the real reason Gerald O'Hara died and also what happened to Scarlett's sister Sueellen. They removed Scarlett's two children by her first 2 husbands. My guess is the producers felt to include them made her too much of a villain. She was a horrible mother to one child.... to neglect three was monstrous. In addition, it was probably deemed unacceptable in 1937 to make it clear that Scarlett had sex with 3 husbands. It might be debatable whether she loved Rhett, but she definitely didn't care about the first 2. But she had sex with them all anyway! (GASP)

As to the casting of Leslie Howard, the only thing that bothered me was his British accent. Otherwise, I think he was the perfect Ashley. Older actors have always played much younger characters in Hollywood. They usually get around that by removing all references to ages. Vivien Leigh and Olivia deHavilland weren't really 15 and 16, either.

Finally, the racism. I don't call this a flaw. This story is told from the vantage of confederates and people embroiled in the lunacy of trying to hold onto a way of thinking and living that was no longer possible or acceptable. Margeret Mitchell might have romanticized aspects of slavery, but she also ridiculed it. It was her literary SMH at slavery and the evils of the civiil war. Every time Rhett Butler makes a comment or speech about The Cause it is with undisguised contempt and irony.

The story is Scarlett's too...the thoughtless, sheltered product of a slave-holding family. From those angles, racism is an integral character in the story.

I remember when I saw Gone With the Wind as a child and being completely horrified. I was incensed at the supposedly comic characters of Prissy and Pork. I thought I would throw up at the way they made the black people appear idiotic and childish, with the possible exception of Mammy, who was tough and smart, but even she didn't even rank a real first name. It was years before I could watch the movie again and several more years before I read the novel. I finally came to peace with this American classic. I realized it is a work of fiction. It doesn't pretend to present a balanced or historically accurate picture of the way all whites felt about black people or slavery. I don't think the word abolitionist is mentioned once. It is a story told with words that can make you cringe. But again, bigotry was a fact of life for these characters. That is not a flaw but intentional, in my opinion.