Review of Gone With the Wind Review Nytimes
Reviews/Goggle box; Tantalizing Tidbits About 'Gone With the Wind'
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January 2, 1989
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As the narrator says in tonight's two-60 minutes documentary get-go at eight o'clock on cablevision'due south Turner Network Television - TNT, of class - the movie ''Gone With the Air current'' was ''a huge matter, crammed with excesses'' and its realization required ''blind religion and great good luck.'' At present, first 1989 and faced with a threatened sequel to the Margaret Mitchell novel, viewers take an opportunity to go back some 50 years and relish the rather astonishing story backside the enormous movie archetype that the producer David O. Selznick built.
''The Making of a Legend: 'Gone With the Wind,' '' written by David Thomson, has equally its executive producers two Selznick sons: Fifty. Jeffrey and Daniel. Paying tribute to their male parent, they have had access to film footage from the family's personal files and take recruited for interviews many of the film's participants, on and off camera. The result is both unabashedly celebratory and remarkably aboveboard.
Dorsum in 1936, when he initially heard nearly a offset novel written by an Atlanta journalist, Selznick was only 34 years one-time merely had several tony films to his credit including three literary adaptations: ''A Tale of 2 Cities,'' ''Anna Karenina'' and ''David Copperfield.'' Afterward some hesitation he finally bought, for $50,000, the rights to ''Gone With the Wind.'' The novel had rapidly become a all-time seller, and the casting of the film became a public obsession. Auditions were held throughout the country for the role of Scarlett O'Hara.
In Hollywood, 32 actresses were willing to accept screen tests, many of which are sampled in this documentary. The top finalists included Paulette Goddard, Jean Arthur and Joan Bennett. But, of course, Vivien Leigh of England snared the part, leaving the gossip columnist Hedda Hopper sputtering about American womanhood being usurped by a foreigner.
With Clark Gable every bit Rhett Butler and George Cukor as manager, filming began in January 1939. Selznick's problems were but beginning. After the offset 10 days, Cukor had only 23 minutes of film, and x had to be reshot. Gable was not happy with Cukor, who was known every bit a adult female'south manager. Selznick dropped Cukor and brought in Victor Fleming, who was finishing ''The Sorcerer of Oz.'' Someone notes about Fleming: ''He did not like everyone except Clark Gable and himself.'' Miss Leigh, in the midst of a tumultuous matter with Laurence Olivier, was not amused.
Meanwhile, the original script by Sidney Howard was first discarded just later on rewritten and doctored past a host of writers that included Ben Hecht and, very briefly, F. Scott Fitzgerald. There was never a final script. All the rewrites were in the caput of Selznick, who interfered in every detail of the production. Keeping his energy upwardly with Benzedrine as bankruptcy loomed, Selznick is described as ''undergoing his own breakup.''
What nosotros take, then, is a wonderfully appalling story of Hollywood at its almost miraculous best. Major stars, giant personalities, terrifying egos - they're all here, revealing themselves with charming abandon. The film opened in Atlanta in Dec 1939. The rest is flick history and, in a very real sense, American history - correct down to the long and bitter struggle to let Gable utter on screen the word ''damn.''
Great fine art? ''The Making of a Legend'' is content to say but that ''Gone With the Wind'' is a dandy show. So is this documentary.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/02/arts/reviews-television-tantalizing-tidbits-about-gone-with-the-wind.html