Vivien Leigh /Bette Davis lifelong feud.

"I could just about stand to look at Joan Crawford's face at 5am but Bette Davis? Forget it!"

To Davis, not ' david'.

And your source OP?

The internet...

"She was convinced it was on purpose. After that there was the famous quote ' and can just about watch Crawford's face without makeup at 5 in the morning, let alone Davis's "

I read the above statement 3 times and it still doesn't make any sense to me.

That's not at all how I remember that story went. I recall Davis actually originally being offered the role, before it became firmed up. She turned it down, went to England and, while gone, the role was given to Vivien.

Source: random memories / internet

Bette Davis STORMED out of the Oscar ceremony when she lost to Vivien Leigh for "Gone With The Wind"

Funny interview with Bette Davis talking about the book being optioned for her - love watching interviews with her.

Interesting article. I remember maybe in her book or somewhere that there really was no feud at all beyond just upset about not taking the role, things going so well, and then her not getting it for Jezebel, etc. From what I've read, didn't seem like a Vivien Leigh thing at all.

What was Leigh's "so and so". This post is confusing.

Bette Davis was fiercely competitive with actresses of the same stature. The only exception was Olivia de Havilland, but Bette was never threatened by Olivia. She hated Vivien Leigh, because of the Scarlett O’Hara role. When Vivien was considered for Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, Bette said Vivien was temperamental, was British and could not authentically portray a Southern character.

Bette hated Miriam Hopkins, even more so than Joan Crawford. Of course, she despised Joan Crawford, but she loathed Barbara Stanwyck. She fought with Susan Hayward, but Susan was a scrappy fighter from the Brooklyn slums and she didn’t take Bette’s abuse.

Publicly, she admired Katharine Hepburn, but privately she was jealous of her. Hepburn starred in higher quality films and television movies. Also, she had success in starring in Broadway plays. Bette didn’t get those prized roles because she needed quick money from lackluster projects. She insisted on supporting her parasitic daughter and her lazy son in law. Also, Bette could be difficult, which is probably the reason she wasn’t offered high quality projects.

They were both nutcase alchoholics. And two of the most uniquely talented actresses who ever lived.

I am sure about the ' Notley' anecdote though I don' t remember where I got it from, but I know that Leigh did that sort of things to several People. She found it amusing.

Was Bette ever in serious consideration for Scarlett O'Hara?

Kate was smart to never have children. Bette took a bunch of shit roles in her later career to support her lazy daughter and son-in-law. If she'd cut them off, she wouldn't have had to do so much shit just for the money.

I always loved Bette Davis. I love her personality, and so many movies. I loved when she was very old, (after she'd had her stroke) talking to Johnny Carson, about how the worst person she'd ever worked with was Faye Dunaway.

She WAS actually cast as a package with Errol Flynn as Rhett by L. B Mayer in exchange for MGM funds, but flatly refused to do it with Flynn whom she despised. And was passed over for Hepburn who was Cukor's choice. This time, Selznick himself put his foot down. Hepburn stormed to his office for an explanation, arguing that Mitchell had practically written the part with her in mind. Selznick replied (in her own words) ' my dear, I simply cannot see Clark Gable chasing you for ten years ' LMAO.

Hepburn was a great actress, but she was not right at all for Scarlett. It would've been terrible miscasting.

Hepburn was not right for it, but I don't know if Davis was, either. Just rewatched it the other day, and Leigh's performance really holds up.

' Wah, Wah, Wah... '

I doubt Hepburn could have pulled off the southern accent. I'm sorry to state the obvious, but I'm sure the root of the hatred or feud was jealousy. Vivian was drop-dead gorgeous, Bette was...not. At all.

Bette Davis was not a beautiful woman, or even all that pretty - in fact, she was almost homely - and she was well-aware of that. Her lack of real beauty really worked to her advantage. She never would've had the career she did if she'd been conventionally attractive.

But Davis got Jezebel (and an Oscar for it), so she had really nothing to complain about. Jezebel was referred to as the poor man's GWTW.

However, I can understand Davis being jealous of Leigh's looks. Vivian was one of the most beautiful actresses ever and was still beautiful when Davis was doing the Baby Jane and The Nanny roles.

Hepburn would have been a fucking MESS in GWTW. She coudn't have made it work with any of the other cast member and the film would be un-watchable today. Vivien Leigh was hit-or-miss but as Scarlett she was perfection. She looked the part, she understood it, she fought for every nuance of it (her eyeroll when Melly gives her wedding ring to the cause KILLS me every fucking time. It's so subtle , and yet it just steales the entire scene) and she knew how to work a cast. Plus she had been raised a princess with colored servants in a tropical country so she was effortless. Davis was a great film actress, I absolutely vote for ' baby Jane' as one of the top 3 best female performances ever on film, but she coudn' t touch Leigh. In fact, no one could. You cannot equal a lifetime expertise on the stage in the most difficult parts, with partners the caliber of Olivier, Gielgud, Novello, and consorts. And she knew how to tone that down for film acting. And there was the exquisite beauty of course. Davis as Scarlett doesn't work either. She 's simply not attractive nor refined enough. I Wonder what would' ve been Leigh's career without GWTW though...

She could still give Natalie Wood a good run for her money in the 60's..Davis and Hepburn, not so much...

That casting in GWTW was perfection except for Leslie Howard, who was far too old to play Ashley, particularly in the early part of the film when Ashley is supposed to be in his early 20s. Howard himself didn't want the part, but took it when they offered him the chance to direct a film as part of the deal.

Howard was a hot favorite of this era and all the leading ladies of the day swooned over his bland ass (that is, until they met him, he was reputedly rude and unpleasant) the way they did over Redford's in the 70's. He was really considered HOT STUFF. Davis, Leigh, Bergman, Hepburn (the real one, not the fashion plate) all had a nasty brush with him. He was also a huge slut and fucked ALL of Hollywood 's female lot. He didn't care about the movie and didn' t even bother the read. The only one who cared was Olivia. Leigh hated the director and pushed him to a nervous breakdown, she only wanted to finish ASAP so that she could fuck Olivier who was doing a play in New York. Gable was forced into the part and refused to take any kind of a southern accent, or cry, or take second billing after some dame. Howard was the school years crush of Leigh and she had married his dopelgänger. She was bitterly disappointed by him IRL and hated his guts.

Grace Kelly is the actual source of a that quote. Kelly was filming The Swan for MGM and Crawford was back on the lot for Torch Song.

Not so R27, it was Leigh’s when she was offered the part of de havilland in 'hush hush sweet Charlotte' '. It was a private remark to a writer friend who put it in his column. Davis fired back by saying that Leigh would be even more difficult than Crawford, and that she wanted her old friend Olivia to take the part. Kelly miss-goody-two-shoes would never say anything like that to a journalist.

[quote]Bette Davis was not a beautiful woman, or even all that pretty - in fact, she was almost homely - and she was well-aware of that. Her lack of real beauty really worked to her advantage. She never would've had the career she did if she'd been conventionally attractive.

The same phenomenon applies to Meryl Streep today.

Bette Davis was cast in Tennessee Williams' The of The Iguana on Broadway, but it was not quite the lead role, as Davis left the play early

The musical was Miss Moffat, originally for Mary Martin, who could sing and act. I doubt the musical ever made it to Broadway.

I am not a fan of Hepburn, but Bette Davis should never have chosen a freaking Broadway musical intended for Mary Martin.

Meryl streep didn't do anything in her career that comes close to baby jane or the iconic margo channing . I don't think any of her performances will stand the test of time like Davis's. She will be remembered as a versatile and enduring star, but what is her finest moment ? Or her classic ? Out of Africa ? Puh-lease. 'Prada' should have been a tour de force, and she was meh and un-fun. And you can always see the weels turning clic clic clic

Young Vivien Leigh looks like a young Elizabeth McGovern in R26.

What pun?

R29- You are wrong. In the late 1970's Meryl Streep was BEAUTIFUL. Look at her in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979).

No R29 is quite right -- Streep has never been beautiful or pretty. She is very much like Davis -- an odd face that doesn't really work, which is one reason why she's been able to do so many different roles, because, somehow, she works it.

But beautiful? God, no.

Leigh turned into a gigantic bitch during the year long shooting. She routinely told everyone to fuck off, forced everybody to work 6 days a week 12hours a day so that she could finish earlier, said to anyone who had ears, incuding Hollywood columnists, that Gable stank something awful, slapped butterfly mcqueen so hard you can still see her hand blood printed on the poor girls's cheek after the film has been colorwashed twice and digitalised, and depleted 3 directors. She demanded her own dressing room while Olivia was dressing on the lot with the extras , with her own set of china, silverware and staff. She was such a humongus pain in the ass that Selznick refused her a share of the profit until he relented in the early 60's. Until that she had made 75 000 dollars out of GWTW, flat, against Gable's 125 000 for a month shoot, plus the shares.

Bette wasn't right for the part. She was compelling and talented but the role of Scarlett O'Hara required a beauty.

They were lucky to find Vivien, who was out-of-this-world beautiful, extremely well suited for the part, and a great talent. She glues the movie together, otherwise it's one big hot mess.

Although in the first line of the novel, Margaret Mitchell writes that "Scarlet O'Hara was not beautiful . . ."

Davis's movie Jezabel was literally an audition for the roll of Scarlett which she desperately wanted. Its the same character. Ironically, she won the academy award for Jezabel which nixed her from the list of hopefuls. Stoopid Oscars.

Davis would have been as laughable as Crawford as Scarlett.

At least Crawford knew her limitations and begged LB for Crystal Allen instead.

I think Leigh fit the description really well. She was not CLASSICALLY beautiful and was not considered that until she became the standard for beauty. Garbo was considered the peak of beauty with her perfectly symetrical feature. Leigh was considered extremely pretty and exotic rather than beautiful, in her youth. She was a bit strange looking when very young.

So many of these posts are amusing fiction. I'd correct you but some of you sound tiresome in your relishing of bitchy quotes possessing all the credibility of "Hollywood Babylon".

I also read for the part. The bigwigs said I was too crass!

Even Lucille Ball read for Scarlett.

No Helen, it was because you kept interjecting the n-word into the script when it wasn't even in there to begin with!

How often did Bette accost random delivery men on the street, pull them into the bushes, and beg them to penetrate her? I think the answer would be “zero times.”

I also read for the part. I improvised a bit where Scarlett eats some wild corn.

Unlike 99% of the posters here R47, like you of all people should mind...

Why would Bette have a feud with Vivian? It's unlikely their paths ever crossed much. She never made a film with Vivian, nor did they ever work at the same studio (as she did with Miriam Hopkins and Joan Crawford). I doubt they were ever in love with the same man. In fact, I doubt they ever spent that much time on the same continent.

I tried to throw a drink in her face but she gulped the damn thing!

Enlarge OP's picture and see what's in Bette's eyes R50. It says it all. How do you think Bette, The 1rst Lady of the screen, took the ' outstanding artist of our Day ' captions, for a woman who hardly bothered to make one movie every decade ? She had cause to resent Vivien. Anyway, The cukor/leigh/Hepburn/dietrich clique detested Davis.

R36 Read the massive book Memo from David O. Selznick : The Creation of "Gone with the Wind" because Vivien was well liked on the set of GWTW because of her incredible work ethic. Selznick and de Havilland have both talked how they admired Vivien for working so hard, for so long. She was in almost every scene of that year long shoot.

And as crazy as Vivien got later in life, people still adored her.

No one adored Davis. Ever.

When did Dietrich ever meet Hepburn, Leigh or Cukor?

R47 Of course Bette didn't do that because she knew she'd soon be covered in their vomit.

Davis had particularly high praise for Marlene for her tireless work at The Hollywood Canteen.

I always thought one thing that drove Leigh crazy was continuing to try to be a theater star like Olivier, all the time denying that her real best talent was for making films. She was a natural movie star, but held back to please Olivier. He never was as good onscreen, and was never as big a film star as she was.

Legendary movie performances by Bette Davis : Of Human Bondage, Jezebel, Dark Victory, The Letter, Little Foxes, Now Voyager, The Corn is Green, All About Eve, What ever Happened to Baby Jane. 2 Oscars, 11 nomination.

Legendary movie performances by Vivian Leigh: Gone With the Wind, Waterloo Bridge, That Hamilton Woman, Streetcar Named Desire. 2 Oscars, 2 nomination.

Vivian didn't have Davis's range or career. On stage Leigh was considered an adequate actress. Her theater voice was weak Leigh was very aware of her stage shortcomings. She got great parts because of the theater power of her husband.

GWTW was revered for decades, but it's very out of fashion today. It's been "cancelled."

Leigh spent much of career on stage compared to most movie stars. And Olivier loved the fact that her stage reviews were mediocre. He adored Tynan for ripping into her though what Ken really wanted was to fuck Larry.

Davis wasn't homely, she just wasn't conventionally attractive.

All About Eve wouldn't have worked with a homely actress. Davis brings her own sort of glamor to the role and completely makes it her own. Now picture Hepburn, Marie Dressler or Greer Garson in the role and you'll get the point.

Selznick and de havilland liked Vivien well.. I think Selznick was grateful that she carried the picture, and de havilland, well, liked EVERY ONE. Ask Evelyn Keyes, or Butterfly, or the crew and the runners if they liked Vivien well... R53.R54, Dietrich lived in Paris and was very close friends with Leigh. She was a regular at Notley Abbaye. There are several anecdotes involving her and Leigh. She was the first to introduce the audience clapping on her concert recordings, and she wanted Leigh and Noël Coward to be the first ones to hear it. They laughed at her and told her she was mad... Another time they were having dîner and dietrich complimented leigh on her beautiful hair . She asked what kind of pills she was taking for having such healthy hair . Leigh bursted laughing and lifted her Alice band wig to reveal she was growing bald. Dietrich wore the same kind of device often after that.

[quote] When Vivien was considered for Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, Bette said Vivien was temperamental, was British and could not authentically portray a Southern character.

How could Bette say that with a straight face, when Leigh had won two Academy Awards, by that point, playing Southern women?

R58 Leigh was considered more than 'adequate' an actress. Some critics didn't like her in the Shakespeare tragedies , but after ' streetcar' she was considered the prima diva of the English stage, along with Peggy Ashcroft.

I've always thought Leigh is overrated in Gone with the Wind. She plays the manipulative flirt too transparently, and becomes annoying. She's only really good in her more serious scenes--especially when she's hiring men at the mill she wons with Frank Kennedy. I love her in almost everything else she did, though.

