Trivia / Gone with the Wind

Novel

• Extremely Lengthy Creation: Margaret Mitchell started working on this book in 1926. It wasn't published until 1936.
• What Could Have Been: Margaret Mitchell originally planned on calling her heroine "Pansy O'Hara", and Tara was "Fontenoy Hall".
• Working Title: Other names she had considered for the novel itself were Tote the Weary Load and Tomorrow Is Another Day.
• Write Who You Know: Margaret Mitchell based Ashley Wilkes on her cousin by marriage John "Doc" Holliday. Melanie was based on her third cousin, and Doc's first cousin and close friend, Mattie "Sister Melanie" Holliday.

Film

• Ability over Appearance:
  • Melanie Wilkes is described as a plain girl in the book and is liked because she is kind and sweet to everyone. Olivia de Havilland is far too pretty to be believable as a plain girl, but she is easily believable as the kind Ingenue that everyone loves.
  • Scarlett also isn't remotely beautiful in the book. She's decent looking but her appeal comes from her personality and lack of attainability. Vivien Leigh might be too pretty but she captures Scarlett's personality to the T. The original author gave Leigh her stamp of approval.
• Adored by the Network:
  • AMC loves to air this around Thanksgiving, even though it has nothing to do with the holiday and isn't really the kind of movie that appeals to all ages.
  • It's been noted several times this is Ted Turner's favorite movie, and not only did he end up owning it (thanks to acquiring MGM for 74 days in 1986, then selling it back, but keeping the MGM library up to that point), it was the first program shown on both TNT and TCM. For years there was a theater at the CNN Center that offered showings of this movie (it was replaced by areas for CNN's websites in the late 90s).
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!:
  • "Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn." It's actually "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Also changed from the book, where it's "My dear, I don't give a damn." Also, it is often used as the last line, which it isn't.
  • Prissy's famous line is "I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies." The word "no" is often inserted before "babies" in modern quotations, but is not present in the actual film.
• Billing Displacement: Despite receiving top-billing in the opening credits, Clark Gable—along with Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, and Olivia de Havilland who receive second, third, and fourth billing respectively—has a relatively low placing in the cast list, due to its unusual structure. Rather than ordered by conventional billing, the cast is broken down into three sections: the Tara plantation, Twelve Oaks, and Atlanta. The cast's names are ordered according to the social rank of the characters; therefore Thomas Mitchell, who plays Gerald O'Hara, leads the cast list as the head of the O'Hara family, while Barbara O'Neil as his wife receives the second credit and Vivien Leigh as the eldest daughter the third credit, despite having the most screen time. Similarly, Howard C. Hickman as John Wilkes is credited over Howard who plays his son, and Gable, who plays only a visitor at Twelve Oaks, receives a relatively low credit in the cast list, despite being presented as the "star" of the film in all the promotional literature.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Olivia de Havilland was a candidate to play Scarlett O'Hara before being cast as Melanie Wilkes.
• Celebrity Voice Actor:
  • In the Japanese dub of the film, Rhett is voiced by Ken Watanabe, albeit only on the TV Tokyo version of the film.
  • In the first Latin American Spanish dub, done in New York, Scarlett was voiced by the legendary Mexican movie actress Blanca Estela Pavón.
• Contractual Obligation Project: Leslie Howard didn't even bother reading the book, and only did the film because Selznick promised him that he could fulfill Howard's dream of becoming a producer. His contract stipulated that he could produce, direct, and star in any movie of his choice. That film was Intermezzo, a remake of the Swedish film of the same name, which ended up being a Star-Making Role for co-star Ingrid Bergman.
• Creator Backlash: Very few of the cast members actually liked the characters they were portraying.
  • Butterfly McQueen regretted playing such an Ethnic Scrappy.
  • Clark Gable thought of the film as a rosy "woman's picture" (i.e. a Chick Flick. Keep in mind that films directed at a female audience at the time were often period dramas) and disliked how it overshadowed the rest of his very prolific resume.
  • Leslie Howard felt he was too old for Ashley and hated the costumes.
  • Rand Brooks disliked playing Scarlett's first husband as he was a rough outdoorsman and disliked such a wimpy character.
  • Subverted with Vivien Leigh, who was a fan of the novel and carried around a copy of the book during filming, much to producer David O. Selznick's dismay.
  • Also subverted with Olivia de Havilland, who personally pursued the role of Melanie while every other actress in Hollywood wanted Scarlett's part, despite being under contract with Warner Bros. (the film was being produced by rival studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). She has often said she always found ingenue roles more interesting.
• Darkhorse Casting: Vivien Leigh was little known in America when she won the most coveted role in Hollywood.
