Gone With The Wind - The Margaret Mitchell Story
Those with the best memories possessed the greatest power. In this regard Margaret Mitchell material aunt oral tradition provide Peggy with the greatest source of exaggerated epic source in the post postbellum world. Like the Trojan Wars, the War for Southern Independence provided Peggy with a glimpse of narrative reality that she was ten before she realised the South she knew and loved was already lost. She learned about the Civil War in her cradle and from then on whenever the family got together. This oral history made tradition immediate, bold and timeless. The intangible material became tangible and palpable reality as hard as the rows of white markers at Oakland cemetery that was only a five minute walk from her home. The old ways lived on in the annual Confederate Memorial Day anniversary every April 26. It was like an ancient tribal gathering with their ritual enactments and the telling and retelling of old tales absorbed the children of present day. After all grandfather R C Mitchell wounds could still be seen and felt.
May Belle dominated her household and her children's lives - from her personal charm to religious Catholic piety to her uncompromising morality. When the influenza epidemic struck in 1918 she wore herself out nursing. Her public and private virtues were certainly influence factor on Melanie Wilkes character.
Hollywood, where bigger-than-life stories and the myth that fiction is always greater and more interesting than fact, Gone With The Wind must of been a dream come true. For David Selznick of Selznick International Pictures, it was to become his milestone and signature epic which he could never repeat. After having purchased the film rights for an unprecedented 50K, it took 2 years, 17 writers, 2 directors (George Cukor & Victor Fleming)and endless hours of casting negotiations to translate Mitchell's words into a classic film.
Of the writers commissioned to this taunting task was novelist, F Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby and Tender Is The Night. He was sacked after only two weeks for not being able or willing to take dictation from the manic mogul, producer. Selznick then called in Ben Hecht of Front Page fame.
Hecht had not read GWTW but his contribution survived better than Fitzgerald's in his notable introduction to the film:
There was a land of Cavaliers and cotton fields called the Old South. Here in this patrician world The Age of
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