Gone With The Wind is one of the most popular movies of all time. To commemorate its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2014, The Making of Gone With The Wind presents more than 600 items from the archives of David O. Selznick, the film’s producer, and his business partner John Hay “Jock” Whitney, which are housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. These rarely seen materials, which are also being featured in a major 2014 exhibition at the Ransom Center, offer fans and film historians alike a must-have behind-the-camera view of the production of this classic. Before a single frame of film was shot, Gone With The Wind was embroiled in controversy. There were serious concerns about how the film would depict race and violence in the Old South during the Civil War and Reconstruction. While Clark Gable was almost everyone’s choice to play Rhett Butler, there was no clear favorite for Scarlett O’Hara. And then there was the huge challenge of turning Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize–winning epic into a manageable screenplay and producing it at a reasonable cost. The Making of Gone With The Wind tells these and other surprising stories with fascinating items from the Selznick archive, including on-set photographs, storyboards, correspondence and fan mail, production records, audition footage, gowns worn by Vivien Leigh as Scarlett, and Selznick’s own notoriously detailed memos. This inside view of the decisions and creative choices that shaped the production reaffirm that Gone With The Wind is perhaps the quintessential film of Hollywood’s Golden Age and illustrate why it remains influential and controversial decades after it was released.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by Robert Osborne Introduction Spring 1936 Selznick International Pictures Summer 1936 The Book Deal Fall 1936 Who Should Play Scarlett? Tallulah Bankhead "With New People or with Stars" Other Film Projects Sidney Howard "Stop Planting Stories about Hepburn" Winter 1936 The Invasion of the South The "Creole Girl" The First Protest Through Scarlett's Eyes First Draft Selznick's Theory of Adaptation Spring 1937 Cukor's Trip South Norma Shearer Paulette Goddard Summer 1937 The Bigelow Twins Casting African Americans Hitchcock Color Fall 1937 Choosing Rhett Censorship Winter 1937–1938 Jezebel William Cameron Menzies and Lyle Wheeler The Story Department Don't Give Up the Scarlett Hunt Bebe Anderson Margaret Tallichet Mercedes McCambridge Susan Hayward Butterfly McQueen Marcella Martin Summer 1938 "I Am Scarlett" The Gable Deal The Confidential Player Walter White and the NAACP "Try to Make This Gable's Next Picture" Fall 1938 Lana Turner and Other Studio Stock Players Winter 1938–1939 Other Film Projects Wilbur Kurtz and Susan Myrick "Dixie's Sacred Drawl" The Burning of Atlanta The Finalists Casting Supporting Roles Vivien Leigh "Plunkett Has Come to Life" Interiors Script Doctors "One More Will Only Confuse Us" January 1939 Filming Begins February 1939 The Atlanta Bazaar (Cukor's Version) "The Negro Problem" The Childbirth Scene Victor Fleming is Hired-Hiatus March 1939 The Wedding Scarlett's Walk with Gerald Twelve Oaks The Atlanta Bazaar (Fleming's Version) The Examiner April 1939 The Evacuation The Jail Scene The Hospital The "Klan Sequence" Melanie's Death Fleming Collapses; Sam Wood Steps In Belle on the Steps of the Hospital May 1939 The Search for Dr. Meade Return to Tara The Yankee Deserter Rhett and Belle "No More Babies"" The "Pull Back Shot"" Scarlett's Oath and Tara Cotton Field Feeding Soldiers Melanie and Mammy on the Stairs Outside Jail; Atlanta Streets June 1939 The Shooting Schedule Becomes More Chaotic The "Hate Word" "Frankly, My Dear . . ." Bonnie Learns to Ride Shanty Town The Lumber Mill "Bonnie's Death Ride" Rhett and Scarlett's Honeymoon The Paddock and Scarlett under the Bridge Summer 1939 Bits and Retakes Fall 1939 Music Postproduction The Fox Riverside Preview Winter 1939 The Atlanta Premiere Spring 1940 Wide Release Appendix (Document Transcriptions) Illustration Credits Acknowledgments Index