As this section is LONG and very full of information, I suggest that, instead of paying to stay on the internet to read it all if you have to pay for a certain amount of time, that you highlight it, go up to EDIT, and select COPY. Then, go into a program like WordPerfect or Notepad, and go to EDIT and select PASTE. This will cut and paste all of this, or a section of your choice, to that program, where you can read it for free. Thanks! ;)

Selznick first read "Gone With the Wind" when he was on vacation in Honolulu. He then realized that it could take months or years of meticulous planning to portray the novel in such a way that it would do justice to the book. When he returned from his vacation, he found piles of mail, begging him not to change the story 'like movies always do'.

The fuss was good, but premature. Selznick had not yet chosen a writer for the script. It was a toss up between Ben Hecht and Sydney Howard. Howard was chosen, and took the job in mid- October 1936. Selznick wanted the script to be done in Culver City, where he could keep a careful eye on the work, but Howard preferred to work on his farm in Massachusetts.

The search for Scarlett was now on! They tried the following women for the role of Scarlett O'Hara:

Louise Platt, Talullah Bankhead, Mrs. J. H. Whitney, Lynn Merrill, Linda Watkins, Susan Fox, Adele Longmire, Haila Stoddard, Diana Forrest, Edith Marrener, Linda Lee, Dorothy Mathews, Ardis Ankerson, Paulette Goddard, Terry Ray, Anita Louise, Em Bowles Locker, Margaret Tallichet, Francis Dee, Nancy Coleman, Shirley Logan, Doris Johnson, Marcella Martin, Fleurette DeBussy, Austine McDonnel, Mary Ray, Lana Turner, Dianna Barrymore, Jean Arthur, Joan Bennett, Katherine Aldridge, Lyn Swann, and finally Vivian Leigh.

On January 31, Clark Gable joined the company to begin work as Rhett Butler. The first scenes Gable worked on were the complicated ones, like the Atlanta charity bazaar. For this scene he had to learn the Virginia reel. The director also had to give him lessons in 'tongue-in-the-cheek elegance. But Gable was not a quick learner, and his acting style was only an extension of his own personality; anything more caused him great torment.

While this was going on, there was a dispute between David O. Selznick and George Cukor. On Monday, February 13, everyone read in the trade papers that:

"George Cukor and David O. Selznick last night issued the following statement: 'As a result of a series of disagreements between us over many of the individual scenes of Gone With the Wind, we have mutually decided that the only solution is for a new director to be selected at as early a date as is practicable...' [Selznick added:] 'Mr. Cukor's withdrawal...is the most regrettable incident of my rather long producing career, the more so because I consider Mr. Cukor one of the very finest directors it had ever been the good fortune of this business to claim. I can only hope that we will be so fortunate as to replace him with a man of comparable talents.' "

"Gone With the Wind" had lost a director. As soon as Cukor left, production was shut down 'for several days' while Selznick tried to find another director. He got Victor Fleming, then busy with the filming of "The Wizard of Oz". Fleming and Gable were close friends, and agreed to come in and help him with the Rhett Butler predicament. On Saturday, February 18, five days after Cukor had left, "Gone With the Wind" gained another director. Fleming had not yet read "Gone With the Wind", so he had no idea about the story. He read the script and hated it. (He used rather strong language that is not acceptable for the Internet, but generally, he thought that it sucked). Fleming told Selznick that he would not direct unless there was a new script. So they got Ben Hecht, just finished another MGM script, to write it. He was offered $10 000 for two weeks' work, and he thought that he might as well take a chance. He agreed with the men about the poor quality of the previous script, (actually, he called it a 'Humpty-Dumpty job). He finally dug up a manuscript and agreed to work; but who were the characters?

Selznick and Fleming decided that they would act out all of the major parts for Hecht. Selznick played Scarlett and Ashley, and Fleming played Rhett and Melanie. This went on until two in the morning (and, personally, I think it would have been a grand thing to see!)

