CASTING ASHLEY

To: O'Shea
October 14, 1937
Please open negotiations with Mike Levee* for Leslie Howard to play Ashley in "Gone With the Wind"...can you point out to Levee with complete accuracy that Howard has been a box-pffice failure in all his pictures in recent years withought expection, and you might start out by demanding option for couple of pictures at least...

*Leslie Howard's manager

To: Mr. O'Shea
October 20, 1938
Confidentially, I think it extremely unlikely that we will find any Ashley that will be satisfactory to me, or that any of the Ashleys we are testing will prove on film to be as right as Leslie Howard seems to be in my imagination. My worry about Howard is purely and simply concerning his age, and I wonder if you would not persuade Howard to make a silnet test in constume in color in England [...]
Howard is an unusually intelligent actor...I have not the slightest desire to give him an acting test, nor the slightest doubt as to his ability to give a great performance, but have simply the necessity from his standpoint and my own, of making sure he is right pictorially...

To: Mr. Daniel T. O'Shea
November 18, 1938
I saw the Paulett Goddard-Jeffrey Lynn test...I was completely unimpressed by Jeffrey Lynn and I think we should forget him as Ashley.
...It is still difficult for me to visualize Lew Ayres as Ashley, in spite of his recent rebirth, but I have no objections to testing him...
If we don't find a new Ashley, I suppose out best possibilities, depressing as it seems, are Leslie Howard and Melvyn Douglas...however in the circumstance of our failure, we had better exert every effort in connection with Leslie Howard and Melvyn Douglas, as we have a starting date staring us in the face now and we have to go ahead...

...Robert Young...ia about on par with Lew Ayres...I should like to say a word of caution against judging Young for what he was a couple of years ago. I was among those who thought he should be thrown out of Hollywood; since then, I have had to eat my words after seeing him give some really fine performances.... ...I feel strongly that Ray Milland should defnitely not be forgotten. On the contrary, I thik he's probably as good an Ashley possibility as has yet been suggested, even though the suggestion did come from my wife, whose casting ideas I rarely agree with. I am aware of the deficiencies of Milland's accent, which are almost as great as those of Clark Gable! I think Milland very definitely a sensitive actor possessing the enormous attractiveness and at the same time the weakness that are the requirements of Ashley...

To: Mr. O'Shea
November 21, 1938
I saw Lana Turner and Melvyn Douglas test ...I think that Douglas gives the first intelligent reading of Ashley we've had, but I think he's entirely wrong in type, being much too beefy physically...I'm afraid we'll have to forget him, too, which is particularily frightening since this narrows down our Ashley list still further. It makes the Leslie Howard matter even more vital and pressing...If possible, I'd still like this to be subject only to a photographic test.