Margaret Mitchell & John Marsh

by Marianne Walker

  No one in Culver City, Kurtz said, had the faintest idea of what Margaret Mitchell’s reference to the car shed meant; they thought it was a mere plank depot. But years earlier Kurtz had found the original plans of this huge structure, designed by Edward A. Vincent, in an old trunk on Washington Street in Atlanta. This car shed, built in 1854 and burned by General Sherman’s orders in November 1864, was the best known of Atlanta’s wartime landmarks.59

  Peggy confessed she was “simply hopping with excitement” to hear all about what was going on with the script, the sets, and the casting.60 But she complained to Kay that she only got news from Kurtz on his return visits to Atlanta, when she could pick at him for information. “Wilbur is a close-mouthed individual and would not even tell anything interesting over the telephone . . . cautious Wilbur does not even trust the telephone operators.”61 She pleaded sweetly with Kay to give her news about the casting of even minor characters. “I’d love to know about them, and I would not spread the news.”62

  The laconic Kurtz gave Peggy all the more reason for wanting the more communicative Sue to hurry out to California. However, Sue was not hired until nearly a year later. About her departure for Hollywood on January 5, 1939, Peggy wrote Kay: “John and I went out to the airport to tell her good-bye, thinking she might be a little lonely. Good Heavens, half of Macon was there and the staffs of the two Macon papers. The airport restaurant was so jammed with them that other travelers could get nothing to eat. I asked who was getting out the Macon Telegraph that night and they replied that it was in the hands of the office boy, the antique colored porter and Mr. W. T. Anderson, owner and publisher.”63

  Although it took her nearly a year and a half, Peggy managed to place three of her own friends in Hollywood on the Gone With the Wind set when the film production began on January 26, 1939. The third person was a former Atlantan, Marian Dabney, who was in charge of the women’s costumes in the wardrobe department. But only Sue Myrick was Margaret Mitchell’s eyes and ears.64

  7

  The first of Sue Myrick’s newsy and entertaining letters arrived on January 11, 1939, and it did not disappoint the Marshes, who were anxious to get “all the inside dope.” Sue wrote:

  Gosh, but I wish you were here so I could talk for ten hours. There ain’t strength in my fingers to write all I’d like to say. And to your ears alone can I say the following. I have not written it to a soul and the studio is so secretive about it all I’m almost afraid to write it to y’all. But I have seen the gal who is to do Scarlett. I am even yet afraid to say her name aloud. Will Price and I speak of her in hushed tones as “That Woman” or “Miss X” and we have spent several mornings with her talking Southern just for her stage-taught ears. She is charming, very beautiful, black hair and magnolia petal skin and in the movie test I have seen, she moved me greatly. They did the paddock scene, for a test, and it is marvelous business the way she makes you cry when she is “making Ashley.” I understand she is not signed but far as I can tell from George [Cukor] et al, she is the gal.65

  By this time, the suspense about Scarlett’s role was becoming intolerable for the public as other roles were being filled. Thomas Mitchell had been hired for Gerald O’Hara, and Butterfly McQueen, for Prissy. Warner Brothers released Olivia De Havilland to play Melanie. Hattie McDaniel, who had enjoyed reading Gone With the Wind, was delighted to have the role of Mammy. Although Leslie Howard thought he was too old to play Ashley, Selznick plied him with money and an offer to coproduce and act in Intermezzo once they finished Gone With the Wind.66 On August 26, 1938, Selznick had announced that Clark Gable would play Rhett. But no Scarlett was in sight.

  When somehow the word had gotten out that Margaret Mitchell had said a southern girl should play Scarlett, Atlanta’s collective head had nodded yes and another giant commotion had broken out. The Atlanta Women’s Press Club had announced that it wholeheartedly agreed with “Miss Mitchell’s statement,” and, as if they had any say in selecting the cast, had issued with pompous authority the following endorsement: “With a long background of Southern ancestry, her forebears among the distinguished Georgians in the Southern army, it is fitting that the South should see one of its favorite daughters, Miriam Hopkins, on the screen as Scarlett, the Georgia heroine of a Georgia story.”67

