'GONE WITH THE WIND', SLAVERY & WHITE SUPREMACISM

Gone with the Wind

Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. The weather is cold and windy and she has decided to stay at home watching TV, especially TV3, that celebrates today its Marató to recap money for minority diseases.

After having lunch, The Grandma has received the visit of Claire Fontaine, her closer friend, who has arrived to watch Gone with the Wind with her. They love Margaret Mitchell's novel and they have wanted to remember it watching the film that received its premiere at Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia on a day like today in 1939.

Claire and The Grandma have got different points of view about this film. While Claire considers that the film is a reflection of the society of the 19 century in the USA, The Grandma thinks that this film perpetuates Civil War myths and black stereotypes.

Gone with the Wind won ten Academy Awards, one of them, Best Supporting Actress, was won by Hattie McDaniel becoming The Oscar Awards' First Black Winner.

The Grandma wants to talk about this classic movie but also about Hattie McDaniel, her award, and the critics that the movie had and has because of its depiction of black people and glorification of slavery.

Before watching Gone with the Wind, The Grandma has read a new chapter of Clare West's Treading on Dreams-Stories from Ireland.

Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American epic historical romance film adapted from the 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell.

The film was produced by David O. Selznick of Selznick International Pictures and directed by Victor Fleming.

Set in the American South against the backdrop of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era, the film tells the story of Scarlett O'Hara, the strong-willed daughter of a Georgia plantation owner. It follows her romantic pursuit of Ashley Wilkes, who is married to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton, and her subsequent marriage to Rhett Butler.

More information: The Hollywood Reported

The leading roles are played by Vivien Leigh (Scarlett), Clark Gable (Rhett), Leslie Howard (Ashley), Olivia de Havilland (Melanie) and Hattie McDaniel (Mammy).

Gone with the Wind Atlanta Premiere, 1939

Production was difficult from the start. Filming was delayed for two years because of Selznick's determination to secure Gable for the role of Rhett Butler, and the search for Scarlett led to 1,400 women being interviewed for the part.

The original screenplay was written by Sidney Howard and underwent many revisions by several writers in an attempt to get it down to a suitable length. The original director, George Cukor, was fired shortly after filming began and was replaced by Fleming, who in turn was briefly replaced by Sam Wood while Fleming took some time off due to exhaustion.

The film received positive reviews upon its release in December 1939, although some reviewers found it overlong. The casting was widely praised, and many reviewers found Leigh especially suited to her role as Scarlett.

At the 12th Academy Awards, it received ten Academy Awards (eight competitive, two honorary) from thirteen nominations, including wins for Best Picture, Best Director (Fleming), Best Adapted Screenplay (posthumously awarded to Sidney Howard), Best Actress (Leigh), and Best Supporting Actress (Hattie McDaniel, becoming the first African American to win an Academy Award). It set records for the total number of wins and nominations at the time.

More information: Ninja Journalist

Gone with the Wind was immensely popular when first released. It became the highest-earning film made up to that point, and held the record for over a quarter of a century. When adjusted for monetary inflation, it is still the highest-grossing film in history. It was re-released periodically throughout the 20th century and became ingrained in popular culture.

The film is regarded as one of the greatest films of all time; it has placed in the top ten of the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 American films since the list's inception in 1998. In 1989, the United States Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Despite receiving top-billing in the opening credits, Gable -along with Leigh, Howard, and 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.

Rhett Butler & Scarlett O'Hara

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 Leslie Howard who plays his son, and Clark 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. Following the death of Mary Anderson -who played Maybelle Merriwether- in April 2014, there are only two surviving credited cast members from the film: Olivia de Havilland, who played Melanie Wilkes; and Mickey Kuhn, who played her son, Beau.

The casting of the two lead roles became a complex, two-year endeavor. For the role of Rhett Butler, Selznick wanted Clark Gable from the start, but Gable was under contract to MGM, which never loaned him to other studios. Gary Cooper was considered, but Samuel Goldwyn -to whom Cooper was under contract- refused to loan him out. Warner offered a package of Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, and Olivia de Havilland for lead roles in return for the distribution rights.

By this time, Selznick was determined to get Gable and eventually struck a deal with MGM. Selznick's father-in-law, MGM chief Louis B. Mayer, offered in August 1938 to provide Gable and $1,250,000 for half of the film's budget but for a high price: Selznick would have to pay Gable's weekly salary, and half the profits would go to MGM while Loew's, Inc -MGM's parent company- would release the film.

