On January 26, production started on Gone With the Wind. Margaret, like everyone else, was following it with interest. She was desolate to learn that less than three weeks later they had to stop filming because George Cukor had been fired. She read about it in the newspaper before hearing from Sue Myrick and Kurtz. She dispatched a telegram to Sue, who replied two days later:
'It is really and actually true; George finally told me all about it. . . .We sat down and he talked -- not for publication he said, but because he liked me, felt responsible for getting me into a mess and wanted me to know the truth . . . . He said he is an honest craftsman and he cannot do a job unless he knows it is a good job and he feels the present job is not right. For days, he told me, he has looked at the rushers and felt he was failing. He knew he was a good director and knew the actors were good ones, yet the thing did not click as it should.
'Gradually he became more and more convinced that the script was the trouble . . . .David, himself, thinks HE is writing the script and he tells Bobby Keon [the script assistant] and Stinko [Oliver] Garrett what to write. And they do the best they can with it, in their limited way . . . . And George has continuously taken script from day to day, compared the Garrett-Selznick version with the Howard, groaned and tried to change some parts back to the Howard script. But he seldom could do much with the scene. . . .
'So George told David he would not work any longer if the script was not better and he wanted the Howard script back. David told George he was [a] director -- not an author and he (David) was the producer and the judge of what is a good script (or words to that effect) and George said he was a director and a damn good one and he would not let his name go out over a lousy picture and if they didn't go back to the Howard scropt (he was willing to have them cut it down shorter) he, George, was through.
'And, bull-headed David said "OK, get out!"'
Margaret then heard that Clark Gable had been asked to choose Cukor's replacement from a list of three directors. Gable chose Victor Fleming, who had directed him in Test Pilot the year before.
On March 12, Sue Myrick informed Margaret that John Van Ruten and John Balderson, who had written The Prisoner of Zenda before for Selznick were now working on the screenplay.
"We have 60 pages marked 'completed script', but every few days we get some pink pages marked 'substitute script' and we tear out some yellow pages and set in the pink ones. We expect blue or orange pages any day now."
"SIDNEY HOWARD IS BACK ON THE SCRIPT!" Sue wrote on April 9. "I haven't the faintest idea how many folks that makes in all who have done script . . . all I know is that Howard is somewhere around the sixteenth, though he may be the twentieth."
All those writers for the screenplay.... it had only taken one woman for the whole novel!!
In five weeks Howard had re-written the screenplay, and when he went to say goodbye to Miss
Myrick he said that he had no doubt that Selznick would rewrite it and then call him back atgain
to rewrite it once more. 'Sue also told Peggy [Margaret] that the current scenario was now fifty
pages longer than the orginal Howard draft, and that the film's running time would be at least four
hours,' says my resource material. The author also adds an interesting quote: "They'd stone Christ
if he came back and spoke for four hours" - Louis B. Mayer
The filming was officially completed on June 27, 1939, but there was a lot of touch-up work to be done. Selznick announced that he would premiere the film in Atlanta on December 15, 1939. Margaret's life was once more under attack.
Margaret knew that once the premiere date was announced, the flood of public interest would come back. She spoke to no one on the telephone outside her family, and rarely left her apartment except to see her father. A false front was already being assembled in front of Atlanta's Loew's Grand Theater to make it look like the Tara in the film -- which looked nothing like Margaret's Tara in the novel. Atlanta's mayor extended the one-day holiday into a three-day festival, and urged the women to wear hoopskirts and pantalets, and the men to wear tight bitches and beaver hats, and to grow goatees, sideburns, and whiskers. The celebration would include a parade with a brass band stationed at every corner for a mile. "For the entire state of Georgia, having the premiere of Gone With the Wind on home ground was like winning the Battle of Atlanta seventy-five years late."