But I think if you compare Bette Davis's Julie in "Jezebel" to Leigh's Scarlett, Davis is about ten times more com plex and arresting. I don;t know if it's the course material or the director, but I think Davis was just a better actress in the 30s than Leigh was (though Leigh was much more beautiful).

That changed over time, though. Davis became reduced to mostly playing her stock mannerisms by the 1950s and 1960s, whereas Leigh was becoming more nuanced and more interesting.

How many decades ago did they die?

Interesting R65. But GWTW, The movie, was never a oeuvre of nuance or depth, and I think Vivien played Scarlett better than any actress could have. Davis in jezebel was very good but slightly creepy and seemed psychotic in the end. They were both terrific actresses, The best IMO. Much better than Hepburn, who was excellent in non verbal acting and funny, but had a terribly narrow range. I think Leigh 's performance in' 'ship of fools' was very close to Davis's 'baby Jane'. She coudn't do ' Eve' but Davis couldn' t do ' blanche ' so apples and oranges. I love leigh in ' mrs Stone' and she' s quite intriguing in her lost movie ' the deep blue sea'. But with so few credits , she couldn' t hope for more nominations at the oscars. I still think she was robbed for ship of fools.

R65 VL played Scarlett to type. Her flirting was suppose to be over the top and insincere. She was portraying a rural, small town Southern belle, circa 1858. The most popular girl in Clayton county.

[R64] After Streetcar she received her greatest criticisms from Kenneth Tynan and John Gielgud admitted to finding her timid and safe when he directed her in "Twelfth Night". She was never considered to be in the same league as Peggy Ashcroft..

R68 Exactly, there are still "southern belles" who act the same way.

[quote]She WAS actually cast as a package with Errol Flynn as Rhett by L. B Mayer in exchange for MGM funds, but flatly refused to do it with Flynn whom she despised

No she wasn’t. Amazing how stories get twisted. Selznick knew he was over a barrel about Clark Gable, because the public had precast him as Rhett. At one point, when Gable was being difficult, Selznick called Jack Warner and made an inquiry about acquiring Davis and Flynn as a package for Scarlett and Rhett. Bette may have thought she turned it down, but it was never more than a casual discussion between Selznick and Warner.

[quote]She was never considered to be in the same league as Peggy Ashcroft..

On stage maybe. She was brilliant on film, and is rightly a legend on the basis of just two films.

Clark Gable grew-up in a little town on the Ohio River--he could do a facsimile of a Southern accent, although no one in the film had anything remotely resembling a Georgia accent.

I thought Gable was great. Whatever accent he used fooled me.

Vivien Leigh was the perfect screen actress. She's not at the top of AFI's list, but she is the greatest female movie star of all time in my book. So beautiful, so erotic, dark, subtle, troubling and lovely. Her characters are fully realized through technique, but she always imbued them with intriguing inner life too.

R73 That isn't exactly true, many, other than Gable, actually did fairly well at the accents. The film was one of the first ones to actually have an accent specialist on set, Susan Myrick. You have to remember the accents that were not supposed to be 20th century Georgia accents, but 19th century Georgia accents, which were slightly different. In fact if you listen to early recordings of upperclass Americans, regardless of region, Leigh and Howard's mixture of Southern and British is most appropriate, as all the wealthy tended to sound slightly RP in speech.

THIS level of beauty is hard to understand. She could laugh in the face of god if she chose.

[quote] She could laugh in the face of god if she chose.

And as a result He had a nasty little surprise in store for her, in the form of mental illness.

I can't think of another actress that comes close to the natural beauty of Vivien Leigh.

Ahem.

Vivien Leigh was just ok in Tovarich on Broadway. I realize she was not well, and left. I never saw Bette Davis in percent.

Good Lord! Next r81 will tell us he walked out of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theater!

Vivien Leigh was greeted warmly by the Ed Sullivan Show audience when she appeared on the show performing with Jean-Pierre Aumont "Wilkes-Barre, PA" from "Tovarich. Even with your empty second act seat, she and the show were a hit.

Bette Davis also tried her hand at a musical, the review "Two's Company", which did very brisk business until Davis got bored and left the show causing it to close. On stage Davis was a dilettante who got bored with the hard work of eight shows a week quickly after the excitement of opening a show.

R79, I would nominate Isabelle Adjani as one of the few actresses who can compare to Vivien Leigh beauty-wise. I’ve always loved exotic brunettes.

Leigh went 2/2 at the Oscars, but you could make a case that she should have gone 3/3 with her strangely overlooked performance in ‘Waterloo Bridge.’

R83 The weird thing is that, as a bisexual, I tend to be attracted to blond men and women. But, from the first time I saw Vivien Leigh in GWTW, I was mesmerized. The one time I fell completely head over heels for a woman, was in college, and it was precisely because she favored Leigh. Sadly, she was crazier than Leigh ever was.

Davis was never seriously considered--she may have wanted to be, but she knew it wasn't going to happen. Paulette Goddard apparently was the only serious competition for Leigh.

Changing attitudes about the antebellum South aside, the film always seemed like a long drawn out soap opera to me, even many years ago.

Vivien's beauty abandoned her quite prematurely.

R43 you said it, toots. Entertaining fictions, especially the ones about Leigh not being beautiful

OT, but since r85 mentioned Paulette Goddard, I'm curious. I don't think I've ever watched her in a film but I want to.

Anybody have a recommendation?

R88, You've never seen "The Women"?

She's a lot of fun in "Kitty," historical confection with cute Ray Milland, about a guttersnipe who ascends the social ladder. Very stylish and directed by underrated, gay Mitchell Leisen.

She's the second lead in "Hold Back the Dawn," also Leisen (they were all Paramount contractees). It stars Boyer and Livvy and is a relevant, touching film about refugees from Europe, stuck at the US/Mexico border...

Yes she's terrific in The Women. Everyone in it is. Even my straight as straight can be father who only liked detective shows enjoyed it.

Thanks, r90 and r91.

The only starring role of her's that I have seen is Pot O'Gold with Jimmy Stewart, it isn't that great of a film though, so it is hard to judge her in it. Jimmy Stewart said it was the worst film he ever made. She is good in The Women, though.

And her two movies with Chaplin: Modern Times and The Great Dictator. She quite charming in the first one.

I tried that once and suspect it's the worst film of everyone involved in it.

" The Women" and "Kitty" are on my list.

Katharine Hepburn drove Leigh and Olivier to their small wedding at Ronald Colman's ranch in Santa Barbara, and she served as maid of honor. Later, Hepburn wrote of Leigh:

"Vivien, dear Vivien… exquisite actress, thoughtful, fearless, gracious, and enormously kind… A lovely little pink cloud floating through the lives of all her friends, hovering over the setting sun, and thinking of everyone but herself.”

You could check out Goddard in 2 DeMille films: "Reap the Wild Wind" with Ray Milland and John Wayne and "Unconquered" with Gary Cooper. Both in color.

My favorite Paulette Goddard film is Ghost Breakers, with Bob Hope and Willie Best, just a fun and goofy mystery.

There was no feud. OP made this up.

"I've always thought Leigh is overrated in Gone with the Wind." Then you're a fool. Leigh's performance in GWTW is considered the greatest performance from the 1930's and one of the greatest performances of all time by an actress. No one could have done the part as well as she did it.

Yes, if you want to see what Paulette would be like in GWTW, watch her in REAP THE WILD WIND. It's her Scarlett performance.

She's also one of the actresses who did a screen test for GWTW, and that's on YouTube.

I am with R75. AFI 's list is a joke. As a french person, I thank you for bringing up the ghost of Isabelle Adjani R83, but Warren' s donkey dick aside , the only thing she shares with Vivien is a mental illness. She was addiicted to cosmetic surgery even by the time of ' Adèle H', started having work done in her twenties, and it' s caught up in a nasty way. Random film choices, disastrous clashes with the press, unprofessional behaviour on sets and Isabelle Huppert have all taken their toll on her ailing career. She looks freakish and is reduced to ' love letters' level in small town circuits. No Laurence Olivier, no film classics and no stage glory here. Sad

Adele H. has the gorgeous Bruce Robinson who claims to have been sexually harrassed by Zeffirelli on the set of Taming of the Shrew.

Jean-Pierre Aumont wasn't in the Wilkes-Barre number. Leigh did it with a young guy named Byron something.

[quote]Leigh and Howard's mixture of Southern and British is most appropriate,

I don’t hear any British in Leigh’s accent. She paid attention to what Myrick taught her. She only loses her accent once. When Scarlett returns from trying to get Rhett’s help, and Prissy asks if he’s coming, she says “He can’t come. There’s no one to come” and she’s pure Mayfair.

And I don’t hear any Southern in Howard’s - it’s like he’s not even trying.

Bette Davis was always quite rude to her interviewers, no matter who they were. Notice how she talked over Cavett, & broke into his questions before he could even answer them. She was arrogance in action. She thought she was above everyone else. It said a lot about her personality.

R40

Jack L. Warner liked the story, but Warner Bros.'s biggest star Bette Davis was uninterested, and Darryl Zanuck of 20th Century-Fox did not offer enough money. Selznick changed his mind after his story editor Kay Brown and business partner John Hay Whitney urged him to buy the film rights. In July 1936—a month after it was published—Selznick bought the rights for $50,000.[4][5][6]

R85, Bette played basically the same character in "Jezebel".

Bette often said that "Jezebel" made her a star. It not only won her a second Oscar, her salary increased dramatically. It also initiated her affair with director William Wyler, who Bette once described as the love of her life.

I had read that Howard took the part because Selznick promised that he could then produce "Intermezzo," which was Bergman's US film debut.

Vivien Leigh was beautiful but not the most beautiful actress that ever lived (Elizabeth Taylor, Catherine Deneuve, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sharon Stone, to name a few, are/were more beautiful). She was also the opposite of sexy. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Nope.

Well face it, Vivian Leigh's biggest problem was the fact that she was bat shit crazy. Bi-polar 1, 2, 4 & 6. LOL

Catherine Deneuve Elizabeth Taylor stone and pfeiffer are more beautiful than Leigh... Like... In which universel gurlfriend ?

Charlize Theron is the most beautiful modern actress.

Ooookey, time to kill the thread...

Whoever you are, I have always relied on the kindness of strangers...

Those were just examples, r115, there are countless others (ava gardner, grace kelly, ingrid bergman, jacqueline bisset)

No thanks....

Was there anyone Bette Davis [italic]didn't[/italic] feud with?

Gays have to love any woman who could pick up delivery boys who stopped by her gracious Belgravia townhouse and then fucked them in Eaton Square.

Vivien Leigh signed a long contract with MGM to secure the Scarlett role, never intending to make good on it. She wanted Scarlett, but she didn't want to live in California and be at the beck and call of the studio. After filming ended, she went back to England with Olivier and, when the studio begged and pleaded for her to return to Hollywood and make more films, she cited the war in Europe for why she couldn't come back--she had to help dear old Mother England by putting on plays for the people of Britain, keep their spirits up, etc. etc.

Ironically, the harsh conditions in WWII-era England probably made her incipient tuberculosis much worse. If she'd stayed in the hot, dry climate of California and lived the life of a pampered Hollywood star, she probably would have lived longer. She would also have left even more of a legacy: She was meant for film, not stage.

Is it just a myth that she was a nymphomaniac? I haven’t read anything about it that seems legitimate.

Maybe Bette started it as a rumor LOL

No, it's not a myth. But it was more hypersexuality brought on by mania. Quite common. Larry said he was exhausted of trying to satisfy her. And yes, by many accounts of even her close friends - Vivien did engage in many anonymous and inappropriate encounters. She was very indiscreet.

You mean I'm just manic? All this time I've been calling myself a whore.

She was a very modern woman

[quote] Was there anyone Bette Davis didn't feud with?

Among female stars of her own caliber, Olivia de Havilland was really the only one.

And that was only because when the friendship started De Havilland was not a strong actress (she didn't really improve until the 40s when she took serious acting lessons), and so offered no competition; and also because throughout the friendship she hero-worshipped Davis and always spoke of her in public and in person as the better actress.

Bette Davis was what a lot of actresses who were unsure of their own talent aspired to be in the 1930s. i've also heard Irene Dunne say on record she wished she could have been the kind of actress Davis was. Davis was seen as really gutsy and everyone admired her in the 30s; but she was so high-strung and nervy and did not see herself as pretty, so she saw all other leading ladies as competition.

R128, Bette was very fond of Mary Astor. In her Oscar acceptance speech for "The Great Lie", Bette was the only person Mary thanked.

Mary also chose to end her film career with Bette in "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte".

There was no feud- troll

TIME cover:

"Gone before the wind"

During that era, Bette could approximate beauty with the right lighting and make-up.....

But you just know she enjoyed playing Fanny's flip side more....

Bette genuinely WAS beautiful on film in the 30s with the right makeup and lighting--she just was never pretty.

After, I would guess, "Mr. Skeffington" (which is all about a woman losing her beauty), she was no longer beautiful any more, even with all of the best lighting and the best clothes. The years of smoking and hard drinking did a number on her.

I read in some biography that Agnes Moorehead said something like - I got to know the real Bette Davis. She was quite funny, very intense - smoked and drank with the best of the boys - huge potty mouth. She was so focused on doing good work that she just didn't have time during shooting to socialize and be friends. But if you were lucky to get to know her outside work, she was wonderful.

That is not a direct quote, and I'm trying to jog my memory as to where that was from. I can't find it online, but still looking.

Vivien Leigh was born in India to English parents, but sent away to boarding school at the age of 6. It was common for ex-pats to send their children back to the mother country for school, but six was young even by upper-crust standards. She was popular at the school because of her fine manners and intense beauty (evident even as a child), but the transition from the warmth and familiarity of India to the cold routine of a London boarding school must have been a severe shock to a six-year-old's system. She was reunited with her parents a few years later, but the damage would have been done.

If she was already genetically predisposed to manic depression, that kind of trauma may have fired the gun nature loaded.

These Bette Davis "bloopers" are funny

Bette was still looking pretty good in June Bride.

[quote] If she was already genetically predisposed to manic depression, that kind of trauma may have fired the gun nature loaded.

How she must have suffered!

Bette could best be described as glamorous in "All About Eve", not pretty or beautiful.

I like a lot of Davis and Wyler's work, but I thought Jezebel was a drag. The Letter is fantastic: much better story and role.

[quote]The years of smoking and hard drinking did a number on her.

I think that's another reason why her career slowed down. Of course she was getting older and had a reputation as difficult, but in the 1950s (right after AAE) she noticeably aged, and got matronly and haggy-looking pretty fast. "The Star" was only two years after AAE, and she looked like she'd aged ten years.

