When "Gone with the Wind" premiered in Atlanta

Posted 9:00AM on Wednesday, December 14, 2011

The world acclaimed movie "Gone with the Wind" premiered seventy-two years ago in Atlanta, GA on December 15th, 1939. The 1930's were an exciting time when everyone loved Super Star-Shirley Temple, Baseball home-run legend Babe Ruth, aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, and "Gone with the Wind" author Margaret Mitchell. The Great Depression was ending but Europe would enter World War II. The United States was only two years away from entering the war, but the Christmas season of 1939 was a jubilant time for America, especially in the Southland. The movie "Gone with the Wind" premiered in Atlanta, GA just 74 years after the War Between the States had ended, and December 15th, 2011, marks the 72nd Anniversary of that wonderful, classic movie that opens with, "There was a land of cavaliers and cotton fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of knights and their ladies fair, of master and slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a civilization gone with the wind." Atlanta native Margaret Mitchell saw her book "Gone with the Wind" published in 1936 and then as a super-technicolor movie in 1939 that would help boost tourism throughout old Dixieland. "Gone with the Wind" won 8 Oscars for 1939, including Best Picture, and Hattie McDaniel, the first Black American to win an Academy Award, expressed her heart-felt pride with tears of joy, when she was presented the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her unforgettable role as "Mammy." Victor Fleming won the 1939 Academy Award for the movies Best Director, and even though Max Steiner did not receive an award for his excellent music score, the "Gone with the Wind" theme song has become the most recognizable and played tune in the world. Vivien Leigh, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a leading role, humbly and eloquently, summed here appreciation by thanking Producer David O. Selznick. And who can ever forget Olivia de Havilland as the pure-sweet Melanie Hamilton, Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes and Clark Gable as Rhett Butler. Friday, December 15th, 1939 was an icy-cold day in Atlanta but folks warmed to the great excitement surrounding the premiere of "Gone with the Wind", a Selznick International Pictures "Technicolor" production of the Metro Goldwyn Mayer release of Margaret Mitchell's novel about the Old South at the Loews Grand Theater. Do you remember Thomas Mitchell who played Gerald O'Hara telling daughter Scarlett, "Do you mean to tell me Katie Scarlett O'Hara that Tara, that land doesn't mean anything to you? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it's the only thing that lasts." And, there was not a dry eye in the movie theater when Bonnie Blue Butler, the daughter of Rhett and Scarlett, was killed in a pony accident. Anne Rutherford, who played Scarlett's sister Careen, took time to visit the Old Confederate Veterans at the soldier's home on Confederate Avenue and the stars toured the famous "Cyclorama" at Grant Park. The festivities surrounding the premiere of "Gone with the Wind" included a parade down Peachtree Street, with over three hundred thousand folks cheering the playing of Dixie, waving Confederate flags and shouting rebel yells. It was a grand day to witness the lighting of the "Eternal Flame of the Confederacy," an 1855 gas light that survived Gen. Sherman's 1864 Siege during the Battle of Atlanta. This lamp remained for many years on the northeast corner of Whitehall and Alabama Streets. Mrs. Thomas J. Ripley, President of the Atlanta Chapter No. 18 United Daughters of the Confederacy, re-lit the great light with Mr. T. Guy Woolford, Commandant of the Old Guard, by her side. Time Magazine wrote, "The film has almost everything the book has in the way of spectacle, drama, practically endless story and the means to make them bigger and better. The burning of Atlanta, the great 'boom' shots of the Confederate wounded lying in the streets and the hospital after the Battle of Atlanta are spectacle enough for any picture, and unequaled." Read the entire Time Magazine article at the website link below. Calvin E. Johnson, Jr. is a speaker, author of the book 'When America Stood for God, Family and Country' to be republished, a resident of Kennesaw, GA "Home of the Civil War Locomotive 'The General'", and a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.