For five days and nights, Hecht wrote and rewrote, and straightened out the other script, managing in that time to accomplish what Selznick had been striving for in three years - a tight, concise script. The next week, the production of the film was resumed. They did an average of three script pages per day, which worked out to about two minutes of footage daily. With Fleming in charge, Gable's attitude changed completely. He began to relax and began to enjoy the role of Rhett Butler. A bank loan of $1.25 million was advanced to keep the film going. As soon as the money came, they filmed the 'fleeing Atlanta' scene. The evacuation was supposed to be two days shooting, and there were six hundred extras dressed in period costume, carrying every conceivable prop as they struggled to get out of the city. There were twenty horse-drawn pieces of equipment, and for the three days it took to shoot it, Vivian Leigh had to dart her way through the mob in 80-degree heat. Lynda Schiller recalles:

"Because she was the center of so much of the action, we couldn't use a stunt double for Vivian Leigh. In the scene where she comes out of the hospital and sees the city going mad, she really had to dart around in the 80-degree heat.

Fleming's health was failing, so Selznick broke the picture up into three parts; one to be filmed under Fleming, one under Chester Franklin, who went to Chico, 100 miles out of Sacramento, to get the shots of Gerald O'Hara galloping about the countryside on his horse, and to film the background shots of Tara, ruined by the war, and the third under his own direction.

The breaking point that Selznick expected from Fleming came in the delicate, two-day filming of Melanie's death. Ironically, it came when Gable refused to do the sequence when Rhett cries in Melanie's lap after Scarlett's miscarriage. Gable thought it 'unmanly' to cry, and no amount of persuasion from Fleming could make him do the scene. Fleming was very upset, but went on to work with Scarlett, Melanie, and, introduced for the first time in the film, Belle Watling, in the exterior Atlanta scene. Leigh made the mistake of arguing with Fleming, and Fleming's temper gave away.

According to John Lee Mahin, who was on the set that day, said that, "Vic [Fleming] rolled up his script, threw it at her, and said, 'You can shove this up your royal British (let's say bum).' and stormed off the set. He later told someone that on his way home, he had considered driving off a cliff. That was how much stress these directors were under.

When Selznick realized that Fleming was not coming back, he borrowed Sam Wood from MGM studios to do the scene at 1:00 in the morning. Ridgeway Callow that "It was freezing cold that night, and every time Ona Munson as Belle Watling walked over to get into her carriage, the horses would decide to take a leak. They must have done it fourteen times, until their bladders finally ran out and we were able to get a good take." They shot until 4:00 am, and were back on the set at 9:30 am, and wood directed the shots of Scarlett, determined to make a dress out of the green velvet curtains.

After two weeks' absence, Fleming was back on the set. Selznick agreed to keep Sam wood, who could shoot alternating scenes with Fleming. His first day back was that of filming Scarlett's vow 'never to be hungry again'. They had to film it over and over again, sometimes for details like the sky wasn't right, or the sun did not rise when they were shooting. Leigh hated the location, and hated the early mornings that scene meant for her. They finally got the shot after an all-night rain. They drove out there, while it was still raining. Leigh and Fleming were both cursing at the camera man, each other, and everyone else. But they got the scene, and there were tremendous apologies afterwards.

The next major scene was the one of Scarlett looking for Dr. Meade through the fields of wounded soldiers. There were 1,600 dead, among which were 800 dummies.

The next big and difficult task was trying to persuade Gable into doing the scene after Scarlett's miscarriage. Carol Lombard finally persuaded her husband that there was nothing unmanly about an actor crying, that the scene would be memorable, and he couldn't back out now. Selznick recalls that "Clark was violently opposed to this and said that nothing was more contemptible than self-pity, that he could not see himself weeping over this situation." Fleming decided to film the scene with tears and without, and let Gable choose which one would be in the movie. Gable reluctantly agreed to have the 'weeping one' included in the picture.