In terms of looks, Bette seemed to fall off a cliff around the time of All About Eve. The combination of smoking, drinking, pregnancy and severe 50s hair styles really did her in.

Yes, the 50s were not kind to Bette. By the 60s she was really haggard-looking. The booze and cigs really did a number on her looks.

If you watch AAE closely, she's already looking rather jowly. The hairstyle and costumes did a LOT for her in that film.

It's perfect casting, really: Margot Channing is like a once shiny fruit that is just about to start showing bruises and rot. No wonder she is ready to retire and let some younger actress handle the star bullshit.

Davis's marriage to that asshole Gary Merrill also took a toll on her looks. All they did was drink and fight with each other.

After Bette, Gary traded up to Rita Hayworth.

Merrill was sort of handsome, but not much of an actor.

So any stories of Davis and Stanwyck?

I've no doubt that Stanwyck was tough enough to handle any shit Davis wanted to shovel. Missy had a really tough childhood and a very low tolerance for BS.

And apparently was beloved by many people who worked with her, including Fonda and Frank Capra and William Holden.

Before we end this, Paulette Goddard is a stand out in So Proudly We Hail, a war story about nurses in the Pacific during WWII- it's got Claudette Colbert, Veronica Lake, George Reeves. And you get to hear Colbert scream "Dirty Rotten Buzzards" at the Japanese Bombers.

R107, watch the film again. The scene where Scarlett is grinning in bed the morning after Rhett carried her up the stairs and nailed her, she starts singing and her British accent is clear as day.

R150, Bette and Henry Fonda were very close friends, and possibly lovers at one point.

With the line 'It's a little like blockade running' her Brit accent is out in full force.

No one, but no one could have played Scarlett O'Hara as beautifully and electrically as Vivien Leigh. It's not only myth or hyperbole. A beautiful accident. The movie is a soap opera - what epic drama isn't? Still, Vivien Leigh is a three hour living work of ART to watch and wallow in. She is more impressive with each viewing.

Meryl Streep holds the same distinction in Sophie's Choice. Fonda, Dunaway, Streisand, Sally Field? They are laughably wrong AND incapable. No one else could have played Sophie. Even with that, Streep's accomplishment is not as great as Leighs. Vivien was flesh and blood as Scarlett. Meryl was a beautifully constructed puzzle of a performance.

Paulette's screen test starts around 2:49 :

Paulette was Plain.

Davis's opening speech in AAE was the transcription of a rant that Mankiewitcz witnessed in Hepburn 's dressing room during one of her Broadway stints. She was not too happy about it and that contribute to the bad blood between them on the set of Suddenly last summer a few years later

R155, Dunaway's roles in Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, Network and Mommie Dearest are remembered far more than any of Meryl's roles. Especially Chinatown and Mommie Dearest. Meryl's a good actress but like Hepburn said, "tick tick tick." Sometimes, it is so obvious that she is TRYING to inhabit a character and it gets in the way of her performance.

Oh come on R79! Gene Tierney!

R83 Another vote for WATERLOO BRIDGE my favourite performance by Vivien Leigh on film.

[quote]Even Lucille Ball read for Scarlett.

Did Gary talk Selznick out of it?

Except what you say is not true R159. Nobody knows who Faye Dunaway is.

Meryl had a role for the ages in Sophie's Choice. No one forgets her, ever in that part. Because she's still a popular actress, younger people seek out the film to watch. It's not a great film, but on par with other sweeping emotional dramas. Far from bad. Streep raises it to something you'll never forget. To claim otherwise is to have no feeling. If you don't weep during Sophie's Choice, you're officially too old and pedantic.

Mommie Dearest is a ridiculous and very bad movie. Dunaway doesn't even impersonate Crawford well. She's grotesque and the script is grade Z. It is laughable. But don't give me that it's camp & Kabuki crap. I was born in 1983 and Mommie Dearest is unwatchable. The only art is in the set decoration. The rest is only crap.

Lucille Ball would have made a great Scarlett.

What's the deal with Meryl Streep ? Has she lost her gift or something ? She was good in ' the french lieutenant 's woman' ' and nothing else I' ve ever seen her in. My ex wife was a fan so I had to sit through ' Julia and julia'' 'it' s complicated'' 'the de il wears Prada' ',' 'mamma mia' ' 'august osage county' ', one with Redford and one with Uma Thurman. She was hammy and awkward in all of them. Not very good at all. I can't see why she' s considered such a great actress. I much prefer the acting of sally field, or the 1st Woody allen girl, or the one with the bug eyes who was in rocky horror picture show. Sorry I can't remember the name of these ladies, I am more into oldies.

R158, That would be 9 years later.

What r161 said. That's my fave Leigh performance too,

Also, that opening shot of Robert Taylor, on the bridge, gazing into his memories took my breath away. He was so unbelievably handsome; moreso than Gable.

Alas, Taylor's looks begins and ends it. Taylor lacked the excitement and charisma of Gable's screen presence. Brad Pitt's dullness and lack of charisma reminds me of Robert Taylor.

Gene Tierney could eat an apple through a picket fence

I really liked Leigh's co-starring role in Fire Over England, it is said it is one film of her's that Selznick watched while considering her for GWTW, and you can see why he would watch it and see her as Scarlett.

Wow.... I wish I could unsee that

Paulette Goddard was a TERRIBLE actress with an awful voice who would have been absolutely HORRID in GWTW. Thank God she wasn't cast. Leigh was perfect for the role. One of the most felicitous pairings of star and role in the history of cinema.

Best thing Streep did was her Last Midnight in ITW. She's just letting it all out. And maybe winking at herself a bit.

Another vote for Waterloo Bridge. A perfect film of its type. So easy to enjoy you can watch it any rainy day or middle of the night. We get to see Vivien in modern dress at the height of her beauty, and Robert Taylor is heartstopping handsome. Oh, yeah. Vivien was still a great actress, even in the ballerina turned streetwalker plot. Gorgeous to behold. The right amount of tragedy, the trouble in her eyes...

Quantity doesn't usually equate with quality. Leigh's films make for great movie watching.

I like that her two Oscars were for GWTW and Streetcar, because you could really see Scarlett becoming Blanche later in life, or Blanche being like Scarlett in her youth.

I always suspected that Blanche started out as one of the Tarleton Twins.

R179 It was funny that when I first watched the film, even though I was a child, I thought she should just be with both of them. Later when I read the book, one of the characters was saying Scarlett would probably take them to Utah and marry both of them.

Scarlett would never admit that she was dependent on the kindness of strangers (even if she occasionally was), and would always face tomorrow as another day, never live in a fantasy of her past, like Blanche (or Margaret Mitchell).

r173, I love it!

R182 A woman of 20 is different than a woman in her forties.

Blanche is 30.

R185 I haven't seen the film or play in along time, is that actually stated in the play? Jessica Tandy was 38 when originated the role, Leigh was 38 when she starred in the film, and Tallulah Bankhead was 54 when she played the role. I always considered Blanche to be in her forties and facing a mid life crisis.

In a few years, I will be able to play Blanche.

Yes Blanche mentions her age . She in her early 30's

In the first scene, Tennessee Williams writes that Stella is about 25, and that Blanche is 5 years older.

Just realized that Mickey Kuhn, one of the only two remaining credited actors from GWTW, the other is of course Olivia de Havilland, is also the only remaining actor from Streetcar.

Olivia De Havilland's part could have been played by any drippy actress. Can't stand her honeyed voice and simpering demeanor. When did she die?

From what I recall reading, (and sorry if it's been mentioned upthread), Bette was never in serious contention for the role. Selznick just wanted Bette, and everyone else, to believe she was in contention. As well as a few other top actresses at that time. It was all publicity! In the back of his mind,he always wanted someone much younger and mostly unknown. Finally, Vivian Leigh fit the bill.

Ok R188 and R189 I accept that Blanche is only 30, but in every production and film I have ever seen she is depicted as being more 40 than 30.

30 was the old 40 r193.

Bette was out of the running for Scarlett, very early, and she knew it.

It's a shame we never got a Blanche from Meryl. The only Williams she's done that I can think of, aside from Songbird!, was 27 Wagons Full of Cotton. Her Baby Doll, I take it, was a bit different than Miss Carroll Baker's.

It's a blessing we never got blanched by Meryl. What a terrible idea.

I had never seen a stage production of Streetcar until the Brooklyn Academy of Music presented the play with Cate Blanchet about a decade ago. Great to see other great performers in the lead roles, but can not beat the film.

R196 Maybe we'll luck out and one of M's daughters will make us blanch.

Mamie got to do Regina, another role Meryl should have done.

Sophie's Choice is dreary melodrama. The book was a WASP southerners attempt at writing a "Jewish novel". It didn't quite work on the page and it was soapy on film. Of Streep's many "accent performances", it's actually one of the weakest. Streep actually could have been a decent Blanche, but I'm not so sure about Scarlett.

Wow R202. How much posturing could you fit into one post? It's not true. You are not an expert on anything regarding accents. To suggest that Streep would make a better Blanche than Sophie is incomprehensible. She can't do much at all, little own the most difficult female role of the modern theatre.

I praised her as Sophie in relation Leigh because one can't imagine another actress playing the part. Who do you suggest could have mastered the multiple accents and time shifts of Sophie better than Meryl Streep? I don't like her much, but who the fuck was gonna do that better? Aren't y'all a bit condescending and grand R202? You smell like a familiar poster.

All this acclaim for Waterloo but the original film directed by Whale is far superior and the young male actor is not only handsome but very good unlike the always terrible Taylor. A beautiful truly heartbreaking film. I'm sure Bette preferred it too.

The gorgeous Robert Goulet is gone for most of the film of Waterloo Bridge. More time for Vivien to display the most natural and unaffected beauty in screen history of that time. She played a ballerina for christ sakes and didn't embarrass herself and when she painted up and went to sell herself it was not the Jekyll and Hyde contortion that Davis or Crawford would have presented. Something very special about Vivien Leigh. She cared not at all to enter the life of that character, but she portrayed her with beautiful compassion and daring. Even way back then. So yeah, she darkened her lipstick and wore a satin dress - but the look in her eye told the story. But it wasn't only one story. That's what made her great.

Robert Goulet.....Good Lord!

You're a dumb eldergay if you don't realize I put Robert Goulet in my post on purpose. Y'all love to correct people more than to enjoy any feeling R206. It's not a matter of how many times you old buzzards repeat the same information. Enjoy it again, through my clear eyes. As you would enjoy me.

Good Lord!

You sound like some old fag.

And I LIKE some old fags!

R204 I don't know if it's been mentioned that Bette was in the first version as Roy's sister.

OT in the second version the abominable Lucile Watson was Roy's mother, and in Watch on the Rhine, Watson was Bette's mother.

[quote] Leigh went 2/2 at the Oscars, but you could make a case that she should have gone 3/3 with her strangely overlooked performance in ‘Waterloo Bridge.’

Wait. What?

She was very good as Emma Hamilton, she blew the dull Olivier out of the screen in that one. Of all the great Hollywood beauties, I think she was the only one who hadn't gone under the knife.

Yes, I love That Hamilton Woman. She's really excellent in that.

Still. photograph.

I would have taken a bullet for Bette but if Leigh played Baby Jane she probably would have won her 3rd Oscar.

No one could have played Baby Jane better than Bette. It was a fearless, flawless performance. Leigh would never have accepted the role anyway.

If Bette did her own makeup for Baby Jane she was a genius. Look at poor Lynn Redgrave in her version.

Why has no one mentioned Vivien's performance in "Ship of Fools"?

Vivien's performance in Ship of Fools.

Vivien visiting Bacall in her Cactus Flower dressing room.

R214 you said it. That dame had guts.

Coulda. Woulda. Shoulda.

Hehehehe

There’s an autobiography of some English gay actor whom Davis took up. He said that out of the spotlight she was a narcissistic monster.

Takes one to know one!

R219, What did Bette have to lose? Prior to 1962, when had she last worked in anything substantial?

Bette was doing television guest shots on "Wagon Train" for Christ's sake.

Ship of fools was mentionned. She was prodigious in that one. Funny I never thought of her in baby jane. She would have smashed it. But on thing she coudn't do as well as Bette was ' funny '. Looking at you mrs Van skuyler. Where are the pearls ???

R168 Yes well, I happen to find that cute. Regardless, it's undisputed she was a beauty, and as far as I'm concerned the greatest beauty in Hollywood. Took my breath away. Otherworldly (in glamour pictures at least).

Elizabeth Taylor in 1951 (A Place in the Sun) and Vivien Leigh were the other two incandescent beauties IMO.

This could be my opinion simply because one of the girls in my school was a dead ringer for Vivien Leigh, she was extremely pretty and yes her favourite movie was GWTW.

Terrible makeup on her at R218. Why didn't someone tell her she looked like she was in kabuki makeup?

How dare you ! How very dare you ! Betty was always ravishing.

Having Lauren Bacall as a friend isn't a good thing.

I love this interview with Bette Davis on Johnny Carson

R229, Too bad it's truncated there. The intact interview is even better.

There's a great interview of Vivienne vs Kenneth Tynan some here. She comes accross as graceful and modest whereas he is a total cunt.

That was perfectly charming r229. What a woman.

As she has said she likes to work so doing TV didn't matter to her. I wish someone would release a collection of her TV appearances. I remember once she was talking about Buddy Ebsen and how envious she was because he had two TV hits.

In the interview she said TV at that time had better scripts. White Mama and the one she did with Gena Rowlands are great movies. Still to this day people are still snobby about doing TV. I think Barbra could have gotten Netflix to do her Gypsy.

R229, Shortly after that Carson appearance, Bette signed to star in "Hotel" and then her health became compromised.

I think doing a cable access show would be better than Trog.

After that horrible gay episode on Black mirror I wonder if we are going to get a young hot gay Male character. They are pushing the young cast members.

Oops. Wrong thread.

The deathbed note OP refers to concerns Roy Moseley . He is a minor figure on the fringes of showbiz. I read his book 'My Stars' in which he describes his ascent from autograph hound to dresser to gopher/kissass to the stars, he now comes as writer. It is an oleaginous volume, interesting in describing the early autograph hunting gang of misfits, but gets sticky with fandom as it progresses . He certainly ingratiated himself with the top names but I think he exaggerated his importance in their lives. The note incident between Vivien and Bette is covered in the book as OP tells it , but Roy fell out with Bette once the Katherine girl came along. He eventually wrote a Bette Dearest memoir and is now a colleague of the dreaded Darwin Porter, so his veracity is shaky to say the least. I doubt Leigh/Davis were any more feudy than any actors, male or female, who are in competition. Steve McQueen and Paul Newman behaved as Diva-ish over billing on 'The Towering Inferno' as any Davis or Leigh may have, none of these people seem to have developed great friendships, but you do hear of many rivalries, and why not, as they were indeed rivals.

