The paperback is in good condition. Even the cover is still firm and unbent, the spine tight. A friend who knows my fascination with all things GWTW (because of my continuing celebration of Vivien Leigh) has given me a copy of the film’s script which she found at a special sale on film books: Gone With The Wind, the screenplay by Sidney Howard; edited and with an introduction by Herb Bridges & Terryl C. Boodman. Delta, 1989.
The cover offers a painting of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable in a kiss, the painting loosely based on the the New Orleans honeymoon sequence in which we first learn about Scarlett’s recurring dream.
I own another copy of the script, a Christmas gift from my wife: Gone With The Wind, the screenplay by Sidney Howard. O.S.P. Publishing, 1994. I have found thus far one discrepancy in the two publications — involving the one line I was never able to hear distinctly despite my multiple viewings of Gone with the Wind. It’s the line Scarlett calls to her father offscreen after he has dismounted returning from his visit to Twelve Oaks. This occurs in the second sequence in the film. The Bridges/Boodman version has: “Pa! So it’s proud of yourself you are!” The O.S.P. publication (no editor credited) shows: “Pa! So it’s proud of yourself Gerald.” I vote for the first version. My aural memory carries that “are” sound as the last word. And it seems unlikely that Scarlett would call her father by his given name. I don’t recall her ever doing so in the novel. My guess is that the second one is what Sidney Howard wrote and that the first one is what Vivien Leigh actually recorded. About Selznick’s constant — near daily, if not daily — revisions of the script, Vivien Leigh has been quoted as saying that they engaged “America’s finest playwright” to script the film, then rarely used what he wrote.
Followers and readers of RICK’S FLICKS know that my bête noire in film writing is the description of Scarlett’s and Rhett’s flight through the flames in the first part of GWTW as happening during the “burning of Atlanta.” This is common, as far as I know, to all descriptions of the scene, even in the best, most careful books. In the novel Margaret Mitchell makes clear that the fire in question has been caused by the Confederate army destroying its ammunition so that it cannot be captured by the approaching Union troops. Rhett, in the movie, makes this clear in a line of dialogue to Scarlett. This has been lost on all writers about the film.
Sherman’s burning of Atlanta happened two months later (after Scarlett was home saving Tara).
I thought I had found a happy surprise in the Bridges/Boodman introduction to the screenplay. They write, about the night Vivien Leigh met David O. Selznick, the night the fire was being filmed with stand-ins: “The old sets on the studio backlot, themselves cast in the role of Atlanta, were set on fire.” Period. But, alas! Later in the same introduction Rhett and Scarlett “race through the flames of the burning of Atlanta . . .”
And the error is perpetuated.
The otherwise interesting introduction reminded me of another repeated error about the film. Bridges and Boodman refer to the “flaming sunsets” of Gone with the Wind. The common phrase in most books is “bleeding sunsets.”
There ARE none.
There are two sunsets and one sunrise — none of them bleeding. The first sunset is that beautiful one when, near the beginning, Scarlett and her father stand on the hill overlooking Tara. It is an early evening white sky, no red. The other sunset is the last shot, Scarlett alone on the same hill against a darkened twilight sky, not a touch of red. The sunrise occurs with the “I’ll never be hungry again” scene, starkly white sky. (This sequence was shot between 2:00 and 4:00 AM just off the Pacific Coast Highway — one of Vivien Leigh’s less happy memories from the shooting.)
One wonders how many writers about Gone with the Wind are influenced by other writers. One wonders how long it has been since they actually viewed the film, as errors about it appear to grow exponentially.
The flaming, bleeding sky is the one over Atlanta on the night Scarlett and Rhett flee the city, a thoroughly red sky, dramatically artificial. It becomes the color of the Scarlett/Rhett conflict, echoed in the red dress she wears to Ashley’s birthday party (without Rhett) and in the carpet of their Atlanta mansion, the carpet over which he will carry her up the long flight of stairs, the carpet over which she will run down to the door as he is leaving her at the end.
NEXT FRIDAY POST June ll
Until then,
See a movie,
Maybe watch something you have not seen in a long while?
Enjoy!
Rick
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