  It seems as though everyone had a favorite actress to play Scarlett. Cukor wanted Katharine Hepburn, who coveted the part so badly that she was angry with RKO for not buying it for her. But Selznick imagined a much more “feminine, seductive, and younger woman,” who was “shrewd but not bright . . . with the kind of beauty and sex appeal that would make Rhett Butler’s twelve-year pursuit of her convincing to moviegoers.”68 Hepburn was not the only star who wanted the part. Keen competition came from Margaret Sullavan, Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins, Paulette Goddard, Claudette Colbert, Libby Holman, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, Tallulah Bankhead, Dorothy Jordan, Loretta Young, Jean Arthur, and Joan Bennett.69 At one time, Selznick thought that his best possibilities for the role of Scarlett were Jean Arthur, Loretta Young, Katharine Hepburn, and Paulette Goddard. But he really did not want any of them. He wanted a fresh face, one that movie audiences would not associate with other roles. He believed that his failure to find a new girl would be the great failure of his career.70 As it turned out, he found that “fresh face” himself.

  8

  In England, confined to her bed with an ankle injury from a skiing accident, Vivien Leigh read the British edition of Gone With the Wind in December 1936. The 25-year-old beauty was so forcibly taken with Scarlett O’Hara and saw so many similarities between herself and the character that it seemed to her as if Margaret Mitchell created Scarlett with her in mind. With identical Irish-French ancestral backgrounds, they even looked alike. She set her heart on playing that role and began planning a way to capture Selznick’s heart.

  Her agent, John Gliddon, reminded her that she was under contract with Alexander Korda, who said he could not see the American public accepting her playing the role of a scheming, spoiled southern flirt.71 Nevertheless, Korda agreed to say something to Selznick about it and to call attention to her role in Fire over England, which was to open in New York in March 1937. When Kay Brown, in New York, saw Fire over England, she instantly saw Scarlett in Vivien Leigh and excitedly wired Selznick about the actress. But he responded: “I have no enthusiasm for Vivien Leigh. Maybe I will have, but as yet have never even seen photographs of her.”72

  Selznick saw Vivien Leigh for the first time on the Gone With the Wind set, on the night he shot the stunning recreation of the burning of Confederate munitions in the Atlanta train yards. The meeting had been arranged by his brother, Myron Selznick, who was the American agent for Laurence Olivier. At that time, Leigh and Olivier were involved in a passionate love affair despite the fact that both were married to other people. Around 11 P.M. on December 10, 1938, after the conflagration had been filmed and the flames were dying down, Selznick and Cukor, thrilled by the entire operation that they had manufactured, worked their way down from their thirty-foot observation tower. Myron, waiting with Leigh and Olivier, called out to his brother telling him he wanted to introduce him to Scarlett O’Hara. It was very cold that night, and Vivien Leigh was wearing a full-length dark mink coat and a dark hat that framed her beautiful face. The light from the dying flames illuminated her fair complexion and green eyes and highlighted the darkness of her long hair. Stepping forward as she extended her hand, she let her coat fall open, showing her beige silk dress, which emphasized her fragile slimness. With a lilt of laughter in her voice, she said, “Good evening Mr. Selznick.”73 After they stood in the chilly night talking for several minutes, Selznick took her by the arm and walked with her off the set toward his car.74

  The next day, Selznick wrote his wife: “The fire sequence was one of the greatest thrills I have had out of making pictures, first because of the scene itself, and second because of the frightening but exciting knowledge that Gone With the Wind is finally in work. . . . Myron rolled in
just exactly too late, arriving about a minute and half after the last building had fallen and after the shots were completed. With him were Olivier and Vivien Leigh. Shhhhh: She’s the Scarlett dark horse, and looks damned good. Not for anybody’s ears but your own: It’s narrowed down to Paulette [Goddard], Jean Arthur, Joan Bennett, and Vivien Leigh.”