Do successful people in the entertainment industry actually have friends? I haven’t seen much evidence of this. The business seems like a playground for sociopaths or Renaissance Italy— forge alliances with people whom you find useful, yet never get close to them because everyone is a potential foe.

What is fag hag Kitty Carlisle doing with Davis and Leigh , she clearly was NOT IN THEIR LEAGUE .

Why is Danny Kaye , standing there in a bathrobe ? All the ladies are wearing Evening Gowns. Was his ass filled with Olivier's cum loads .

Um, maybe the event was a Danny Kaye performance.

Looks like the ladies are visiting Danny in his dressing room.

R241 If you ask me Danny serviced Larry and swallowed his loads.

Thanks R238. I knew I wasn't delirious. Don't get me started on Kaye. ' Larry ' is probably hiding in his dressing room, naked on All 4, arse dripping with cum, and Vivien looks like she wants to persuade Kaye to let her in.

R241, All that photo is missing is Tallulah Bankhead.

Tallulah loved Vivien. She called her a true siren, and called out the bitches ' male and female', who said she wasn' t good enough for ' Larry ' and held him back. She noted that she was in fact supporting him.

Tallulah was the pretty version of Bette Davis. She used to resent that whenever one of Tallulah's hit plays was made into a film, Bette always got the lead. Tallulah was apparently electric on stage but never quite worked on film.

The Ed Sullivan piece from Tovarich was better than the show during the Boston try out when I was in college. Still, I was the musical had much better songs Sad.

TB was very good in Lifeboat and the camp classic Die ! Die ! My Darling !

Tallulah was hilarious on "The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour".

It was originally written for Bette Davis, but she fell down some stairs at home and hurt her back. Tallulah was the perfect last minute replacement.

I doubt very much whether Vivien cared two straws about Bette. That the vituperative Miss Davis envied and resented her, I have no doubt. But by that definition, Bette Davis "feuded" with every one of her female contemporaries.

Master class......

Bette Davis was most likely a very big bitch, but I doubt any real "feud" happened. People didn't get along with her, does that constitute a feud? That picture of Bette and Vivien with Danny Kaye is evidence, at least, that there was no feud between them, standing next to each other in focused attention.

Bette Davis lived much longer than Vivien Leigh, and Davis never gave up. She died in Paris after accepting yet another award in Spain.

Bette, at least, had her wits about her to the end. Vivien was a basket case.

Vivien didn't run around the world telling lies about herself and co stars and begging for minor awards. She had her garden and a young man in her life. Familial closeness with whatshername and her grandchild. She wasn't meant to die that day.

Viv’s version of ANNA KARENINA is my favorite. Can’t stand Garbo or Bisset in the role. And I love Bisset.

Bette Davis didn’t want to do MR. SKEFFINGTON until she found out that Warner Brothers had Merle Oberon waiting in the wings. Fanny Skeffington was supposed to be a great beauty so Bette somehow became believable as her. I like Merle well enough, but she simply wasn’t in the same league acting-wise as Bette. Bette dislikes Merle because she was considered a film beauty. Fivehead notwithstanding.

No no, Garbo's is by far the best.

No, no, maybe yours r259, but not mine. Garbo IMO was a heavily mannered actress. The only reason people are sycophants for her is because she retired from films while she was still relatively young.

I'm not a sycophant. Garbo's Anna is the one! Watch them again.

Garbo's Anna is perfection.

But I prefer Vivien’s.

For R54.

And another one.

From LA Times:

Bette Davis, hardly ungifted or egoless herself, agreed, calling Garbo's work "pure witchcraft. I cannot analyze this woman's acting. I only know that no one else so effectively worked in front of a camera." As critic Kenneth Tynan famously said, "What, when drunk, one sees in other women, one sees in Garbo sober."

I'll mark this thread just for your picture, OP

Amazing that this hasn't been sourced in this thread. Suffice it to say, there was no feud between Bette Davis and Vivien Leigh. Vivien was completely crazy by the end, and probably imagined bad blood, but there wasn't any.

I wish Vivien had given Madame Bovary a go. She could have rocked that part.

And Bette Davis, writing gracious notes like that in 1940, at the very height of her movie star career, proves that she was no narcissistic bitch. She was denied Scarlett long before Vivien Leigh was considered, and certainly bore no ill will. If Joan Crawford and Vivien imagined feuds with Bette, it was their own problem.

Robert Osborne who I think is a damn good source said that Bette was never considered for GWTW. She certainly didn't audition which I guess would be an insult. In 1938 bette had just played a conniving Southern belle and won an Oscar. I would have given Bette both my kidneys if she needed them but VL as Scarlett is one of the greatest castings in Hollyeood history.

That was certainly a mean thing to say mot wanting to look at Bette"s face. Besides I thought they made her look her best playing Charlotte.

I doubt Bette was envious of Vivian's mental illness, frequent breakdowns, habit of dropping out of productions and early death.

Yes, Vivien Leigh's later life was pretty miserable due to her mental illness and tuberculosis. The mental illness is what truly killed her, since she just wouldn't take care of herself: TB was highly treatable by the 60s.

Vivien was scary crazy. Bette was crazy in a fun kind of way.

I don't think Bette was crazy at all.

Anne Baxter spoke very highly of Bette in an interview about All About Eve. She regretted the competition with Bette for the Oscar, and gave high praise to her professionalism, work ethic, etc.

I know that two actresses who were briefly considered for Blanche in the original Broadway production of "Streetcar" were Mary Martin and Lillian Gish (I can't recall whether they were Kazan's ideas or Williams'). It would be interesting to hear what it was in those actresses that made the creators contemplate them as possible Blanches--perhaps Martin's highly performative coyness and flintiness (a kind of masquerade of femininity and heterosexuality) and Gish's spinsterly profile, with the rumors that she may have had a love affair with Griffin or others. I don't think either would have worked as well as Tandy or Leigh, but it makes you think about the play and the role with fresh eyes.

Kazan had worked with Mary Martin in the hit musical One Touch of Venus. Initially Martin seemed wrong for the goddess Venus. But, she became Venus on stage, and saved the Kurt Weill musical after Dietrich turned it down. Kazan, the director of Venus, was great ful.

Broadway musical performers are just as confident as movie stars. Martin was a little older than Senator, and should been cast in the film Pal Joey.

K. HEPBURN looks like the cat who had all the cream in the pics with Dietrich, but what got me is Crawfords's husbands sheer socks and sleepers. Instant boner.

R279, And yet, Baxter refused to be nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category.

Let's have a Leigh /Garbo Anna Karenina face off, and see for ourselves I much prefer Vivien in the part. Garbo looks like a big nordic cupboard.

Read this.

Here's Bosley Crowther on Vivien as Anna:

“With all due respect for an actress who would willingly undertake a role that has twice been rendered immortal by Greta Garbo within the past twenty years, it must be confessed by this observer that the ‘Anna Karenina’ of Vivien Leigh is a pretty sad disappointment, by comparison or not. At the same time, it must be admitted that Miss Leigh is not wholly to blame. It’s a pretty sad chunk of motion-picture… Miss Leigh [does] slowly disintegrate into a whining, maudlin, vain, self-pitying dame.”

Agreed to disagree. Suicide is the ultimate form of depression and, where Garbo plays corny Hollywood melodrama, Leigh played clinicly mentally ill, which she knew well enough.

R283 doesn't sound you actually read what was posted

[quote] Suicide is the ultimate form of depression

That makes no sense

Sad to watch Vivien Leigh in Ship of Fools . But, I did decide to read the book. So, not a complete loss

Another for Leigh's Anna. I love Garbo and I appreciate her performance but Leigh's performance--and film--are better. I know the critics of the day felt it was slow and passionless but I have always been moved by her version. It's my "sick day go-to".

Why was it sad ?

Katherine Anne Porter wrote some of my favorite short stories, but I thought "Ship of Fools" was a turkey. She makes such obvious points (with 20/20 hindsight) and then hammers them home again and again.

The Garbo film is marred by melodramatic music, so it's harder to watch for some. But that face, and that grace... Garbo has gravitas.

True story, I once went to try and buy ' the roman spring of mrs Stone ' but the shopgirl wasn 't familiar and asked who was in it. I said' 'vivien leigh lotte lenya Warren Beatty... It's Tennessee Williams' ' and she went' ' noooo.... Depression night another time !' '

Garbo was a hunchback with no lips.

There is no way Garbo would have a career today. Viv and Bette on the other hand.... STAHS

That's crazy talk.

George Cukor said of great actresses (like these two): "They must have something about them that is irritating." Without this "something" they would not be stars. What is it? Blind ambition? Bitchery?

No he meant that a star who doesn't antagonize part of the audience doesn't last. You need to keep the talk alive. There's no thread here about Sylvia Sidney/Irene Dunne feuding or not.

All stars have to have something unusual. Many of the people who became movie stars were not perfect beauties, but had beautiful personality in their *faces.* Garbo could barely speak English when she started in Talkies, and yet she continued to be a star, why? Because no one could act with their face like she could.

Katharine Hepburn was all angles — her cheekbones could cut you. But very curiously, her speaking voice and accent seemed like hard angles, too. Her voice, and speech, matched her unusual look perfectly. That's a star.

Garbo had an unfair advantage in playing Ann Karenina in 1935, in that she had already played her in the 1927 version, Love. So she had two shots at getting it right. Though I still prefer Leigh's version. I am surprised that Korda didn't shoot it in Technicolor, to market it as a sort of second GWTW, maybe it was too expensive so close after the war.

Bette Davis had to work very hard to achieve stardom. She wasn't tall, or particularly pretty. But she did have something, those famous big eyes which she could "flash" in anger, and so she became famous for being petulant, bitchy, which she did very very well ("Of Human Bondage"). But then she kept getting cast in these dreary soap operas — no wonder she got fed up! Bette's best roles are The Letter, The Little Foxes, All About Eve (obviously), anything that gave her a chance to be flushed with anger.

"Was Bette ever in serious consideration for Scarlett O'Hara?"

I don't think she was. She loved to tell stories about how she was offered the role, but I think that was just bullshit. The only American actress I know of who had the best chance of playing Scarlett was Paulette Goddard. I think she would have done well in the role. But Vivien Leigh was perfect. And another thing: I never heard of any "feud" between Bette Davis and Vivien Leigh. I don't think there was one.

I don't know or care about feuds, but Leigh did make the remark about not being able to face Bette Davis at 6:00 a.m. when she turned down the chance to replace Crawford in Hush Hush, Sweet Charlotte.

Little known Fact. Bette Davis was STUNNING when she started out in Hollywood, a solid ten years before Vivien Leigh , but she lost her looks quickly and was clever enough to transition to characters actress very early in her career, and managed to retain Star statuts.

Bette was out of the running for Scarlett before there was ever a screentest for another actress.

Young Bette was not as pretty as young Tallulah.

Bette's youthful beauty was all bloom and coloring. That kind of beauty never lasts--bone structure carries you in old age, and she didn't have that.

The Notley Abbaye anecdote is true.I am sure . I knew someone who had been invited there and witnessed Vivien 's bitchiness. Even Saint Olivia, who never opened her mouth to utter an unkind word, said that Vivienne was' 'a little perverse' '. And remember what vivien did to Olivia' s sis..

[quote]I doubt Bette was envious of Vivian's mental illness, frequent breakdowns, habit of dropping out of productions and early death.

She dropped out too. In 1974 Bette did "Miss Moffat" on Broadway based on her original film "The Corn is Green." It was a spectacular failure. From Shaun Considine's book:

"Thank God for this play," Bette told [Director, Josh] Logan. "It's going to save me from those flea-bitten films. The last one I read they had me hanging in a closet." Describing herself as a "klutz" when it came to intricate dancing, she asked that her choreographed steps be kept to a minimum, and that her singing voice, aged and abused from forty years of smoking and yelling at her ex-husbands, be limited to performing no more than three songs in the show. During the preview performances in Philadelphia, Bette began to forget her lines and was inaudible at times. She blamed her lapses on the bad material. "I am too BIG a star to give a bad performance," she railed at Logan. The critics panned her and the play and, after more changes and rewrites, Bette decided to quit. "I'm not doing it anymore." [friend and assistant Vik Greenfield] said "Bette, you can't do this. You can't put all these people out of work before Christmas." She looked at me and said, "You're fired." When she lost the use of her legs, Bette entered the hospital again and submitted to tests by the show's insurance doctors. They confirmed that she was indeed paralyzed from the waist down. "Everyone seemed to forget that Mother was one of the most convincing actresses alive," said daughter B.D.

The way Vivien passed away alone was sad. Both actresses ignored tons of health problems in order to keep performing.

The only actress who had a right to feel robbed about Scarlett was Tallulah Bankhead. As the preeminent Southern actress, and an actual belle from the Southern aristocracy she had to feel she born for the role, but sadly she was born too early. It was said her black and white screen test was good, but she didn't photograph well in Technicolor. Then Selznick offended her by offering her Belle Watling.

Tallulah should have taken Selznick's offer. She'd have been a FANTASTIC Belle. If she thought that at 36 she could pull off the young Scarlett scenes, she was kidding herself. Too many men AND too many women, too much booze and cocaine to make that possible.

This picture is of Tallulah when she played Regina in Little Foxes in 1938. This is a picture of a Belle, not a Scarlett.

R314 It would have been interesting to see her and Hattie McDaniel's Mammy on screen together, considering their reported affair.

1/Tallukah's tests are available on youtube. She looks dreadful and SMOKES for chrissake. 2/Vivien didn't die alone. She was living with John Merivale, and he actually was in the flat when she drowned in her own fluid in her desperate attempt to reach the loo. 3/Katharine Hepburn WAS robbed. She had a secret agreement with her mentor Cukor. The last day of the tests, Cukor would pretend to not finding anyone right, and would bring Hepburn in. Walter Plunkett had dressed her many times and was good to go. Then they discovered Vivien and Kate was off

I usually love the Old Hollywood threads but there is a staggering amount of misinformation and mangled information in this one.

R163 complete bullshit

Then please set us straight, R317.

I can't believe that anyone ever seriously thought that Kate Hepburn, that red-haired, freckle-faced, rail-thin Damned Yankee could play dark-haired, green-eyed, bosomy southern belle bombshell Scarlett O'Hara.