• Dawson Casting: Leslie Howard was 47, and felt he was far to old to play the twenty-something Ashley Wilkes. Justified because this film covers over ten years, and so he had to play the older Ashley as well. Also, Vivien Leigh was 26 years old when cast as the 16 year old Scarlett. Like the Howard example, this was justified as she continued to play Scarlett as the character aged.
• Distanced from Current Events:
  • The film was temporarily removed from the library of HBO Max in June 2020 amidst the George Floyd protests. It topped DVD sales on Amazon that very day as a result. It was later clarified that it would eventually return to the service with a disclaimer that discusses its historical context and warns about the outdated depictions of slavery.
  • Hallmark pulled an ornament depicting Scarlet O'Hara from this movie from their 2020 line-up for the same reason.
• Dueling Dubs:
  • There's two Latin American Spanish dubs: one done in the 1940s in U.S. in New York, and another one done in the mid-1980s in Mexico City. While there's some remaining information about who worked in the New York dub, that one is considered lost, and only the Mexican one remains so far.
  • There's also six Japanese dubs: One for home video, one for DVD, two made for Nippon TV (NTV), another one for TV Tokyo, and yet another one for in-flight used mainly by Japan Airlines (JAL).^note This film, along with the Star Wars original trilogy were the foreign films with more Japanese dubs available, a record later topped by Roman Holiday in 2022, with nine dubbed versions.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Vivien Leigh's natural blue eyes were color-corrected to green eyes in post-production to match Scarlett's description in the book.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • When Melanie goes into labour, Olivia de Havilland had someone pinching her toes off camera to make her feel pain.
  • While directing the scene where Prissy says, "Oh Miss Scarlett! I don't know nuthin' 'bout birthin' babies," George Cukor told Vivien Leigh to actually slap Butterfly McQueen and to make it as realistic as possible, and directed McQueen to scream. After many takes McQueen broke down in tears, complaining that Leigh was hitting her too hard. In a later interview, McQueen said that she "bargained" with the others, stating that if Leigh hit her, she would NOT scream, but if Leigh's hand only passed close to her face with the illusion of hitting her, she would scream as loudly as she could. McQueen also giggled and said that she thought "Prissy should have been slapped often, because she was horrid!"
  • In the fleeing of Atlanta scene, there was true bedlam and chaos on the set, with very little direction to anyone other then "Run in a panic". Look at Vivien Leigh as she struggles through the crowd. It's very much a real push against the tide. There's also a moment after Scarlett talks to Big Sam and the other slaves where she dashes out of the way of an out-of-control wagon barreling down on her. Leigh said that this wasn't scripted and she actually would have been run over if she'd been any slower in reacting.
• Fake American: English actors Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara and Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes. Olivia de Havilland was also British, but was later naturalized as an American citizen.
• Fake Irish: New Jersey native Thomas Mitchell plays Irish immigrant Gerald O'Hara. Subverted in that Mitchell’s parents were Irish immigrants.
• Genre-Killer: Of the "so good (relatively speaking) no one can top it" variety. The Genre Deconstruction of Roots (1977) 37 years later would prevent any kind of Genre Revival from happening.
• Hostility on the Set: Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable repeatedly denied the newspaper rumours that they weren't getting along on set. They found the rumours so funny that they would frequently greet each other by saying "How are you not getting on today?"
• Hypothetical Casting: Margaret Mitchell was so convinced that her book wouldn't work as a film that she jokingly suggested Groucho Marx as Rhett Butler. Her first serious choice was Basil Rathbone.
• Money, Dear Boy: Clark Gable only agreed to do the film because the money would allow him to divorce his current wife and marry Carole Lombard.
• Non-Singing Voice: Variation. The retching noises Scarlett makes as she delivers her famous "with God as my witness" line were dubbed by Olivia de Havilland. Rumour is that Vivien Leigh either couldn't do it the way the director wished, or refused because it wasn't ladylike.
• Promoted Fanboy: See Ted Turner and his owning the movie.
• Prop Recycling: The MGM lot had many old sets that were due for demolition. Instead, they set fire to them to film the burning of Atlanta. The gates from King Kong is the burning wall that almost collapses on Rhett and Scarlett's speeding wagon.
• The Red Stapler: Uncertain, and definitely downplayed. Scarlett appeared in the top 1000 female names in 1940, a year after the movie came out, and lasted four years. The name reappeared in 1962 and 1963. It reappeared in 1992, then gained in popularity in the 2000s, reaching 30th in 2014.
• Scully Box: Clark Gable wore lifts.
• Star-Making Role: For Vivien Leigh.
• Throw It In!: When Rhett pours Mammy a drink after the birth of Bonnie, for a joke during a take, Clark Gable actually poured alcohol instead of the usual tea into the decanter without Hattie McDaniel knowing it until she took a swig. This was the take ultimately used.
• Uncredited Role:
