Gone With the Wind
(1939)

Director: Victor Fleming

Key Cast: Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Barbara O’Neill, Evelyn Keyes, Ann Rutherford, George Reeves, Fred Crane, Hattie McDaniel, Oscar Polk, Butterfly McQueen, Victor Jory

Rating: G

Genre(s): Drama, Romance, War

Song Sample:
"Tara's Theme"

Gone With the Wind is an epic Civil War and Reconstruction period drama.  It tells the story of the O’Hara family who live a seemingly idyllic, genteel lifestyle on their cotton plantation named Tara.  However, when the Civil War breaks out their lives change dramatically, and for the worse.

At the center of the story is Scarlett O’ Hara (Vivien Leigh) who becomes the driving force to save the family plantation. She will do whatever it takes to save Tara, including marrying someone that she doesn’t love.  The relationships that she has with others, especially her future husband, Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), unfold over time against the backdrop of the historical changes occurring in the South during the pre and post Civil War period.

This highly-anticipated film smashed all box office records and to this day is considered one of the greatest movies ever made.

Hattie McDaniel, Butterfly McQueen and Oscar Polk are some the key African-American actors in this longstanding epic film.

∙  Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American to ever win an Academy Award when she won the 1940 Best Supporting Actress Academy Award.  Her nomination for the award also was the first time that an African-American had ever been nominated.

∙  When Gone With the Wind premiered in Atlanta, Georgia, Hattie McDaniel did not attend because Georgia was still a segregated state and she would have had to sit in the “colored” section of the theatre.

∙  The word  “nigger” was originally in the screenplay but was removed at the request of the African-American members of the cast.

∙  As a ten year old child, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. attended the Gone With the Wind opening ball with his father, Martin Luther King Sr. who had been invited to attend.

∙  The Klu Klux Klan was purposely not mentioned or shown in the film so as to not create the same outrage that the movie Birth of a Nation (1915) did.

∙  Margaret Mitchell wrote the Pulitizer Prize winning book, Gone With the Wind, that the movie is based on.  This turned out to be Margaret Mitchell’s first and only novel.

∙  Won ten 1940 Academy Awards:  Best Picture,  Best Actress (Vivien Leigh),  Best Supporting Actress (Hattie McDaniel), Best Director (Victor Fleming), Best Music (Max Steiner), Best Film Editing, Best Writing, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Technical Achievement Award.

∙  Nominated for five additional 1940 Academy Awards:  Best Actor (Clark Gable), Best Supporting Actress (Olivia de Havilland), Best Special Effects, Best Music, Best Sound.

∙  Selected in 1989 to the Library of Congress National Film Registry.

Buy the Gone With the Wind Movie DVD
Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American
to win an Academy Award and she won it for
her performance in this movie,
"Gone With the Wind."

 
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Gone With the Wind Movie Posters
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"Gone With the Wind" Movie Soundtrack
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