The ONLY actress who deserved to feel robbed of Scarlett was Paulette Goddard, who endured endless auditions for Cukor, and was the only other person besides Vivien to be photographed in Technicolor.

Selznick sent her flowers to say the part was going to Vivien. If I was Paulette, I might have killed myself.

They thought Lana Turner might be a good idea R320 !

While I can believe Jack Warner may have taunted Bette with the possibility of securing GWTW to keep her in Hollywood, it must be remembered that this was way back in 1936 before Bette was as big a star as she eventually became. And before anyone really understood what GWTW was.

In spite of winning her first Oscar at that point (and for the little-regarded film Dangerous), her only big prestige role by then was Mildred in Of Human Bondage. All of her best roles were to begin a year later in 1938 with Jezebel. Kay Francis was Warners' Queen of the Lot in 1936, believe it or not.

So she really wasn't someone who would've particularly interested Selznick or even much of the audience when the film was in early pre-production and casting.

R316, complete fabrication. Selznick didn't want Hepburn, but he did offer to test her. She refused to audition. It was a stand off that was good for both of them.

But the myth that prevails is that Vivien Leigh walked in and got the part, right at the end. Well, her agent was Myron Selznick, David O's brother, do you think it was sudden? No, Myron told Vivien to walk out of her play contract in England, fly to LA, with more than 80% chance that she would get the part. David O wasn't satisfied with Paulette, or anybody else.

I am watching "The Scarlett O'Hara War" as we speak. Bette Davis is barely mentioned. Barrie Longfellow is great a s Crawford Sharon Gless!!!is awful as Lombard and even Annie Potts is in it. It says something that they even cast actresses to portray Miriam Hopkins and Lucille Ball but not Davis.

It was never going to be Bette, after Jezebel.

Paulette Goddard is so horribly crass in her audition tape (and it was not her first), you can hear George Cukor trying to relax her and coax some softness into her shrewish line readings. And when she tries to soften up she acts bat-shit crazy.

You can absolutely tell he was not seeing her as Scarlett.

Garbo is utterly divine and deserves her own thread. I adore her and can't take my eyes off her when she's on screen. Her early retirement is one of the greatest tragedies of Hollywood.

When casting was at its most heated in early 1938, Hepburn had famously been declared Box Office Poison. It hardly seems likely that Selznick or Cukor would have gambled on her in a multi-million dollar epic.

Tallulah's screen test:

R324 it's in ' me, stories of my life' by the author Katherine Hepburn, so...

R330 It isn't much of a test, she just stands there, not even in costume.

It isn't fair to keep referring to Vivien Leigh's "bitchiness." The woman was ill. Manic depressive on top of tuberculosis. When she was in good health she was not bitchy, she was kind and generous. Other times, she succumbed to her mental illness and her physical illness, but that wasn't her fault.

David O. Selznick knew all about Vivien Leigh, and she was in the running for the part for two years before she actually landed it. He had watched her films, and Myron (his brother) was her agent, who continually pestered David about her. There were two catches: David had wanted to do a big publicity stunt, find an "unknown," (like his earlier movie A Star is Born), even though he knew it would come to nothing. It was for publicity only. Meanwhile, Vivien was an actress in England. He couldn't just fly her to Hollywood for a screentest, and then send her back. So she continued to act on the stage and movies, and he continued to look at other people. But both of them knew, at some point, that she would be in the running.

Yes, r324, Selznick had his own personal prints of Fire Over England and A Yank at Ocford and a big file of Vivien's reviews. The search for Scarlett was a big publicity stunt to build and sustain interest in the film. Memo from David O. Selznick quotes a letter from Selznick's assistant that Leigh had been Selznick's dark horse all along. It didn't hurt when she finally arrived in LA and her tests blew all the other ladies out of the water.

Tallulah's test was short and silent, a test to see how she photographed, not a true screen test.

Jean Arthur wasn't seriously in the running but she was Selznick's mistress at the time and he wanted to keep her happy.

If for some reason Leigh hadn't worked out, it probably would have gone to Goddard but she had one big problem: she was publicly living with Charlie Chaplin but couldn't produced a marriage certificate because they weren't actually married. Chaplin said they had been married at sea by the captain on a trip to Asia and the certificate had been lost traveling back.

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned that before they went to Hollywood both Cukor and Davis were working together in some god forsaken road company. Was it somewhere near Rochester? Anyway Cukor fired Davis and she never forgot it always resenting it. Or is this some bogus story?

Many years later she was still resenting him for it and he was pretty much 'Jesus Christ get over get over it! I was fired from the biggest film of all time!'

Jean Arthur was Selznick's mistress?

And all these years I thought she was a dyke!

"Miss Moffat" was created by Josh Logan for Mary Martin. Mary dropped out when her husband died. Why did Bette Davis agree to star in a musical?

Why did Lauren Bacall agree to star in a musical?

R337, I met Jean Arthur several times. She preferred the ladies but early in her career she got around with both sexes. She was a very insecure person with many emotional issues.

If only Shane had come back. Sigh.

At least two women from the Scarlett casting bonanza ended up in the film: Alicia Rhett, of Charleston, who played India Wilkes, and Mary Anderson, of Birmingham, Alabama, who played Maybelle Merriwether.

Jean Arthur had two problems, first, she was basically a comedienne, and would have brought the wrong "tone" to GWTW, and second, she was actually older than everyone else, born in 1900. She would have been 39 when that movie opened.

Jean Arthur is one of my favorite actors period. Brilliant at both comedy and drama, I find her amazing. But that chapter about her in The Season is heartbreaking and Billy Wilder called her a doozy. How did she even last on stage in of all things the physically taxing role of Peter Pan?

What always intrigued me is that Vivien went to LA on a 5 days break from her very successful (and now legendary) production of ' midsummer night's dream', at the Old Vic, where she was the lead, and never returned. No up and coming actress does that, it' s career suicide. How could she take that risk if she wasn't sure Scarlett was for her ?

R345 Well she wanted to get GWTW, which she knew would make her a STAR, and she had it bad for Olivier and he was in Hollywood.

What is it they say about acting? You have to want it more than anything else in the world. I guess she wanted the role more than anything else in the world. She also knew she was a beautiful charmer who was always forgiven no matter what she did.

R280 Lillian Gish and Merv Griffin?!!!

No, Ryan Seacrest and Merv Griffin.

[quote]Why did Bette Davis agree to star in a musical?

I know! And she has such a lovely singing voice!!

The difference between Bette Davis and Lauren Bacall.l in a musical? We're Bacall's musicals written for someone in the original cast of two Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals?

R345, I said up thread, Vivian was certainly told that if she showed up in Hollywood, she'd get the part. Selznick was just not convinced by Paulette. Vivien would have had to be really really bad in the tests, and of course, she wasn't, and she's more gorgeous than everyone else, for sure.

I wouldn't be surprised that Vivien told the Old Vic "I have to go to LA, and I probably won't be back." And they cheered her on, I'm sure.

She loved Larry, but that was just the public excuse for the trip.

I'm old enough to remember when Bacall was in Woman of the Year at the Winter Garden. But all I remember is she almost got tossed off the revolving stage when it came to a stop.

R286 Crowther was mean and shortsighted. His judgments do not stand the test of time. That said, the Leigh version isn't great, but she certainly brings a feverish desperation to the part that is very effective. Since I know about her struggles with mental illness, it's hard to say if that affects my assessment.

I've always wondered how it was that TB killed her, at a time when there was a cure. Someone wrote earlier that she didn't take care of herself. Anyone have specifics? I'm guessing she kept smoking.

Also, FWIW Midsummer Night's Dream is really an ensemble show and Vivien was probably playing Hermia or Helena and thus not that difficult to replace. It's not like she was playing Lady Macbeth or Cleopatra.

Did somebody say Bette Davis in a musical?

'39 was a banner year for Vivien and Larry.

R294 Garbo also had gravlax.

I certainly can see Bette in The Sound of Music considering what the real Maria was like. It would have made a helluva lot more interesting musical. The Sound of Vitriol.

Vivien and Joanie Fontaine exchanged flats in the 50's. In her autobio, Joan explains that she wanted to use the garage, and Vivien refused to let her. So Joan sent away mrs Mack and poo jones, Vivien 's housekeeper and her cat, saying that the flat reeked of cat piss. In retaliation , vivien overstayed in Joan' s flat in NYC, and when she came back, she called scotland yard to report that her watch collection had been stolen from her Belgravia residence ,during the saying of an american guest. She had the cops sent to Joan. Interestingly, The precious watches turn out last year at Sotheby 's in the' vivien leigh collection. '. So... No bitchiness at all

Vivien did screentests for Rebecca, the next year. She's quite hilariously wrong for the role, even though an actual Brit. Cukor apparently chuckled all the way through them.

There's a story about Vivien a year before she left for LA. She handed out copies of GWTW to her castmates in the play she was in and told them to read it because it was a terrific read and she was going to star in the film.

This is Bette Davis at 23. She was no beauty. For a short person, she had a long chest and low hanging bosom, which made her body look dumpy, even at 23. But... those eyes.

R325 I would have loved Lucy as Scarlett. Remember the Carol Burnett GWTW spoof where she wears the curtains AND curtain rod? Lucy could have pulled that off (so to speak) in the film. And "Whaaa! Rhett, get me outta here!"

Davis wrote a nice note to Leigh in the early 50s, after she and Gary Merrill had spent an evening with Leigh and Olivier. Davis invited Leigh to visit her in Maine. If they had a feud, it wasn't lifelong.

She played Titania, The female lead, and it was a major production, attended by the young princesses Bessie and Peggs. Olivier Messel designed it and it was a smash and still considered a Milestone today for that play. You don't just drop out

Yes, Vivien kept smoking and drinking, wouldn't take her TB meds consistently, wouldn't rest properly. She shouldn't have died of TB, but she did.

R364 You need to watch Here's Lucy Season 4 Episode 1, Flip Goes Legit. Uncle Harry is putting on a community theater production of Gone With The Wind, Lucy plays Scarlett and Flip Wilson plays Prissy.

Wow this thread is raging. A few years back, Vivien coudn't open thread on DL. There was no interest. Seems like the V&A museum did a good job ' rescuing her from the shadow of Olivier '. Love her.

Vivien was not in Midsummer when she went to Hollywood. That Old Vic production was in 1937, and she didn't go to Hollywood until December, 1938. She got the part of Scarlett on Christmas Day, 1938, and started filming in January, 1939.

I know it is Hollywood myth, but I think Selznick was 99% ready to cast Vivien, and then seeing her, and those eyes, while they were burning "Atlanta" sealed the deal.

Wasn't Vivien cast when GWTW was already in production?

The only thing that had been shot was the so-called Burning of Atlanta, using stunt doubles.

R372 Technically. She arrived in Hollywood as they were shooting the burning of Atlanta. They needed to destroy all the old facades on the backlot, to build the sets for GWTW, so they decided to not waste the opportunity and burn them, using the footage for the burning of Atlanta, in the movie. So they were filming part of the movie, but it wasn't really in production yet.

This is well known but they put up fake Atlanta facades across the native's great wall from King Kong and had a carefully installed system of oil pipes to control how it burned. Every Technicolor camera in Hollywood (I think eight) was used to capture the conflagration from different angles. They shot most of the night and the LA fire department was swamped with calls that the city was going up in flames.

I have not seen many of Leigh's film, but I seem to be the only person who saw "Tovarich," and knows about the cast album still available from Amazon.

R376 How have you NEVER seen one of her films but saw Tovarich? Are you just allergic to films?

Yes, but did you see Bajour?

The Tovarich! cast album is also available to me on both vinyl and CD because they're sitting on my shelves.

A sad, haunting, creepy scene from Ship of Fools, her last movie. I'm not sure she's doing much "acting" here.

Why haven't I seen many Vivien Leigh films?

Response:

I was a student in college. Broadway shows trying out in Boston were Affordable then. Yes, changes were made before Broadway. Frankly, I was surprised to see people like Henry Fonda, Barbra Steisand, Art Carney, Barbara Harris and Vivien Leigh on stage for about the same cost as a film.

R381 Sorry, I thought you said you hadn't seen any of her films not that you hadn't seen many of them. It would make sense, when you were in college and movies weren't regularly shown on tv. But, with the internet and cable it wouldn't make sense to have not seen any, by this point.

It amazes me, if true, that GWTW didn't begin principal photography until January 1939 and yet was opened in time to be considered for 1939 Oscars.

How do DLers explain Robert Donat's Mr. Chips Oscar win over Clark Gable in 1939? Was there some backlash against GWTW that taken out on Gable? Or maybe Gable lost his MGM votes to Donat?

R383 They worked their butts off. Filming took place from January 26-July 1, 1939 and post production finished on November 11, and then it premiered in Atlanta on December 15.

He probably lost the MGM votes, I've read that MGM especially didn't like for their players to win on a loan out, which would also explain why Stewart didn't win either. Plus, he fought them and didn't want to do the film in the first place. I'm more interested as to how Mickey Rooney managed to be nominated with Donat, Gable, Olivier, and Jimmy Stewart.

Donat had been nominated the year before, and the role of Chips let him age over decades and elicit floods of tears, both of which are appealing to Academy voters. Gable already had an Oscar.

I remember Bette saying she felt she should have won Oscar for Fark which of course is crazy talk.

"This is Bette Davis at 23. She was no beauty."

No, she wasn't. She was plain, at least compared to other female movie stars. Some studio executive said she had all the sex appeal of Slim Summerville, a comedy actor with a homely face.

It's been said many times that Bette Davis was not beautiful, and I don't disagree. But she could be very attractive, sexy even; and she could certainly play a beauty. By the late forties, she was already visibly aging: her waist had thickened, her face puffier, her slouch more pronounced (see Deception and Beyond the Forest). But in her youth, before her excesses began to leave their mark, she had scenes where she looked incandescently lovely (Cabin in the Cotton, Ex-Lady). I remember her at the height of her stardom in Dark Victory, a movie best described as a "gooey collection of cliches," a classic case of a talented actress elevating pedestrian material. Her young heiress is afflicted with one of those fatal Classic Hollywood movie ailments of the type that make you more and more beautiful the closer you get to death. By the final sequences, make-up, hair, lighting, and committed acting combined to render her the picture of radiant gorgeousness. There was nothing left for her to do but lie on that bed and gaze wistfully into the camera as the image dissolved.

R388 But she made All About Eve in 1950 and she was stunning!

True R388.

I'd call her glamorous in AAE, but you can definitely tell the bloom is off the rose.

Sorry, I meant, I agree with you anyway R389.

She's two drinks and five cigarettes away from full-on blowsy in All About Eve.