  • The original director George Cukor was fired after three weeks of shooting, but some of his footage remains in the final cut without credit, and Sam Wood similarly worked without credit when he replaced an exhausted Victor Fleming for two weeks.
  • The screenplay is solely credited to playwright Sidney Howard, but his original draft was much too long and other writers worked without credit to create the filmed version, including Jo Swerling, Oliver Garrett, and Barbara Keon, with leading Hollywood script doctor Ben Hecht contributing to the final rewrites.
• Underage Casting: Barbara O'Neil was only 28 when she appeared as Ellen O'Hara. Vivien Leigh was 25 when she appeared as Scarlett, who is only 16 at the beginning of the film.
• Wag the Director:
  • Vivien Leigh wasn't happy with Victor Fleming's brusque style after the careful nurturing she had enjoyed with George Cukor. When she asked him for direction in one scene, he told her "Ham it up". On another occasion when she asked for his constructive advice, he told her to "take the script and stick it up her royal British ass". After Cukor's departure, Leigh had to fight hard to keep the movie's Scarlett true to her view. Fleming's interpretation of her was that she was an out-and-out bitch as in the novel and that he had no desire to create any sympathy or insight for her. Leigh had private meetings with Cukor about the direction her character had to take.
  • Clark Gable supposedly had George Cukor fired as director. Allegedly, when Gable was still an unknown actor, Cukor propositioned himself sexually to Gable in exchange for advancing his career. Gable, who, to top it off was already a homophobe before this, rejected Cukor's advances and never forgot this episode. Several years later, with Gable now the top movie star in Hollywood, Selznick selected Cukor to direct the film, but Gable, already signed into the production, adamantly vetoed Cukor and got him kicked out of the project.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Gary Cooper was the first choice for Rhett Butler. He turned it down, expecting the movie would flop. Ronald Coleman and Fredric March were also considered.
  • Katharine Hepburn was a leading contender for Scarlett, but she refused to do a screen-test. Legend has it that David O. Selznick turned her down, saying, "I just can't picture Clark Gable chasing you for seven years".
    • Bette Davis turned down the role of Scarlett O'Hara, thinking that her co-star would be Errol Flynn, with whom she refused to work. Needless to say she ended up regretting her decision deeply, and was given the leading role in Jezebel (yet another film about a Southern Belle out for trouble) as a consolation price of sorts, and she was awarded her second Oscar for it.
    • Tallulah Bankhead was up for the role, but her scandalous personal life ruled her out. She also reportedly turned down the role of Belle Watling.
    • Paulette Goddard almost won the role, but controversy over her marriage with Charlie Chaplin caused Selznick to change his mind.
    • Other candidates included Jean Arthur, Lucille Ball, Claudette Colbert, Joan Crawford, Carole Lombard, Susan Hayward, Miriam Hopkins, Norma Shearer, Barbara Stanwyck, Lana Turner, Shelley Winters and Loretta Young.
  • Alfred Hitchcock wrote a treatment for the scene where the women wait for the men on the raid from Shantytown at the request of the director. His treatment included precise shots, showing Rhett and Ashley dodging the Union soldiers - and a meaningful exchange of glances between Melanie and Rhett. None of this was used.
  • Judy Garland was heavily in the running to play Scarlett's sister Careen but she was too busy filming The Wizard of Oz - so Ann Rutherford was cast instead. Billie Burke, who played Glinda, auditioned for Aunt Pittypat but was turned down for being too young.
  • Early drafts of the script kept in Scarlett's son Wade but he was cut from the story before filming began. He and Ella (who also cut from the film) still appear in a book of paper dolls about the characters that was printed before he was cut.
  • The final scene was to be of Scarlett clad in a green dress, approaching Tara. This was filmed (stills can be found on YouTube), but cut.
  • Although Olivia de Havilland was always front-runner to play Melanie, Janet Gaynor, Fay Wray and Jane Wyman were also considered. Reportedly when Joan Fontaine was considered for the role, she rejected it but suggested her sister de Havilland for the part. Shirley, Hunt and Leeds were the only ones who underwent a screen test for the part.
  • Lew Ayres, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Ray Milland, Tyrone Power and Vincent Price were among those who tested for the part of Ashley.
  • Lillian Gish had originally been approached to take on the part of Scarlett's mother.
  • Lionel Barrymore was originally considered for Dr. Meade, but he had to turn it down due to his crippling arthritis.
  • Elizabeth Taylor was considered for Bonnie Blue Butler.
  • Victor Mature tested for the role of Brent Tarleton.
  • After Tallulah Bankhead turned down the Belle Watling role, Mae West was offered the role of the Atlanta madam only to West to also turn down the part due to feeling it was too small for an established star and also wanting to rewrite her own lines to suit her persona (which potentially could have been an issue given her film career had largely stalled following the increasingly strict enforcement of the Hays Code).

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