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Sunday, February 14,2010 8:00 PM
Monday, March 8,2010 5:00 AM
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Behind the Camera on CASABLANCA
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On December 10, 1938, Gone with the Wind went into production on independent producer David O. Selznick's back lot with the burning of Atlanta. He used the scene as an excuse to get rid of old sets standing where he hoped to build Tara and the city of Atlanta. Special effects man Lee Zavitz arranged an elaborate system of gas jets and water sprinklers so he could ignite and extinguish the fire eight times. All seven Technicolor® cameras in existence were used to shoot stuntmen, including Yakima Canutt as Rhett Butler, racing through the fire.
Among the Hollywood luminaries joining Selznick on the observation platform were his brother, agent Myron Selznick, and actor Laurence Olivier, recently arrived to film Wuthering Heights (1939). Accompanying Olivier was his fiancée, British actress Vivien Leigh. Myron Selznick introduced her to his brother with the line, "Here, genius! I want you to meet your Scarlett O'Hara!"
Impressed with Leigh's beauty and her resemblance to Mitchell's descriptions of Scarlett, Selznick scheduled her for a final round of screen tests that also included Paulette Goddard, Joan Bennett and Jean Arthur. On Christmas Day, the film's director, George Cukor, took Leigh aside and said "I guess we're stuck with you."
Some biographers have suggested that Selznick had decided to cast Leigh long before that and staged the search for Scarlett and the other actress' screen tests as a publicity stunt. It is known that he had screened one of Leigh's British films while searching for talent, but others have stated that he didn't think her right for the part at the time.
Principal photography started on January 26, 1939, with the film's opening scene.
Selznick and Cukor started quarreling almost from the first over the director's approach to certain scenes and his habit of re-writing lines on the set (to be fair, the script, which was still being re-written on Selznick's end, often didn't arrive on the set until the morning a scene was to be shot). Adding to their problems was Gable's uneasiness at being directed by a gay man and his fear that Cukor, already noted for his facility as a woman's director, would favor the film's leading ladies. On February 13, Selznick fired Cukor. Out of respect for the director, he kept him on the film until he could arrange another job for him, directing The Women (1939) at MGM.
Throughout filming, Cukor continued coaching Leigh and Olivia de Havilland in secret. Neither knew the other was working with him until they ran into each other one Sunday as one was leaving his home and the other arriving.
According to Hollywood legend, the real reason Gable wanted Cukor fired was that Cukor was friends with William Haines, a gay former star, who allegedly had helped get Gable's career started in return for sexual favors. Supposedly, Gable feared Cukor knew about the relationship and would expose it.
Selznick's first choice to take over the film was King Vidor, who turned him down. He next turned to Victor Fleming, an old friend of Gable's. MGM agreed, even though Fleming still had a few weeks to go on his current assignment at the studio, The Wizard of Oz (1939). Vidor agreed to take over for him.
When Fleming stepped in, he shut down production for two weeks to work on the script with Selznick and playwright Ben Hecht, who threw out later writers' revisions and returned to Sidney Howard's original script. All he did was make necessary cuts and create title cards to bridge shifts in time and provide background. Selznick paid Hecht $10,000 for the two-week job.
Shooting resumed on Gone with the Wind on March 1, and this time it was Leigh's turn to clash with the director. She resented his more melodramatic approach to the material and the fact that his sole guidance to her was to "ham it up." At one point, she even suggested he look at her screen test, directed by Cukor, to learn how a scene should be played.
A week after he resumed production, Selznick fired cinematographer Lee Garmes, claiming he was using too soft a color palette for the film. In his place, he borrowed Ernest Haller from Warner Bros.
When Selznick ran out of money during production, his board chairman, Jock Whitney personally guaranteed a $1.25 million loan from the Bank of America. In return, Selznick had to give Whitney a larger share of ownership in Selznick International and a larger share of the film's profits.
On April 26, Fleming walked off the film, claiming to have had a nervous breakdown. Until Fleming returned two weeks later, Sam Wood filled in for him (he actually got there the night Fleming quit). With shooting falling behind schedule, Selznick and designer William Cameron Menzies also took a hand at directing scenes. At times there were as many as five companies shooting at once. Even after Fleming returned -- after a personal visit and apologies from Selznick, Gable and Leigh --
Wood stayed on to help keep things moving.
Since none of the Hollywood studios had a crane tall enough for the shot of Scarlett surrounded by wounded soldiers at the Atlanta train depot, Selznick had to rent a 125-foot crane from a construction company.
When Central Casting couldn't even come up with half of the 2,000 extras needed for Scarlett's visit to the depot, the crew filled in with dummies, some of which were moved by the live extras next to them. When the Screen Extras Guild tried to make Selznick pay the minimum extra's wage for each of the dummies, Selznick challenged them to come up with the live "extras." They couldn't.
Shooting finally concluded on June 27, though retakes would continue into October. Leigh was so exhausted by the whole process and had lost so much weight, that retakes inserted into the film's first scenes show her noticeably thinner and more haggard.
The final cost of Gone with the Wind was $4.25 million, a record at that time.
Selznick had clashed with the Production Code Administration, the industry's self-censorship organization, throughout the film's writing and shooting. Among their objections were the use of racist language, the sympathetic depiction of Belle Watling, Rhett's prostitute friend, Rhett's rape of Scarlett and the explicit treatment of their sexual relations. Selznick agreed to refer to the black characters only as "darkies" and softened some of the language about sex, but kept Belle's profession and the rape.
The film's most famous censorship battle concerned Rhett's last line, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." The Production Code forbade any use of the word "damn" on screen. Selznick actually had the scene filmed with both Margaret Mitchell's original line and the tamer "I don't care," but felt strongly that the original was the only version that worked. Finally, he convinced the Production Code's heads, Joe Breen and Will Hayes, that the line had become so famous it could not be changed. As precedent, he pointed out that they had allowed Warner Bros. to use the line "Damn the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!" in a 1937 short based on the American classic The Man without a Country. They gave in and later amended the Code to allow mild profanity in famous literary and historical lines. According to Selznick's publicists, he paid a $5,000 fine to keep in the word "damn," though some historians have debated that allegation.
Before the release of Gone with the Wind, Selznick wanted to give Cukor some kind of credit on the film, but stopped when Fleming objected vehemently. Feeling Selznick was trying to take all the credit for himself, Fleming boycotted the Academy Awards®, at which the film would bring him his only Oscar® for Best Director.
Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta on December 15, 1939, in the midst of three days of festivities for which the governor declared a state holiday. More than one million people crowded the streets for the parade preceding the screening, which was attended by 2,051 people. Among those in attendance were Selznick, Gable and Carole Lombard, Leigh and Olivier, de Havilland and Mitchell. Hattie McDaniel was in Atlanta at the time, but couldn't attend the premiere as it took place in a whites-only theatre.
Gone with the Wind was a huge hit overseas. It played in England non-stop during World War II. Although its release was held up in France until after the war, it ran three years straight in Paris.
by Frank Miller
 
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31 Days of Oscar Highlights for Feb. 10
Richard Widmark gives an Oscar® nominated Best Supporting Actor Performance as one of the screen's scariest psychopaths in Kiss of Death (1947). We're also spotlighting Gypsy (1962), Of Mice and Men (1939) and 9 more Academy Award honorees.
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