All the stars of the film -- except the blacks -- would attend the premier, along with David O. Selznick and his wife, Clark Gable's wife, Laurence Olivier and Claudette Colbert, who was there because Selznick had heard that she was Margaret's favorite movie star. There was to be a huge costume ball the night before, and Margaret was to be the guest of honor. But, to the horror of everyone, she declined the offer, claiming that her father was ill and that she could not be away from him for two consecutive nights. In fact, not going to the ball was sweet revenge for Margaret: the Junior League, who had banned her from Atlanta society, was sponsoring the ball.
Only 2,031 people could attend the premier, for that was the number of seats available. It seemed to Margaret that everyone in the world was at her neck, trying in a grim and desperate struggle to obtain tickets for the event. She and John had only been given four tickets, which they had requested, for themselves and Stephens and Carrie Lou. The gay occasion was dulled by the overshadowing death of Sidney Howard, which occurred only a few months before.
A forty-piece band blasted out "Dixie" as Vivien Leigh arrived, and she naively exclaimed, "Oh, they're playing the song from the picture!" The song was played almost nonstop, and both American and Confederate flags were waving gaily. Confetti littered the path from the airport to the hotel and Rebel yells echoed through the streets.
Margaret made her first public appearance on Friday at a luncheon for the Macmillan executives. The ladies of the press had gone to great lengths to keep the time and place of the party out of newspapers. But their plan backfired. They guarded the information so closely that Margaret herself did not know the hour. She thought the party began at 6:00 p.m., and so had not arrived when it started at 5:30 p.m.
'Gable and Selznick exchanged nervous glances. Where was Margaret Mitchell? Would she fail to show up again? To everyone's relief, the Marches finally arrived at 6:10 and, after greeting everyone, Peggy talked with Clark Gable for the first time. Gable was struck by her diminutive size and sat down with her in a fairly quiet corner so that she would not have to look up at him and strain her neck. Peggy, a coquettish velvet hat in the shape of a large bow precariously secured to the back of her head, was flushed and a bit insecure as flashbulbs exploded close by. Her glance caught Gable's. He smiled down at her and then, on impulse, jumped up and spirited her into one of the smaller adjoining rooms, for a private chat about herself and the book. Gable, towering over Peggy, was in full command as he shut the door to curious eyes. Later he said she was "charming" and she said he was "grand." But, in fact, they remained behind those closed doors for less than five minutes, so it would appear that once social amenities had been exchanged and they were alone, Margaret Mitchell and Rhett Butler had little to say to each other.'
A crowd of what was estimated to be a hundred thousand people packed the block of Peachtree Street that held the theater as the ticket holders began to arrive. The audience members were well aware of the national event which they were witnessing. It had taken Margaret Mitchell seven years to write the story they were going to see enacted, and they were aware that it had taken two years to find an actress to play Scarlett O'Hara, that the film was the third most costly picture Hollywood had ever produced, and that it ran three and three-quarters hours, making it one of the longest pictures filmed. "Above all," Time said in its story of the premiere, "most of them knew by heart the love story of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara, and they were there to protest if it had undergone a single serious film change."
Nowhere in any letters or correspondence did Margaret record what she felt when she and John sat on the plush rear seat of the limo that Selznick had supplied, on their way to see her book and characters brought to life. But she did comment on the vehicle itself, how luxurious it was, the first of its kind she had ever ridden in.
There was only a five minute ride between the apartment and the theater, and Margaret was staged to be the last to arrive. The crowds had been standing all day in hope of getting a glimpse of the stars as they arrived, and by this time they were in a frenzy, waving their hats along with the Confederate flags. Their own Margaret Mitchell was coming!
The Mayor stepped forward, took Margaret's hand and led her to the platform in front of the theater where a microphone was set up. She looked over her shoulder to watch John get out of the car and turned again and waved to the crowds. It was a good thing that everyone knew who she was, because no one could hear the introduction over the cheers, shouting and whistling. As Margaret disappeared through the doors, underneath the false front Tara, the cheering grew even louder.
Four aged veterans who had fought in the Battle of Atlanta -- each attired in their greys -- had been seated on the aisle. The youngest of them was ninety three. Only a few minutes after Margaret had arrived, the houselights dimmed.