  Selznick later said, “When my brother introduced her to me, the dying flames were lighting up her face . . . I took one look and knew that she was right—at least as far as her appearance went . . . and right as far as my conception of how Scarlett O’Hara looked. . . . I’ll never recover from that first look.”75

  As a veteran publicity man himself, John thought Selznick’s two-year search for Scarlett and the other lead roles was “the best damn publicity stunt” he had ever seen.76 With the final casting announcement of Vivien Leigh as Scarlett came the end of a nationwide search that involved fourteen hundred prospects, ninety screen tests, more than 142,000 feet of black-and-white film, and thirteen thousand feet of technicolor film—and all at a total cost of ninety-two thousand dollars.77

  9

  Around 9:00 P.M. on January 13, 1939, Peggy received a call from the Western Union clerk telling her that a long wire was on the way from David Selznick and that portions of it would arrive at fifteen-minute intervals. Wanting to avoid delay in delivery, Peggy and John hopped in their car and drove downtown to the Western Union office. In writing to Selznick the next day, she said:

  Three sheets telling about Miss Leigh had arrived by the time we reached the office; I knew our morning paper was going to press and of course I wanted the home town papers to have the break on this story, so I left John at the Western Union office to wait for the remainder and I went to the Constitution office. By good luck, they had a photograph of Miss Leigh and they tore out part of the front page, put her picture in, and began setting your wire. At intervals the rest of the wire came in. It was all very exciting and reminded John and me of our own newspaper days.

  Peggy added that if she could judge from the reactions of the newspapermen she saw that night, the choice of Miss Leigh was an excellent one and so was the announcement of Olivia De Havilland. “For a bad five minutes it looked as if a picture of Miss de Havilland in a scanty bathing suit was going to appear in the morning paper, bearing the caption ‘Here Is Melanie, a True Daughter of the South.’ That picture was the only view of her the file clerk could find at first. I made loud lamentations at this, especially when the editor said, ‘We can explain that Sherman’s men had gotten away with the rest of her clothes.’ Finally we found the sweet picture with the old fashioned bangs.” She concluded, “I know that you must feel a great sense of relief this morning—a relief far greater than mine.”78

  That same night at the Constitution building, while Peggy was waiting for the story to be set up in type, John arrived waving a telegram and calling across the city room to her that she had a wire from Vivien Leigh. The city editor heard him, ran over and snatched the telegram out of John’s hands, and dashed into the composing room with it. Peggy did not get to see it until two hours later.79

  At first, many southerners did not like the idea of Vivien Leigh’s playing Scarlett. They were not looking forward to hearing some more of the “bogus Southern talk” that they had heard so often on the stage and screen. In the Atlanta Journal on January 20, 1939, Frank Daniel reported that the Dickinson Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy celebrated General Robert E. Lee’s birthday on January 19 by “deploring Vivien Leigh, and announcing the chapter’s secession from Selznick International because that studio had chosen an English actress to play the Southern heroine of Gone With the Wind. . . . The Ocala Daughter, in a resolution, protested vigorously ‘against any other than a native-born southern woman playing the part,’ and added, ‘we resolve to withhold our patronage if otherwise cast.’”80 The ladies’ objections broke into a national story.

  Peggy was right when she told Sue Myrick, “It sometimes seems to me that Gone With the Wind is not my book any longer; it is something about which the citizens are sensitive and sore at real and fancied slights and discriminations and are ready to fight at the drop of a hairpin.”81

  Drawing from some of his own public relations tactics, John suggested that the Selznick company try to deflect some of the negative publicity about the English actors by having its own publicity department focus on all the good work that was being done by the southerners Sue Myrick and Wilbur and Annie Laurie Kurtz. John said, “Selznick needs to emphasize all that he is doing to make the film authentic. That’ll get some heat off him.” So Peggy conveyed that advice in a letter to Kay on January 21, 1939, adding, “Your publicity department has done nothing with them [Myrick and Kurtz] in the way of dramatizing them and showing just what good assistants Mr. Selznick has.”

  The intense interest the southerners had in Gone With the Wind may be difficult for some readers to understand. But in the 1930s, the United States population still divided itself up into Yankees and southerners. In a letter to Helen and Clifford Dowdey in 1938, Peggy wrote that when she read the title of an article the couple had written, “Are We Still Fighting the War?” she laughed aloud. In this letter, she gives us an excellent account of a southerner’s view.

