The Making of A Legend: Gone With the Wind

One of the great things about being unemployed is that you can sit back and watch TV shows you wouldn't be able to watch if you were at work. (I can't watch TV much at night as my Dad dominates the telly with his endless reruns of Law and Order.)

Today I saw a show I'd taped, The Making of a Legend: Gone With the Wind. I'm an official Gone With the Wind junkie (see the link on this site to the GWTW Forever site).

I have the DVD of the feature film, I just hadn't realised how much had gone into making it.

I knew, of course, that GWTW was the only book Margaret Mitchell wrote. Scarlett was initially called Pansy, and the book was not initially written for publication. Then a publisher read it and was interested, but didn't like the name Pansy, so Margaret Mitchell agreed to change it to Scarlett.

And then David O. Selznick secured the rights for $50,000 to produce GWTW.

I watched the show as they showed the search for Scarlett. It seemed they had an easier time deciding on Rhett Butler - the public demanded they choose Clark Gable. The only problem was that Gable was with MGM and Selznick wanted to do the project alone. It wasn't for ages and after lots of money and negotiations that he made a deal with MGM - they would let him 'use' Gable, and they'd also lend some money to fund the project, so long as they got half the profits of GWTW for the next 7 years.

Then it turned out that Gable didn't particularly like the deal, as he didn't want to play Rhett, so they 'sweetened' the deal for him by giving him ... $50,000 so he could pay off his wife and get rid of her and a weekend off so he could marry his new girlfriend (an interest payoff!)

Anyhow, I watched a lot of the auditions with the different Scarletts and Ashleys. After seeing what Vivien Leigh and Leslie Howard can do - especially Vivien Leigh - watching the different screen tests is like watching a series of Australian Idol auditions, you just feel how wrong they are and you want a nasty judge to pop up and give them a gong and tell them they're absolute crap.

It was amazing to see how much work went into creating - or destroying - some of those sets. They decided one way to make a set was to burn down an old set and then rebuild. An idea they had was to burn down the old set and then film it as the burning of Atlanta. At the time they hadn't got Leigh and Gable working yet so a stunt double is what you see when you see the horse and carriage driving through burning Atlanta at the time. And they really did just burn down a whole set, film it, and then rebuild a set.

Then some sets were only partially built - for instance some of the big houses were built without roofs - it was less expensive - then an art director comes in later and "draws in" different style roofs later to make the different places.

And the scene in Atlanta with the soldiers all lying wounded ... well while they called in many extras to lie there as wounded men, but they didn't have enough so they put in some dummies as well and instructed extras how they could pull a string on the dummy so the dummy could move a little so it looked alive. (Apparently Margaret Mitchell's husband said when he saw that scene that if they'd had that many soldiers, they would have won the war!) I know, I know, I guess they cheated too because those extras, they only pretended to be wounded. Many of them weren't really shot or anything at all. They only pretended to be shot. And int he scene where Dr Meade is supposed to amputate the leg - I think he doesn't amputate it at all. It's all faked!

So much work went into the recreation, it was amazing, especially when you consider there was not the advantage of the special effects that we have today.

I watched in amazement as every detail of dress was attended to ... the only thing I think I could compare it to was watching This is It when I watched the perfectionism that went in to making the Michael Jackson tour show. How many people actually put the time and effort and research into their shows any more. It's immense and it's amazing.

By the way I still love Scarlett's green barbecue dress - it must be her most famous - but now I've really taken a fancy to that little light blue jacket and white dress she wears to the store when she's caught with Ashley.

I’d rather play a maid and make $700 a week, than be a maid for $7

Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American to win an Academy Award, is famous for saying "I’d rather play a maid and make $700 a week, than be a maid for $7"

Hell, I would too. Though on this site it is pointed out that with this comment and others similar she brought wrath and it was thought she traded group values for personal gain.

Her Academy Award seemed to be loaded with criticism, but I think it's one of those double edged sword things. People seemed to complain when she won it that she played a role that just perpetuated stereotypes of blacks and brought up issues of slavery which they'd rather not revisit. On the other hand if you don't hand it to her, I guess people would foam that it was a great opportunity to give an Academy Award to a black woman and the Academy didn't because they were racist. Oh damn.

So, Hattie played a slave and this was offensive to blacks. As is noted here she didn't have a whole lot to choose from - she's a huge black lady and at the time there weren't a whole lot of roles for huge black ladies. What was she supposed to do - I like her comeback - "''What do you expect me to play?'' she asked. ''Rhett Butler's wife?''

At least she got out there and played something, which is more than can be said for some people who whinged about her.

Naturally, if a white person makes a career out of playing delinquents and villains and druggies and criminals, it doesn't seem to get loaded with criticism. I guess it's because there are other caucasians out there playing heroes. So why should Hattie cop it all for not carrying the responsibility of depicting the "acceptable image that Negroes want to be portrayed as" on her shoulders? Is it because they are such broad shoulders?

No, it seems it's because there aren't enough Negroes in Hollywood so they put all their expectations on her. Maybe those who whinge ought to have got off their backsides and become stars instead of telling her how to live her life, their way.

I do think a lot of hit films in English are mainly filled with white actors in more varieties of roles, but then, what you have to do is crack in to the market. I see Asian actors badly stereotyped too - you either are a martial arts fighter or a whore, to a large extent. I suppose the way to change this is to become a scriptwriter or producer - preferably both. You can also encourage actors of certain races to get involved to support your projects. A lot of stereotyping could be argued to be the laziness or disinterest of some nationalities in cracking into certain markets, and some of them perpetuate their own stereotypes.

I think there is nothing wrong with Hattie playing slaves and maids if that's what she wanted to do - she probably did a whole lot more for film than many will admit. It's not possible always to make giant leaps all at once; her driving that small wedge in made it possibly easier for many other people later to secure more varied roles and they would not appreciate her difficulties - and make it so much easier for them to criticise her.