'Later she was to say that she was somewhat aghast when Ben Hecht's first title moved across the screen: "There was a land of cavaliers and cotton fields called the Old South . . ."
'"Cavalier" was not a word she liked associated with the South. But Vivien Leigh had not pouted on the screen for more than five minutes before Peggy, along with the rest of the audience, was convinced that no better choice for Scarlett O'Hara could have been made. She did not speak letter-perfect middle-high Georgian, but no one watching her really cared. "She is my Scarlett," Peggy told Medora during the intermission.
'Throughout the entire film, the audience clapped, cheered, whistled, and wept in turn. There were cheers when Scarlett shot the Yankee desterter, loud sobbing at the scene of mass desolation as the grieving folk of Atlanta read the casualty lists after Gettysburd, and cheers again as the Confederate band dispelled the mood of tragedy with a rousing chorus of "Dixie."
'Peggy's "haw-haw" could be heard during moments when Prissy (Butterfly McQueen) was on screen, and when Mammy (Hattie McDaniel), whom Time dubbed "the sly, leather-lunged devoted Emily Post of the O'Hara's," lifted her skirts to show Rhett Butler her red petticoat. Peggy told Medora, who reported it in her Journal coverage the next day, that she felt desolate that Hattie McDaniel was "the only big star of the picture who isn't here -- and a real star, too. The scene in which Mammy walked up the stairs with Melanie after Bonnie's death was one of the finest I ever saw."
'When the lights came up at the end of the film, there was hardly a dry eye in the house and, when Peggy was escorted with David O. Selznick and all of the actors and actresses who had come to Atlanta, she unashamedly dabbed her eyes with a lace handkerchief. The entire audience was on its feet, yelling "Bravo!" and applauding at the same time. Mayor Hartsfield stepped in and guided Peggy to the microphone. There was silence for a brief moment as the master of ceremonies announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Margaret Mitchell of Atlanta."
He lowered the microphone for Margaret, but it was a full three minutes before the enthusiastic, wild cheering was finally silenced. She stood there looking childlike, with her cheeks flushed, red-rimmed eyes, and a coy pink bow holding her hair back on one side.
'"It was an experience," she finally said in a trembling voice. The audience laughed nervously. "And I'm so glad you liked my Scarlett." She finished by thanking Mr. Selznick and all the film people for "doing such a fine job of bringing my book to life."
Margaret had never doubted the film's success like she had doubted the success of her book. And as she was escorted out of the theater, pausing every few steps to accept kind words and congratulations, she whispered to Medora: "Oh, I do hope the madness isn't going to start up all over again!"
Margaret and John escaped the madness that followed by going to Tucson, Arizona, to visit Helen and Clifford Dowdey for Christmas. The Marshes, upon their return, had both been back to see the film a second time and, in respect, as John wrote the Dowdeys, they thought "the novel was followed much too closely"; Leigh was "unqualifiedly marvelous -- she was Scarlett"; Gable seemed "only adequate"; de Havilland, "good"; and Howard, (Ashley) was "wretched beyond compare." Margaret was delighted with Mammy, but now felt that some scenes were "a little on the Show boat side." They felt Aunt Pitty was poor, and, all of the supporting characters were "adequate" except Carroll Nye, as Frank Kennedy, who was "excellent."
'Twelve Oaks was "too lavish" a set; and Tara, "not nearly plain enough;" and the house Rhett Butler build for Scarlett "could have been in Omaha so little does it resemble any dwelling in the Atlanta of the Reconstruction period." But on second viewing, both of them agreed that the feeling of the old south was stronger than they had originally thought, and Thomas Mitchell's performance as Gerald O'Hara, much more moving.'
Neither of the Marshes were well. Margaret was waiting for her abdominal operation on January 13 and was in a moderate amount of pain, and John seemed exhausted. Home again in Atlanta, they were plunged again into the madness of the film. John's comment to the Dowdeys was, "Whatever else might be said about the picture it certainly made a splash."