R8 just watched the whole interview in my caftan. WOW. brilliant!

THIS is how you die of a wasting disease, bitches.

Never classically beautiful, but what an interesting face she had!

All things considered, Judy Garland would have been much happier at some place like Warner's in the 1930s, where less conventional beauties like Davis were appreciated. By the time Garland got there in the early 50s, she was too burned out and crazy to make a go of things.

The AAE party dress: 1. Most people think it was black but it was actually a kind of rusty brown, which photographs better in black and white. 2. Her shoulders were supposed to be fully covered with a square neckline but the shoulders of the dress were slightly too large and kept sliding down. Head was going to fix it but Davis shoved them as far down off the shoulders as they would go, said she liked the dress better off that way and that's how she wore it.

The off the shoulder dress was a masterstroke of Davis'. It visually demonstrate's Margot's world-weariness.

When she was working on a 40s film with cameraman Haller or Gaudio, she asked him why he didn't photograph her as in, let's say, Dark Victory. The reply: "But, Bette, I was 10 years younger then."

And please remember Bette in the opening flashback dressing room scene of AAE, wearing a dumpy robe and slippers, her hair pinned into a wig cap and her face with no makeup except for the cold cream she slathers upon it. Now that's bravery!

Does anyone think Claudette Colbert would have played that scene with the same look? Joe Mankiewicz was a very lucky director.

I wouldn't be surprised if Mankiewicz talked her into that look--he was known to have a way with actresses.

But I'd bet that he didn't have to convince Bette and yet never could have convinced Claudette, r401.

I agree with you there, R401. Davis had a lot less vanity than many actresses. Even as old women, most of them wouldn't have played Baby Jane in that makeup.

I meant, I agree with R402.

Bette could get laughably glammed up by Warners in the early years.

You know, I was thinking to myself just recently that women don't wear fur capes nearly often enough these days.

Now and then there's a role where she seems to be pretty much without makeup in a given scene (though maybe she's made up to look that way), and she's very handsome, in a good way. For example, in A Stolen Life, after the sailing accident, when she's in bed and just coming to, she seems to be "nude" and she's lovely. In part because the real shape of her mouth is evident, rather than the way-over-the-lip style that she used.

[quote] I put Robert Goulet in my post on purpose.

Oh, and I AM the "eldergay"!? Bwaahaha! Oh, you are a CAUTION, r205!

I made no corrections or assertions! All your paranoid delusions supplied by you in your epic meltdown. It's obvious you meant to type "Robert Taylor", but no amount of fun hating can be enough for you! You sound impossible to get along with and highly anti-social.

Up so late r408? Tomorrow is Bingo.

Oh, girls, girls, girls, do behave.

Meanwhile, ON TOPIC, Vivien, though she probably had GWTW in the bag, officially came to the US to test for Rebecca, which she also badly wanted to do, as her current inamorato Olivier had already been cast. The tests used to be on youtube and I assume are still there. They show her as inadequate and wrong for that part as much as was so spectacularly right for Scarlett.

^ as much as she was. Sorry.

One of Vivien's many screen tests for Rebecca. She really was all wrong for the mousey second Mrs. de Winter. Far too strong. Joan was the correct choice. I think Joan's tests are linked at the link.

Fontaine really was wonderful in that. I think Olivier wasn't nice to her, as he had wanted Leigh, and that fed into her performance as a mouse. When she finally stands up for herself it's rather thrilling. I wonder if she also called on her history of being bullied by Livvy...

Leigh wanted to play opposite Olivier in Wuthering Heights when she first arrived in America, but Wyler said she could play the secondary role of Isabella, and that she couldn't expect to play the lead role in a prestige production at that point in her career. Then she got GWTW... Rebecca was after GWTW.

You are correct, r414. I apologize.

I think Olivier (who I sometimes find hammy) gave just about his best film performance ,for Wyler, in "Carrie" (1952). Heartbreaking. If he didn't get an Oscar nom, he should have.

Yes, it's possibly his most subdued work and all the more effective for it. Vivien was a much more effective film actor than Larry, I think

No no no gurls. Leigh WAS in the middle of a re-run of ' midsummer', don' t forget that the Old Vic was a stock company back then. Hers (although well deserved) and Donat's oscars were part of the war effort. Do you still believe that oscars are ' won ' bishes ? How sweet. And the Rebecca tests started way after GWTW was released. Vivien could have played that part, with the right makeup/hairdo. She also was denied the Garson part on Pride and prejudice that year. Selznick didn't want to let her work with Olivier. Which led to her breaking her contract. Then Korda reunited them in lady Hamilton and she blew Olivier out of the water. He was the one who wouldn't appear on screen with her after that. Cunt.

Er, um, I've never read that exactly, r418, but it is absolutely, totally in line with everything else I have read about Old Hollywood and the Oliviers.

[quote]Vivien was a much more effective film actor than Larry, I think

That's been frequently suggested above, r417. Film, where Larry didn't control her performances, is where Vivien always excelled.

Vivien as the mousy insecure second Mrs. de Winter was always a non-starter. Unusually for her, she's bad and completely wrong in the screen test. Why? Because Vivien would have been the perfect Rebecca.

Perhaps Olivier coached her into the wrong performance for the Rebecca tests so he wouldn't have to play opposite her in the film itself?

Adding to my post at R420 I think Vivien has something hard and spiky and unsympathetic about her even when she's playing tragic characters who might otherwise inspire pity or evoke compassion (Blanche in [italic]Streetcar[/italic], for example, or Hester Collyer in [italic]The Deep Blue Sea[/italic]). I'm not sure what accounts for this steely quality but I simply cannot envision her as a mousy type.

Olivier declined to play Vronsky to her Anna Karenina, he didn't want them to appear as 'lovers' on screen anymore, reason being that he hated her at that point, and the camera doesn't lie. . Vivien asked him to let her divorce in order to marry Peter Finch, but Olivier coudn't bear the thought of being 'humiliated' by his protégé. She tried to elope with Finch but they were grounded at Heathrow by the fog. The Vips, with Taylor and Burton is inspired by that episode , with Jourdan playing Finch. Rattigan wrote that script. Must have been strange for Vivien to watch that movie, esoecially since Taylor had replaced her in Elephant Walk. He only let her go when it was too late for her. Ploawright was in the picture at the time, but it could have been any of the young actresses he was Weinsteining, Simmons, Bloom, tuttin, et c.

Olivier had directed and co-starred with Leigh in Terence Rattigan's The Sleeping Prince in the West End. It was a hit and the film rights were sold but only on the participation of Marilyn Monroe in Leigh's role, with Olivier again directing.

The first couple of weeks of filming were very difficult. Olivier thought Monroe was inept and constantly interrupted her performance to give notes. Then the dailies started coming in and he was smart enough to realize she was wiping him off the screen. He shut down production for just a few days, rethought the whole thing and began production again letting Marilyn do her thing and playing his performance to hers. The Prince and the Showgirl, as it was released, was a big hit.

MUST SEE !!!!

Thanks for posting from your alternative universe R324. In our world, Olivier, to the end of his life, thought Monroe a shit actress who ruined his picture, and the movie bombed hard.

Well, R425, she WAS a Scorpio, after all...

Wow, R425's video is disturbing-- I knew that Cecil Tennant was killed in an accident the day of Vivien's funeral but I had never heard this story before.

We seem to have this same thread every six months.

So I'm recognising the DLer who consistently spells 'Vivien' as ‘Vivian' and the other one who claims she was a competent stage actress.

She wasn't. R23, R60, R64 She was described as being as “ornamental, fragile and inaudible as some exquisite Delft Blue faïence” when she first came to attention in ’35. She needed microphones to be heard and she only appeared in 20 straight plays (as opposed to revue or cabaret) over the next three decades.

There is NO comparison with Dame Peggy Ashcroft who was a genuine stage actress appearing in hundreds of roles.

R429 = Kenneth Tynan. Go to bed Ken, you tired hag.

There is a youtube interview with Olivier and he does say Monroe was a nightmare to work with and they were in agony trying to get a performance out of her but he conceded at the time of the filming of this she was magic in it.

While filming it one of the elderly actresses who knew him from way back said to him something to the effect 'she's stealing the picture from you.'

The film is a disappointment, quite dull. and was a big disappointment at the boxoffice but still worth seeing for the Monroe incandescence. Olivier is very bad and I don't know what he was thinking but I am a fan unlike a lot of DLers. As said his performance in Carrie is one of the all time greats. Monroe's role was another Leigh wanted as she had done it on stage. But Olivier told her I'm sure with a great deal of satisfaction I'm sure she was too old. It was made by Monroe's production company and she wanted him so it didn't matter he was too old. It would have been much better with another actor. It's like he's trying to drain every scene of any energy.

Yes it would have been fitting if Gable had won for GWTW but Donat is pretty great in Chips and so is Garson. Her first appearance from the mist is one the most magical first appearances by an actor in a film.

I've never cared for Olivier, and though Vivien may have made his life miserable, he mindfucked her repeatedly. For instance, when he said she was too old to play Ophelia in his Hamlet, and then cast Jean Simmons, who was her (slightly younger) doppelganger.

She would have been a very good Cathy in Wuthering Heights and an excellent Elizabeth Bennet. Greer Garson was far too old for that role.

I can't help but wonder if Vivien's HUGE success as Scarlett was just too overhelming and scared off directors like Hitchcock and Wyler who felt she could never overcome the GWTW association and would skew her performances in the audience's eyes in the early 1940s? I imagine GWTW was still playing at first run theaters and bringing in crowds in those years.

Otherwise I see no reason she wouldn't have been cast as the leads in Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice where she would have been far more effective than Merle and Greer.

[italic]Wuthering Heights[/italic] started shooting in December 1938, same as [italic]GWTW[/italic]. When [italic]Wuthering Heights[/italic] was being cast Vivien Leigh had not yet achieved the international stardom you're referring to, R434.

I agree with you that Vivien would have been fantastic as Catherine Earnshaw, an unsympathetic character who could use Vivien's charisma and beauty to make her more palatable.

433 Simmons was 15 years younger than Leigh.

In the screen test for Rebecca she comes off as fake - exactly like Scarlett in her green velvet curtain/dress trying to fenagle $300 out of Rhett while he's in a Yankee jail.

What worked perfectly in GWTW would have been a disaster in Rebecca.

Jean Simmons (b. 1929) was still a teenager when she appeared in [italic]Hamlet[/italic]. Olivier was 41! That is a big age difference. On the other hand it makes Hamlet's treatment of Ophelia even more despicable.

It has always been said Oliver had a better career than Leigh. I don't know. With her awesome beauty and two iconic FILM performances I say Leigh wins by a mile.

She was alive for like, 5 minutes, so of course she coudn't have Olivier's or Davis's career. I think she did pretty well in the time she had.

This thread I learned she died at her early 50s which today we have leading ladies that age. It hurts when you are admired for your beauty and you don't age well. The same thing happed to Rita Haworth. Joan Crawford must have fought like hell to keep it most of her life.

That clip of Bette singing in r350 s link is embarrassing. Cringeworthy...I feel humiliated for her.

If you want to see a great Jean Arthur film, watch HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT (1937) with Charles Boyer. The plotlin is similar to TITANIC, but with better dialogue.

Bette Davis "sang" several times in her career. I guess nobody told her she couldn't sing a note.

[quote]They worked their butts off. Filming took place from January 26-July 1, 1939

I never registered on that. Makes partial sense of Selznick firing the fussy, slow paced Cukor in favour of the march march FUCKING MARCH Victor Fleming.

R418, Rebecca was shot in total before GWTW even premiered. Rebecca's first preview was in December, 1939, and GWTW premiered in December, 1939.

Bette singing "Whatever Happened...." is hilarious and I think Bette is in on the joke. She certainly knew she was no singer.

R418 I wouldn't necessarily say it was part of the war effort, the US and Hollywood still had strong isolationist tendencies in 1939-40.

Dear Bette:

You. Cannot. Sing.

Dear r448:

I. FUCKING. KNOW. THAT.

Like Vivien could sing. Bitch could act, but have you heard ' tovaritch'? It's available on youtube...' 'My cat passing a kidney stone' ' more like

Leigh was also a lovely dancer, and none of the others were. Can you imagine Garbo dancing, or Kate or Bette?

Bette Davis studied with Martha Graham when she was young. Maybe she could dance?

Bette Davis studied with Martha Graham when she was a teenager attending the Robert Milton-John Murray Anderson School of the Theatre. In her first memoir, The Lonely Life: An Autobiography, she wrote about Graham, and Graham’s influence on her work. Well worth quoting in full:

Our instructress for dancing was Martha Graham. Her job was to teach us how to use our bodies properly.

“To act is to dance!”

I worshiped her. She was all tension – lightning! Her burning dedication gave her spare body the power of ten men. If Roshanara was a mystic curve, Miss Graham was a straight line – a divining rod. Both were great, and both were aware of the universal. But Miss Graham was the true modern.

I had already learned that the body via the dance could send a message. Now I was taught a syntax with which to articulate the subtleties fully. She would with a single thrust of her weight convey anguish. Then in an anchored lift that made her ten feet tall, she became all joy. One after the other. Hatred, ecstasy, age, compassion! There was no end, once the body was disciplined.

What at first seemed grotesque to the eye, developed into a beautiful release for both dancer and beholder. To me, Martha Graham is one of America’s few authentic geniuses. I was lucky enough to study with her.

A mutual friend recently repeated this great woman’s happy observation that amongst dramatic actors, I have always expressed an emotion with full body – as a dancer does. If this be so, I would like to remind her that it was she who made it possible. Every time I climbed a flight of stairs in films – and I spent half my life on them – it was Graham step by step.

Even toward the end Vivien knew how to dance.

Ande here's the link.

Ain't nobody gonna post the clip of Garbo foxtrotting in Two-Faced Woman??

R455 yes. She uses that really well to show the character's craziness. And really nimble. In "St. Martin's Lane", an early film with Laughton, she plays a dancer. It's very good.

R456 the "Chica Choca"!

That clip of Vivian Lee dancing at home is hilarious R455. Poor dear.

Speaking of not aging well....

Bob looks just fine. Bitch.

I told her not to do that special.

That's why I did it, schmuck.

At that point, Lucy looked like Caesar Romero's Joker.

It's tricky!

By then, Lucy was in her 70s. And the story is not interrupting.

Vivien could out-Charleston these old gals.

They knew each other WAAAY back at RKO.

Those ladies frightened me. Who were they? They look like they're kicking a dog.

Bette, Martha Graham my ass! When you walked up those fucking stairs Max Steiner was doing most of the work!