More information: Vintag

To compose the score, Selznick chose Max Steiner, with whom he had worked at RKO Pictures in the early 1930s. Warner Bros. -who had contracted Steiner in 1936- agreed to lend him to Selznick. Steiner spent twelve weeks working on the score, the longest period that he had ever spent writing one, and at two hours and thirty-six minutes long it was also the longest that he had ever written. Five orchestrators were hired, including Hugo Friedhofer, Maurice de Packh, Bernard Kaun, Adolph Deutsch and Reginald Bassett.

About 300,000 people came out in Atlanta for the film's premiere at the Loew's Grand Theatre on December 15, 1939. It was the climax of three days of festivities hosted by Mayor William B. Hartsfield, which included a parade of limousines featuring stars from the film, receptions, thousands of Confederate flags, and a costume ball. Eurith D. Rivers, the governor of Georgia, declared December 15 a state holiday. An estimated three hundred thousand residents and visitors to Atlanta lined the streets for up to seven miles to watch a procession of limousines bring the stars from the airport.

Melanie Hamilton & Ashley Wilkes

Upon its release, consumer magazines and newspapers generally gave Gone with the Wind excellent reviews; however, while its production values, technical achievements, and scale of ambition were universally recognized, some reviewers of the time found the film to be too long and dramatically unconvincing.

Frank S. Nugent for The New York Times best summed up the general sentiment by acknowledging that while it was the most ambitious film production made up to that point, it probably was not the greatest film ever made, but he nevertheless found it to be an interesting story beautifully told.

Franz Hoellering of The Nation was of the same opinion: The result is a film which is a major event in the history of the industry but only a minor achievement in motion-picture art. There are moments when the two categories meet on good terms, but the long stretches between are filled with mere spectacular efficiency.

At the 12th Academy Awards, Gone with the Wind set a record for Academy Award wins and nominations, winning in eight of the competitive categories it was nominated in, from a total of thirteen nominations. It won for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Editing, and received two further honorary awards for its use of equipment and color, it also became the first color film to win Best Picture.

More information: Variety

Black commentators criticised the film for its depiction of black people and as a glorification of slavery. Carlton Moss, a black dramatist, complained in an open letter that whereas The Birth of a Nation was a frontal attack on American history and the Negro people, Gone with the Wind was a rear attack on the same. He went on to dismiss it as a nostalgic plea for sympathy for a still living cause of Southern reaction.

Moss further criticized the stereotypical black characterizations, such as the shiftless and dull-witted Pork, the indolent and thoroughly irresponsible Prissy, Big Sam's radiant acceptance of slavery, and Mammy with her constant haranguing and doting on every wish of Scarlett.

Scarlett O'Hara & Mammy

Opinion in the black community was generally divided upon release, with the film being called by some a weapon of terror against black America and an insult to black audiences, and demonstrations were held in various cities. Gone with the Wind has been criticized as having perpetuated Civil War myths and black stereotypes. 

David Reynolds wrote that The white women are elegant, their menfolk noble or at least dashing. And, in the background, the black slaves are mostly dutiful and content, clearly incapable of an independent existence. Reynolds likened Gone with the Wind to The Birth of a Nation and other re-imaginings of the South during the era of segregation, in which white Southerners are portrayed as defending traditional values, and the issue of slavery is largely ignored.

The film has been described as a regression that promotes both the myth of the black rapist and the honorable and defensive role of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction, and as a social propaganda film offering a white supremacist view of the past.

More information: Refinery 29

One of the most notorious and widely condemned scenes in Gone with the Wind depicts what is now legally defined as marital rape. The scene begins with Scarlett and Rhett at the bottom of the staircase, where he begins to kiss her, refusing to be told 'no' by the struggling and frightened Scarlett; Rhett overcomes her resistance and carries her up the stairs to the bedroom, where the audience is left in no doubt that she will get what's coming to her. The next scene, the following morning, shows Scarlett glowing with barely suppressed sexual satisfaction; Rhett apologizes for his behavior, blaming it on his drinking.

The scene has been accused of combining romance and rape by making them indistinguishable from each other, and of reinforcing a notion about forced sex: that women secretly enjoy it, and it is an acceptable way for a man to treat his wife.

Download Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

For the entire state of Georgia,

having the premiere of Gone With the Wind on home ground

was like winning the Battle of Atlanta 75 years late.

Anne Edwards