Production had now been going on for five months. On the stage, the blistering heat of summer mingled with the heat of the many lights needed because the light needed for Technicolor photography. The stages weren't air conditioned, they only had big exhaust fans to try and make it a bit cooler. Everyone was looking forward now more than ever to the end of filming. On June 27, the last scene was filmed. It was also the last scene of the movie, ironically. It was Rhett's farewell to Scarlett, and Selznick had just revised the script for it the night before. On the set, just before Gable said the famous line, "My dear, I don't give a damn", Selznick added 'frankly', thus making the line "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Five months and one day after it had started, "Gone With the Wind" was finished....almost.

Now they had to sift through the mass of film to find the shots that would make the picture. This took all of July and August. Selznick was interested and worried about the editing, for he believed that it could make a film poor or great. It was he who invented the ending, when Scarlett sat sobbing on the steps and voices fill the air. Then the long silhouette of Scarlett where she and Gerald had stood before gave the film a happier feeling to a otherwise depressing ending.

At the end of July, the film was down to five hours. For the opening credits, they originally wanted the "G" to fill the screen, then the "O", and so forth. They did so and found that the proportioning was all wrong. They settled with the current starting, with each word sweeping across the screen individually. By September 9, Selznick decided the film was ready for its first preview.

They went to a theater in Riverside with a full house. When the film had ended the manager stood up in front of the audience and told them there was going to be an unannounced preview, one of the biggest pictures of the year, and that it ran over four hours. He didn't tell them the title; in case anyone left, Selznick didn't want them blabbing. Once some people had left they closed the theater and refused to let anyone make phone calls. The police were called and a cop stood at every exit. The manager's wife was called to come, for the manager would not let the film play without her in the audience. The lights went down and when the curtains opened Margaret Mitchell's name came on the screen. There was a silence for a moment, then everyone began applauding. When the title came across the screen the audience got to their feet and screamed and cheered so loud that the volume had to be cranked to full blast for the music to be heard. Mrs. Selznick started to 'cry like a baby', along with another man who had come, Jock Whitney. The ovation was thunderous and just wouldn't stop. The picture ran four hours and twenty five minutes, and then the ovation was repeated.

The preview was a success; shining reports about the film came in. For the next month, they tried to squeeze another hour out of the film. They did this by removing the scene when the O'Hara family was riding to the barbecue, Scarlett and her sisters quarreling and Mammy scolding them, and Scarlett's wedding night with Charles Hamilton, when she made him sleep in a chair. Also deleted was the scene with guests slumbering after the barbeque. The sequences with the evacuation from Atlanta and the scenes in the hospital were shortened, as was Scarlett's search for Dr. Meade at the railway station, which included an encounter with Mr. Wilkes, (Ashley's father), who dies in her arms as she is telling him about his grandchild who was about to be born. Also cut was the scene showing Belle Watling nursing the wounded soldiers, which was not in the novel. A conversation between Scarlett's sisters was deleted, when they were talking about the changes after the war and when no one would marry Southern girls.

The next time the film was shown the loud ovation was repeated. I think that was all they could expect. "Gone With the Wind" is such a great film that they could expect no less. The very mention of the title is enough to have an ovation in its honor.

The time had come for the Atlanta premiere. Selznick flew in, saying before he left that he would be satisfied if it was just a great film, and not the greatest film ever made. But it was. At exactly 8:29, a roar from the crowd outside penetrated the inside of the theater, announcing the arrival of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. As they swept down the aisle and found their seats the overture started and the lights dimmed. The curtains parted. The applause was tremendous. After three years and $4 million worth of work, David Selznick's gamble, his 'folly', and 'white elephant' was finally given over to the judgement of his peers. The judgement was, and still is, that "Gone With the Wind" was and still is, the greatest film ever made and never can be reproduced or topped.

The aftermath is unimportant. Every fan knows what happened, the huge response the film created, the millions of fans worldwide. "Gone With the Wind" was not only the "epic novel of is time', but also the greatest (I cannot make 'greatest' seem good enough) film ever made.