Not really true. Davis walks those stairs in an infinite variety of ways. She really used her body to convey character, mood, station, age and intention. Part of what makes her so dynamic to remember, and someone like Streep so forgettable after the credits.

Deliberate and expressive body movements are part of any great actor's craft. I, too, studied with Martha Graham.

Fuck all y’all!

R466, According to Lucie Arnaz, Lucy and Ginger were distant cousins.

[quote] They worked their butts off. Filming took place from January 26-July 1, 1939

Actually, the final retakes of the opening scene took place in October of 1939. After four shootings, two with Cukor and two with Fleming, the scene still didn't work. Selznick gave Vivien a month off to pull herself together physically before the final retakes, hoping she would look refreshed. What appears in the film are a combination of takes from Fleming's fourth and fifth shootings.

Cukor's takes were undoubtedly the best, but unusable due to various technical issues. No shots from those sessions could appear in the finished film (as a handful of Cukor's shots did in Fleming's reshootings of the Atlanta Bazaar and Paris Hat sequences) because Leigh wore the green sprigged dress from the Twelve Oaks barbeque instead of the later white dress Fleming worked with. A famous film goof is Leigh saying to the Tarleton Brothers (twins in the novel) "I just wore this old dress because I thought you liked it" wearing Cukor's green sprigged dress as opposed to the white dress she wears in Fleming's finished film's opening

The film was never formally finished. Just before the Atlanta premiere, Selznick had to just cut together everything he had for a final negative to produce a print for the Atlanta premiere. An example: the long shots of carriages entering Twelve Oaks for the morning barbeque. Especially in large screen viewing, it is very obvious that the carriages are transparent. You can see the ground through the carriages. It was an unfinished special effect.

R474 Pauline Kael, referring to JC's terpsichorean efforts in "Dancibg Lady," wrote "Joan Crawford, her feet dipped in lead..."

R476 those carriages were meant to be transparent. They symbolize the evanescence of that way of life, soon to be Gone With The Wind.

My favorite review of that sort is a review of 1975's At Long Last Love referring to Cybill Shepherd as dancing "with bovine splendor."

This tribute is very well done.

There absolutely are scenes shot by Cukor in the finished film.

Isn't the birth of Melanie's baby a Cukor scene?

Yes. As is the scene where Rhett brings Scarlett a hat from Paris.

R88 I have avoided Marion Levy (who adopted the stage name "Paulette Goddard"). She had thin lips, appeared crass R327 and had a voice that sounded like kerosene R172.

The only one I've watched is this British production with fabulous dresses by Cecil Beaton.

^ That must be Marion Levy on the right wearing tangerine.

I don't see anything wrong with Goddard's screen test (she certainly acquitted herself better than many others), but she's nothing special, either. She would have been competent; she wouldn't have hurt the film (unlike Hepburn, who would have been a disaster!), but Leigh was perfect.

Cukor's work represents about 20% of the released film, including the birth of Melanie's baby and both scenes shot in Scarlett's bedroom at Tara. Cukor shot the evening prayer scene at Tara and Melanie's wedding reception. That's just what I can remember off the top of my head, there are other things.

Cukor also shot the opening scene twice but none of his footage of which could be used, the Atlanta Bazaar sequence, the bulk of which Fleming reshot, and the Paris Hat Fleming reshot the Paris Hat scene and none of Cukor's work could be used because she had a new hairstyle and a new hat for Fleming. Among the Cukor shots in the Bazaar scene are Rhett's entrance wearing a cape (he never wore a cape shooting for Fleming) and the shot of Scarlett in her booth from the rear, when the camera pans down and you see she is secretly dancing. I've always suspected Cukor shot Hattie McDaniel leaning out of the Tara window shouting "Miz Scarlett! Where yo gwine without yo shawl and the night air fixin' to set in!"

Midway through his shooting stint, Fleming dropped out claiming nervous exhaustion. Sam Wood took over for awhile (he filmed the lumber mill sequences) and when Fleming came back, Wood remained. Vivien found herself working 12 to18 hour days, working for one director in the morning and the other in the afternoon and evening. The very first and very last things shot was the opening scene on Tara's porch. Vivien was so haggard at that point that Selznick sent her away for a month's vacation with Larry and the final reshoot of that scene was done in September or October. The released film contains a mix of shots from those final fourth and fifth shootings.

Stunt director Yakima Canutt was behind the camera for various shots involving stunt work and production designer William Cameron Menzies led one of several second units doing establishing shots, like the riverboat sailing down the river during Scarlett and Rhett's honeymoon and the scenes underneath the opening credits. He was also behind the camera when the old RKO sets from King Kong and others were burned for the so-called "burning of Atlanta."

It didn't matter really who was behind the camera. The auteur of this film was the speed addicted and micromanaging Selznick, not any of its directors.

I've twice posted about the "so-called Burning of Atlanta" because "The Burning of Atlanta" is a historical thing and is not what is depicted in the film. The film depicts the night Confederate forces abandoned Atlanta and blew up their arms and explosives at the Depot to keep them from falling into Union hands. The historical burning of Atlanta occurred a few weeks later when Sherman and his troops actually succeeded in invading the city and tried to raze it by setting it ablaze.

So, wait! Does Scarlett actualy wear both the green-sprigged dress and the white ruffly dress in different shots of that opening BBQ scene and it's not been heavily commented on before now? Or is each dress in its own different event?

The white dress is the opening scene with the Tarleton Twins. The green sprigged dress is BBQ. I think they originally shot it with her wearing the green sprigged in both. Victor Fleming reshot the opening. Pretty sure it was the last thing they shot.

More info on Scarlett's gown in the opening scene:

The porch scene... shot five different times.

R32, but McGovern has a much larger jaw. Leigh's face is much more delicate.

Interesting that in those 5 different takes of the opening scene filmed over 9 months, Fred Crane and George Reeves were never replaced as the Tarleton Boys (or Twins if you will). Do those characters even appear in other scenes in the film?

The original use of the green sprigged dress for the porch scene was an attempt to follow the book. In the book, it's a big deal that Scarlett wears an afternoon dress to a morning barbecue, and it's the same dress she wore with the Tarleton twins on the porch.

Go to 24:10.....

How would a morning BBQ party dress differ from an afternoon BBQ party dress, r495?

You CAN'T shou you' bouzoum 'fow 3 o' clock, dumbass R437 !!!!! Geeez

In the book, the difference was cleavage. That's why Mammy yells at her that she's not supposed to 'show your bosoms before 3 o'clock.'

In the world of the book, Scarlett's movie porch dress (the high-necked one with ruffles) would have been appropriate for a morning barbecue, but not the green-sprigged one, which showed shoulders and bosom.

Different food stains, r497.

In the book, Scarlett has issues with all the dresses which would be appropriate for the barbecue, as she fears none of them are good enough to impress Melanie, her rival for Ashley's affections, and to entice Ashley himself. She finally settles on the inappropriate green muslin because it's the best of the lot. From Chapter 5:

[quote]But it was an afternoon dress. It was not suitable for a barbecue, for it had only tiny puffed sleeves and the neck was low enough for a dancing dress. But there was nothing else to do but wear it. After all she was not ashamed of her neck and arms and bosom, even if it was not correct to show them in the morning.

The white dress she does wear at the beginning is also the dress for family prayers.

Vivien did her screentests for Rebecca in between finishing the initial shoot for GWTW, and doing retakes. The Rebecca tests were in August, 1939, just when GWTW was previewing.

The white dress gave her a virginal look for the beginning of the film.

GWTW is my favorite movie. I never tire of watching it. And it is Vivien Leigh's performance that anchors the film and gives it the stature that it has.

The high neckline and ruffles also disguised Vivien's weight loss, which happened due to the stress of filming, and the white color and puffed sleeves made her look younger and more virginal, as 16-year-old Scarlett was supposed to be.

Why didn't Careen and Suellen (sp?) have white prayer dresses?

Were they beyond hope?

Careen and Suellen were minor supporting players. If they'd all been in white, Scarlett wouldn't have stood out.

Could Olivier have pulled off the role of Ashley? At least he was younger and (at the time) good looking.

I always thought Errol Flynn would have been a fantastic Ashley, who was supposed to be a blonde Prince Charming type in the book.

People seem to not get how charismatic, handsome and popular Leslie Howard was. He was a real matinee idol throughout the 30s, his age was irrelevant to the audience and Selznick knew the audience would understand implicitly why Scarlet would pine for him for more than 10 hears.

Bacall was a teen and had said a few times in interviews she had a major crush on Howard and she was not alone. I think he's perfect in the role and gets it right off the bat in the scene in the library. He also has a melancholy throughout the film which is so appealing and draws Scarlett in.

Errol Flynn??

Ashley is supposed to be dashing in an ethereal, not carnal, way.

I guess it helps if you find Leslie Howard attractive, but he never did it for me.

R511 I get it, I've always preferred Ashley to Rhett.

Howard said his GWTW costumes made him look like a fairy doorman at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

[quote]GWTW is my favorite movie. I never tire of watching it. And it is Vivien Leigh's performance that anchors the film and gives it the stature that it has.

I respectfully disagree. She comes second - no maybe it's a tie. First is the size and scale of the thing... everything's big... epic... the sets, the costumes, the music, the sweep of the thing. It's massive. And then there's Leigh, who is absolutely equal to the size and scale of everything going around her. She's terrific but I think the overall creativity of the whole can't be ignored.

People have the impression that GWTW is an epic, but almost all of it was shot on soundstages and the studio backlot. They say if the camera zooming out in the dramatic shot of the wounded of Atlanta had risen one more inch, a slice of Culver City would have appeared in the frame.

Half of the wounded soldiers were dummies. Literally. But why not? They worked cheap.

I wasn't impressed.

In the novel, Scarlett wears to the barbecue the same dress she wore the day before when she was with the Tarleton twins; a green, flowered-muslim dress, with tiny puffed sleeves and a low neck. It's not suitable for a barbecue (bosoms are to be completely covered until after 3:00), but she decides it's the best dress to show off her charms so she wears it. I think that's why she says to the Tarleton twins at the barbecue "I only wore this dress because I thought you liked it!" I have no idea why they had her wear a prim, ruffled, high necked white dress with the Tarletons at the beginning of the movie. To make her look innocent? Scarlett was never what you would call "innocent." She was always predatory and merciless when it came to going after men.

When I first saw a revival of GWTW, as a kid, I was fascinated by Scarlett and thought Melanie was a ninny. Now, 100 years later, I dislike Scarlett and appreciate Melanie's decency and kindness. Leigh was great, however.

Well, r520, if you read some of the posts and links above you'd know that the first scene was reshot with Scarlett in the white dress for 3 reasons:

1. Selznick wanted the extravagance of 2 dresses in 2 different scenes at the beginning of the film.

2. Vivien Leigh, 9 months into the filming, had lost some weight and looked exhausted by the time they got around to filming the 5th version of the scene at the end of the entire shoot and she needed the coverage at her upper chest and neck that the high-necked white dress gave her.

3. Most importantly, Selznick felt it was important to introduce Scarlett in her very first shot in a virginal and innocent white dress to contrast with all that would come next.

IMHO it was a wise choice. What do you think, r520?

I'm loving this thread! Even if we've left Bette in the dust for the time being.

Nothing Bette ever did took the world by storm.

What's funny about Bette is that she was probably the most famous smoker who ever lived, but she never inhaled when she smoked, she just blew the smoke out of her mouth. Maybe that's why she lived to a relatively old age.

If Ashley had been like this I could better understand Scarlett’s crush.

But Ashley had to have some intellectual gravitas. Flynn could never do that.

Great thread. Hope it gets an 80th anniversary theatrical run this year. Would LOVE to see it on the big screen.

When the Depot scene with all the wounded appeared onscreen during the premiere in Atlanta, Margaret Mitchell's husband whispered to her "If we'd had that many soldiers, we'd have won the war."

If Ashley looked like that he would have said I want to fuck you Scarlett because you need it badly. And I do to despite the fact that I just fucked the Tarleton Twins 5 minutes ago.

That rings so funny and true R530. Thanks!

Another reason Helen Lawson lost out on the role of Scarlett was her insistence to Selznick that O'Hara would offer up to rim Frank Kennedy to seal the marriage deal.

Errol flynn would have stolen the movie from Gable. Far to young and hot. But what a fantastic Ashley. Never thought of that. By the way he really looks à lot like Armie Hammer in that pic

Errol Flynn would never have spent 10 years dreamily mourning a lost past.

Helen Lawson was also vehemently opposed to Jenny Stewart playing Melanie.

Twenty years later Flynn did regret magnificently in Too Much too Soon. He was also a very well-read man and could have brought the necessary gravitas, which R528 is too limited to realize.

I always wondered about how Frank Kennedy felt when he found out that Scarlett lied to him about her sister marrying someone else.

I think Franchot Tone or Laurence Olivier would both have made very good Ashleys. Better than Howard, who is the film's weak link. He has his moments: I think he's good in the scene where Scarlett tries to convince him to run away with her to Mexico. But so often he is wooden and seems uninterested in acting the part.

I agree that the scale of the movie and the grand production values add greatly to the movie. But none of that would have matter had, say, Paulette Goddard played Scarlett. The movie would be remembered but would not be as high on the list of the greatest movies ever made as it is now. Vivien Leigh acted Scarlett with a fearlessness and a depth of character that is, even now, almost shocking. She's not afraid to be bitchy. Only Bette Davis might have given such a fearless performance. Davis is the only other actress I can imagine being truly good in the part.

Errol Flynn would never have played a second fiddle cuckold to Clark Gable in 1939. I don't believe he would be cast that way either. I think the weak and slender Leslie Howard made the proper contrast to the brutish bad breath of Gable. But I've never read the book and I don't really get what Scarlett wanted with Ashley. He didn't seem her type as a personality to be honest. I always took it that he was her obsession - something she couldn't have. Not that he actually represented a viable sexual or life partner for her. I am probably too modern in my approach and am sure I will soon be corrected.

I think it was a case of opposites attracting. They were nothing alike and so Scarlett was infatuated with him. He was also the handsomest man in the county, and blond and dreamy.

Pure CLASS

Scarlett realizes late in the book that Ashley is a dream she made up in her head, not the real flesh-and-blood man. She also realizes that Ashley desires her but doesn't love her. She tells him that he could have saved them both a lot of heartache if he'd been honest with her 12 years ago, but he was always too much of a gentleman to speak plainly.

And Ashley was no cuckold; quite the opposite. Rhett hates Ashley because he knows that Scarlett spends their entire marriage still dreaming of her childhood crush. At the same time, he pities Ashley because he knows that the man has no place in the Reconstruction South, and will never be any kind of success in it. Instead, he winds up a widowed bank clerk.

