GONE WITH THE WIND Secrets, Scandals & Lost Scenes

THE BIG SCREEN'S GREATEST LOVE STORY STRUGGLED WITH HISTORICAL REALITIES FROM THE BEGINNING

- LOUISE A. BARILE

In a scene that didn’t make the final cut of 1939’s Gone With the Wind , Rhett But ler sits alone in his bedroom, drinking and fondling a gun. A knock at his door interrupts him from his dark thoughts. He rises and finds Melanie Hamilton standing there.

Eighty-five years ago, Gone With the Wind bowed in theaters and breathed Technicolor life into the tragic romance of Rhett and Scarlett O’Hara set amid the Civil War and Reconstruction periods of American history. The movie “comes to the screen as one of the truly great films, destined for record-breaking box office business everywhere,” gushed John C. Flinn Sr. in Variety on Dec. 19, 1939, noting that despite its three-hour-37-minute running time, “it demonstrates again that in entertainment, the best is the most easily sold.”

As of 2020, GWTW was still the highest-grossing film of all time (adjusted for inf lation) due in part to its legendary performances by Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. In 1976, 47 percent of all American TV viewers tuned in for its NBC debut.

In recent years, a backlash against GWTW's sugarcoated depiction of slavery and the use of racist stereotypes has grown louder. HBO even pulled the film from its streaming library in 2020 to add a new introduction providing historical context.