On the night of 10 December 1938, David O. Selznick stood on a Culver City backlot watching Atlanta burn. The fire was the first footage shot for Gone with the Wind: to clear space for the film's enormous sets, Selznick torched the studio's old standing scenery — including the great wall built for King Kong — and dressed the blaze as the burning of Atlanta, with doubles driving a wagon through the flames. The production had a fire, a budget and a novel that half of America had read. What it did not have, two years after buying the book, was a Scarlett O'Hara. And then, as the flames lit the lot, Selznick's brother Myron — a talent agent — arrived late with a young English client on his arm and said words that became Hollywood scripture: David, meet your Scarlett O'Hara. Her name was Vivien Leigh.
The search she ended had become a national entertainment in its own right. Selznick had paid $50,000 in 1936 for the rights to Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning novel — a record-setting price for a first novel — and then discovered that casting its heroine was a public trust. His organisation ran a two-year, coast-to-coast talent hunt whose commonly cited ledger reads like a census: around 1,400 women interviewed, hundreds given readings, dozens screen-tested, at a cost that ran well into six figures for the tests alone. Scouts toured the South auditioning debutantes; unknown hopefuls climbed through office windows and had themselves delivered in crates, or so the publicity men swore. Nearly every bankable actress was mentioned or considered — Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Paulette Goddard among the serious contenders — while for Rhett Butler the public voted overwhelmingly for exactly one man, and Selznick duly paid MGM heavily, surrendering distribution rights and profit share, to borrow Clark Gable.
Cynics have long noted that the fairy-tale timing of Leigh's fireside introduction was too good, and they are partly right: Myron Selznick represented Leigh, negotiations had been quietly stirring beforehand, and the "discovery" was stage-managed at least in part. But the screen tests were real, and in January 1939 the part of the archetypal Southern belle went to a 25-year-old Englishwoman then best known in Britain — and then conducting a discreet affair with Laurence Olivier, whom she later married. American newspapers grumbled about the casting for roughly as long as it took to see the rushes.
Burning through directors
Scarlett was not the only role that changed hands. George Cukor, who had prepared the film for two years, was dismissed weeks into shooting — accounts differ on whether the friction was with Selznick's control or Gable's discomfort — and Victor Fleming was pulled off The Wizard of Oz to replace him, bringing a brisker, more masculine hand. When Fleming, run ragged by Selznick's midnight memos and an amphetamine-paced schedule, briefly collapsed and withdrew, Sam Wood kept the cameras turning until he returned. Leigh and Olivia de Havilland, devoted to Cukor, reportedly continued visiting him privately for coaching. Selznick, rewriting nightly, ran the whole enterprise on Benzedrine and telegrams.
The premiere in Atlanta on 15 December 1939 was a state occasion: a holiday declared, hundreds of thousands lining the streets, Confederate veterans paraded. The exclusion was as telling as the spectacle — Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy, could not attend the whites-only celebration in segregated Georgia. Ten weeks later she became the first Black performer to win an Academy Award, accepting Best Supporting Actress at a Los Angeles hotel where she was seated at a separate table at the back of the room. The film swept the 1940 ceremony with eight competitive Oscars plus honorary awards — a record haul at the time. Vivien Leigh took Best Actress, and Sidney Howard became the Academy's first posthumous winner for his screenplay, having died in a farm accident months before release.
Adjusted for inflation, Gone with the Wind is still routinely reckoned the highest-grossing film ever released, its tickets sold across re-releases spanning generations. Its reputation now travels with heavy footnotes about the plantation myth it romanticised — a reckoning as public as the casting search once was. But as pure production legend, nothing has ever matched it: a studio that set fire to King Kong's wall to make room for the future, and found its heroine standing in the glow.
Quiz nuggets
- David O. Selznick paid a record $50,000 for the rights to Margaret Mitchell's novel in 1936.
- The two-year Scarlett search reportedly involved interviewing around 1,400 women, with dozens screen-tested.
- The burning of Atlanta was filmed on 10 December 1938 by burning old sets — including the wall from King Kong — and Vivien Leigh was introduced to Selznick that night.
- Victor Fleming left The Wizard of Oz to replace the sacked George Cukor, with Sam Wood filling in during Fleming's collapse.
- Hattie McDaniel became the first Black Oscar winner for playing Mammy, but was barred from the segregated Atlanta premiere in December 1939.