"IMHO it was a wise choice. What do you think?"

I never liked that white dress Leigh wore at the beginning of GWTW. I don't think Scarlett would ever have worn such a dress. It wasn't her type. It was two girlish and sweet. Reminds me of a passage in the novel where Scarlett is deciding what to wear to the barbecue and is looking over a pile of colorful dresses (none of them were white). One of the dresses was a beautiful "lavender barred muslim" with "wide insets of lace and net above the hem" but "it had never suited her type. She thinks it would be good for her someone like her baby sister Careen: "it would suit Careen's delicate profile and wishy-washy expression perfectly" but Scarlett thought it made her look like a schoolgirl. No, I don't think Scarlett would have been caught dead wearing a virginal white dress. I think the only white dress she ever wore was the ill-fitting (it had belonged to her mother and there was little time to alter it) wedding dress she wore at her wedding to poor Charles Hamilton.

The medication Vivien Leigh took for her tuberculosis in the 40s and 50s is now known to have a severe side effect: it dramatically worsens the symptoms of bipolar disorder. That wasn’t known then. The poor woman probably suffered far more than we know.

They used a white dress because David O. Selznick insisted that the dress in the first scene be white. This was in order to make Scarlett look fresh and virginal. This was Selznick's choice and he had complete control over the film.

I didn't know that, R546. It casts a whole different light on her behavior in those decades.

It's muslin, not muslim.

I think that someone should make clear that their is no fabric known as Muslim. Muslin, however, a lightweight cotton fabric, has always been popular in warm climates.

^ there is, not their is. I'm so embarrassed.

Thank you R542 and R544. I don't find Gable attractive (but I understand that he was) so I guess I never saw Leslie Howard as weak looking. He was handsome. But I didn't know that Ashley was meant to be a blond, dreamy stud. I always thought he was meant to be a more sensitive aesthete. Thanks for the clarity.

Errol Flynn was still too handsome to lose out to Gable though, no?

R16 In the documentary from the early 1990s about the making of GWTW, it was said that Bette was passed over for the role of Scarlett because she "had just played Scarlett the year before", meaning her character in Jezebel was basically Scarlett-esque. She was never a serious contender. So that whole claim about Bette and Errol Flynn sounds like gossip and nothing more. It was PAULETTE GODDARD who was the most likely to be cast as Scarlett. She did screen tests and everything.

R529, GWTW had an 80th anniversary reissue earlier this year, through Fathom Events. I saw it at an AMC and it was fantastic. It did very well so I'm hoping fur another reissue at the end of this year.

Ashley is definitely a sensitive aesthete, R552, and he was supposed to be blond with aristocratic features. But he was also tall and well-built, an excellent poker player, and, according to Gerald O'Hara, could drink the Tarleton Twins under the table. So he definitely wasn't supposed to be a wimp. But Gerald tells Scarlett early in the book that Ashley's family is odd compared to the other planter families, as the Wilkes are interested in art and music and literature, and it's best they marry their cousins and keep their oddness to themselves. Her father flat-out tells Scarlett that marrying Ashley wouldn't make her happy, but she's too young to understand what he's saying.

R555 That is the interesting thing Ashley, and the Wilkes acted more like the old Planter families of Charleston, Savannah, and Virginia, while the brash Rhett was more like the backcountry planters, than the ones of his native Charleston. That was also what made the O'Hara's marriage strange, Ellen was a Savannah belle and Gerald was a rough Irishman. We think of Southern culture, especially among the elite, as being one culture, but they weren't. The planters along the coast really say themselves as an extension of the British landed gentry and aristocracy, where art and culture were treated with great importance. Those in the backcountry, didn't care for such things, largely because they weren't exposed to them as much.

Are any of you bitches watching the Tonys while you're here? If not, you're not missing anything.

R557 I am. Reading threads too. Awards night tradition haha.

Yes, the Ellen/Gerald marriage was something of a misalliance, which is embodied in the face of her eldest daughter, in whose face "were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father." Scarlett is too clever and willful to be happy as the bride of Charles Hamilton (or, probably, any of the neighbor boys she had wound around her finger). She never fits the role she was brought up to occupy, which makes her soulmates with Rhett, who never fit his background, either.

At 33 when the novel opens, Rhett is wise enough and jaded enough to appreciate all of Scarlett's brash qualities. (We'll pass over his lusting over a sixteen-year-old, as it wouldn't have been considered so odd in the 19th Century.) He even tells her later in the book that it's her mind and heart he wants far more than her body, as he can get sex anywhere. Sad that she loses him in the end, though knowing Scarlett, she found a way to get him back eventually.

no she didn't

R560 Yes, she did.

"Though knowing Scarlett, she found a way to get him back eventually."

Though knowing Rhett, she never would have gotten him back. He meant what he said. He didn't love her anymore and he didn't care where she went or what she did. He'd lost interest in her sexually long before ("I promise I'll never bother you again. That's final"). Of course Scarlett is surely going to TRY and get him back. That's certainly in her stubborn, single-minded nature, "the spirit of her people who would not know defeat, even when it stared them in the face." But getting him back? It never would have happened.

By the way, A. Ripley and D. McCaig are idiots.

I think it's left open deliberately so the reader can make his/her own decision about whether Scarlett can wear Rhett down or not.

Sorry, who are A. Ripley and D. McCaig?

R564 here. Nevermind I googled it. That sounds like a hot mess.

R562 You are wrong, Rhett would never find another woman who excited him sexually, emotionally, and intellectually like Scarlett. Just like Scarlett had a thing for Ashley, Rhett had a thing for Melanie but he realized he could never be with a woman like that.

R564 Alexandra Ripley author of "Scarlett" and Donald McCaig author of "Rhett Butler's People" the authorized sequels to GWTW.

The Wind Done Gone is the only one of the Gone With the Wind Sequels that sounds interesting at all.

R567 The prequel about Mammy, given the name Ruth, called Ruth's Journey, isn't bad.

As has already been said Maggie is on record saying that Scarlett does not get Rhett back. Scarlett realizes that the dream Ashley in her head never existed and will never exist and Rhett has simply lost interest in Scarlett. It turns out she was more effort than she was worth. He is over her and knows he still has options.

Scarlett has Tara and it's all she really wanted in the first place. She's home so it's really a happy ending and the audience is satisfied.

I don't like this conjecture based on sequels. GWTW is worthy of mythology. I think we can all have our own conclusion. Mine is that Rhett was really done with Scarlett. The "frankly my dear" line is dramatic, thank god. Still, the feeling was final. Comes a day when even the most tender heart has been betrayed too often or has been lied to in a way that feels outside of bounds. Scarlett was not a girl anymore and Rhett had lost some certainty and gained some insight. Her delusion is what the last scene points to. It's a great movie in so many ways. She's written as a great heroine and she is heroic. But she's not a good wife or mother or sister or friend. Rhett knows the better part of her and the beautiful pieces. But a man grows up and a woman shouldn't remain a wily girl. Vivien Leigh was remarkably different as the Scarlett on the final staircase, but Scarlett O'Hara was not changed enough. I don't want no sequel, ha.

"Rhett would never find another woman who excited him sexually, emotionally, and intellectually like Scarlett."

As stated before, he was done with her sexually. After the incident where he carried her up the stairs, he disappears for two days (he spends them at Belle Watling's). When he gets back they get into another one of their heated quarrels and she tells him that from now on she would "lock my door!" He says "Don't bother." She tells him to get out and he says "Don't worry. I'm going. And I promise you I'll never bother you again. That's final." He even offers to divorce her, if that's what she wants: "Just give me Bonnie and I won't contest it." And she never stimulated him "emotionally and Intellectually." He liked her because she was in essence like him; self-centered, unscrupulous,mercenary, a rascal, a rogue.

At the end of the novel he tells her in no uncertain terms that he no longer loves her, or cares about anything she does, and that he's going away. And he means it. That is Rhett Butler, telling it like it is. Only hopeless, swooning romantics believe in the fantasy of Rhett and Scarlett getting back to together. It's just not going to happen. They could have had a great marriage if Scarlett and let go of her fixation on Ashley. But she never did. And that destroyed the love Rhett had for her. It was over. That was so obvious; there was no happy ending in store for Scarlett and Rhett. Margaret Mitchell was too smart for that.

Throughout it all from the very first scene with the Twins Scarlett is saying I'll think about it tomorrow then the final line is tomorrow is another day.

Clearly Scarlett's perception has changed.

"Scarlett" by Alexandra Ripley, was one of the worst books ever published. It is truly BAD. A total piece of crap.

Ten years down the line Scarlett and Emmy Slattery are shacked up together in NYC, running a settlement house on the Lower East Side. They are vegetarians. Ashley is in the French Foreign Legion and is an opium addict. Rhett sponsors promising young, male musicians in Atlanta and his favorite position is Reverse Cowboy. His Sunday afternoon soirees are legendary.

We won't even get into the fact that Helen Lawson had personally contacted Margaret Mitchell and pleaded with her to re-work the novel for film so that her Scarlett would have sexually pursued Big Sam!

She told Mitchell it would be wonderful to have Big Sam take Scarlett right on the floor underneath a portrait of Jefferson Davis as "Dixieland" played.

She then posited just how "big" Big Sam really was!

Leigh had large hands that she was self-conscious about. She called them her "paws" and usually tried to disguise their size by keeping her fingers folded, etc. Astaire did the same thing.

Well I, for one, believe Scarlett did get Rhett back. Scarlett was single-minded and willful and despite what another poster has said, Rhett still loves her at the end of the book. He was tired, he needed to get away, but Scarlett was the only woman he'd ever loved body and soul and that had not died. Each knew the other intimately, better than anyone else knew them, and each was the only person the other could possibly be happy with. In my version, Scarlett eventually convinces him, they get back together and have another baby. Scarlett is still young enough, and the baby bonds them together as before. Only this time, Ashley doesn't come between them. They help him, help Beau and pay for his college. They grow old together in that big Atlanta house with Scarlett making frequent visits to Tara. Scarlett is still fiery but she's a better woman and she and Rhett understand each other in a way that neither could ever achieve with anyone new.

Disagree. Women will take you back, but once men are done with you they are [bold]done[/bold].

[quote]One of the dresses was a beautiful "lavender barred muslim" with "wide insets of lace and net above the hem" but "it had never suited her type. She thinks it would be good for her someone like her baby sister Careen: "it would suit Careen's delicate profile and wishy-washy expression perfectly"

Producer's had hoped initially that Judy Garland could play Careen O'Hara. Even though it is a smallish role, Garland was far too busy with "The Wizard of Oz" and "Babes in Arms", although she would have been an added treat as Scarlett's younger sister.

R569 Scarlett doesn't have Tara, bitch sold it to ME, remember ?

Oh, oh....

It's true, Judy was originally cast as Careen, but she turned out to be so popular that she wasn't available by the time shooting came around and was easily replaced in such a small role.

Judy Garland with her chirpy voice and dilated eyes would have been out of place at Tara. She'd burst into Swanee or Ole Man River and everyone would revolt. She'd be singing dear Captain Gable and getting all mixed up. She'd want to stage a show in the ruin of Tara. She'd make a dress out of old tea towels, slit her throat and invite the Yankees to stay all night!

Oh you are such a dear, r583

June 22--50th anniversary of Judy's death

June 28 --same for Stonewall

Judy's dead. Let's riot again!

^ Let's = Let us

Judy in GWTW would have pulled focus. Vivien would have killed the little darling and had her scenes cut. Especially the scene where Ashley convinces Careen to let him fondle her bare breasts and finds to his annoyance that they were bound by the studio. Turns out Careen isn't as young as he thought.

You are a treasure, r588. And so correct.

Judy's voice was never "chirpy." She was a mezzo with a fantastic belt.

As late as 2015 MM was saying she didn't know if Scarlett got Rhett back.

I don't know either. You have to think Scarlett wouldn't have given up, but that doesn't mean she found a way either. As someone point out upthread, when a man is done, he is done. When I think about some of the broken relationships in my life, they all break, irretrievably, when someone has said something that can't be unsaid. Not played out in the book, but described, is the clawing they did at one another after Bonnie's death and the blame thrown about. He loved that kid. I wonder if what Scarlett said was, in the end, too much to get past?

As for Scarlett, with her newfound insight into love and life, perhaps she just carried on with a broken heart and wound up writing The Man That Got Away under a pen name.

Scarlett finally gave up on Ashley so she would have eventually given up on Rhett. And MM did say she never got him back. Maybe at other times she said she didn't know because people did not want to know Scarlett ultimately failed. And 2015? What was MM Elvis? She really wasn't killed by that hit and run driver?

Someone asked Vivien if she thought Scarlett and Rhett would ever get back together and she said no.

And SHE should know!

Does this mean that Liza Minnelli will be dying in the next two weeks?

Does R591 really think Margaret Mitchell was alive and giving interviews in 2015?

Margaret Mitchell died in 1949 after being struck by a car with a drunk driver while crossing the street. I doubt she was giving interviews in 2015.

Rhett was a dick. He knew when he married Scarlett that she was in love with Ashley. He told her he didn't care, that he was only marrying her because he wanted her body and couldn't get her any other way. This was a lie, because he was too much of a coward to tell her he loved her. He didn't even TRY to romance her, when her long-term crush on Ashley shows that Scarlett was capable of romantic feeling. Once she had Bonnie, she didn't want more babies with Rhett because it would ruin her figure and possibly kill her (childbirth was still deadly in the 1860s). Also, she WAS still in love with Ashley, which Rhett very well knew. Rather than trying to understand her feelings, he gets drunk and has rough rapey sex with her. Strangely enough this works for her, but instead of trying to build on their newfound passion he gets butthurt and starts fucking whores again. He transfers all of his obsession with Scarlett to Bonnie, which is insanely creepy. Then Bonnie dies, Melanie dies, Scarlett finally gets over Ashley but is Rhett willing to let the past be the past? Nope. Which makes you wonder if he ever really loved her at all, or if he just wanted what he could not get.

Fuck Rhett. I hope Scarlett married Ashley, whipped him into shape, and had a million babies with him.

I didn't realize Margaret Mitchell lived as long as 1949 and yet never produced another novel in the 13 years since GWTW was published.

Mitchell spent 10 years writing GWTW in her off hours as a reporter for an Atlanta newspaper, although she started it when she was confined to home due to illness. Scarlett's name until the final draft was Pansy O'Hara and the novel's tentative name was Tomorrow Is Another Day.