  Ever since Roosevelt’s Barnesville speech Senator George [Georgia’s senator] and his supporters have been on the air. I have heard so many yells of “states’ rights” and “Northern oppression” and “sinister centralization of power” and so many bands playing “Dixie” that I have wondered whether this was 1938 or 1861. I feel that if I look out of the window I will see the Confederate troops, headed by General John B. Gordon, marching toward Washington. When I read Heywood Broun’s sneering remarks about Senator George “arousing sectionalism” and his other remarks about some Southerners acting as if Appomattox had never occurred I wondered whether he was just plain dumb. His ideas, and those of a number of Northern commentators of pinkish tinge, seem to be that Appomattox settled beautifully and peacefully and justly all the problems, economic and social, for which the South was fighting. Their idea seems to be that might made right in 1865. Common sense should show that many of the problems that sent us to war have never been settled, and the same injustices persist—tariff, freight rates, et cetera. As far as I can see, Appomattox didn’t settle anything. We just got licked.82

  The southerners’ situation was, in some places, she thought, much worse than it had been then, and the same kind of problems were still raising their heads. That, she said, is what annoyed “Mr. Broun and his playmates. After all, when a section has been held in economic slavery for over seventy years that section should have the delicacy of feeling not to squawk.”83

  She had been reading Jonathan Daniels’s book A Southerner Discovers the South, and she recommended that the Dowdeys read the section where Daniels compares “the South with Carthage and remarks that the Romans, after all, were politer than the Northern conquerors, for after they had sown Carthage with salt they never rode through it on railroad trains and made snooty remarks about the degeneracy of people who liked to live in such poor circumstances.”84

  10

  As the lively search continued for actors for the minor roles, thousands of people clamored for even a bit part in the movie. Even Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt got involved in the talent search when she wrote a letter to Kay Brown recommending her maid Lizzie McDuffie for the part of Mammy. A native Georgian, McDuffie was given a screen test, but the role went to Hattie McDaniel, who won an Academy Award for her performance.

  Curious about the casting of supporting roles, Peggy wrote Kay: “Your item about the possible Prissy whetted my interest. I have been especially interested in who would play this little varmint, possibly because this is the only part I myself would like to play. For this reason, whoever plays Prissy will be up against a dreadful handicap as far as I am concerned, for I will watch their actions with a jealous eye.”85 She had confessed earlier that the only character that did not
come out of her head was Prissy, who was based on an indolent young black servant Peggy had known.86 The role went to Thelma “Butterfly” McQueen, to whom it brought instant fame. At first, McQueen was turned down for the part because, she was told, she was too old, fat, and dignified. (In the novel, Prissy is a skinny twelve-year-old when she is brought to Tara.) Although she did not like playing the charming but lazy, dim-witted slave, who is described in the novel as “a simple-minded wench,” she thought the role her best and later said, “It paid well. I went through a full semester at U.C.L.A. on one day’s pay.”87

  By the end of January 1939, the excitement about Vivien Leigh and the other British stars had subsided. Peggy assured Kay that the Selznick company need not worry now about the picture being boycotted, at least not in the South. After all, she aked, if southerners did not see the picture, how would they be in a position to criticize it?88

  11

  In January, Sue Myrick started writing her “Straight from Hollywood” columns, which appeared in the Macon Telegraph for six months (January 12 through July 13, 1939). She wrote more than two dozen articles about the filming of Gone With the Wind for the Georgian.89 In these light narratives, she told how hard she and Wilbur Kurtz worked to keep Hollywood from making “Miss Mitchell’s South a ‘South That Never Was.’” But in her confidential letters to Peggy and John, she offered much more interesting accounts of the goings-on, such as Olivier’s being banned from the set so he would not distract Leigh from her work, and Leigh getting so cranky that Selznick had to let her go spend weekends with Olivier. She told how starry-eyed she was about being introduced to Clark Gable, who was nicknamed “Dutch.” She said the palm of Gable’s hand was moist when she first shook hands with him. “He had a look of a man with so much red blood—so hot as it were—he couldn’t help a little perspiration.” She thought his hair was too long, his eyes very blue, and his lashes beautiful. “He wore a tan coat over a canary-yellow silk sports shirt, a tie of raspberry and yellow stripes and gray trousers and looked fresh washed.”90 She talked about how good natured and sweet Gable was and how everybody liked him.