30. UGa. MM to Stephen Vincent Benét, 9 July 1936.
31. MMD. JRM to his mother, 26 June 1936.
32. NYPL. MM to HSL, 21 May 1936.
33. UGa. MM to HB, 8 Feb. 1937.
34. Farr, 127.
35. NYPL. MM to HSL, 21 May 1936.
36. NYPL. MM to HSL, 21 May 1936.
37. Interview with MMD.
38. NYPL. E. E. Hale to HSL, 18 May 1936.
39. NYPL. HSL to E. E. Hale, 19 May 1936.
40. NYPL. HSL to A. L. Williams, 19 May 1936.
41. NYPL. HSL to MM, 21 May 1936.
42. NYPL. MM to HSL, 25 May 1936.
43. NYPL. MM to HSL, 25 May 1936.
44. NYPL. HSL to A. L. Williams, 26 May 1936.
45. NYPL. MM to HSL, 25 May 1936.
46. NYPL. MM to HSL, 25 May 1936.
47. NYPL. LDC to MM, 28 May 1936.
48. Interview with JK.
49. Interview with FM.
50. FMZ. MM to FMZ, 27 May 1936.
51. FMZ. MM to FMZ, 27 May 1936.
52. UGa. MM to Joseph Henry Jackson, 1 June 1936.
53. UGa. MM to HSL, 1 June 1936.
54. FMZ. MM to FMZ, n.d. [June 1936].
55. NYPL. LDC to MM, 28 May 1936.
56. NYPL. MM to LDC, 29 May 1936.
57. NYPL. MM to GB, 6 June 1936.
58. NYPL. Notes.
59. NYPL. HSL to LDC, 14 June 1936.
60. MMD. JRM to his mother, 26 June 1936.
61. MMD. JRM to his mother, 26 June 1936.
62. MMD. JRM to his mother, 26 June 1936.
63. Farr, 124.
64. NYPL. “What is believed to be a record in recent years has been established by Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. Although it has been published only one month printings already total 201,000 copies.” Memo in Book News, 23 July 1936.
65. MMD. JRM to his mother, 26 June 1936.
66. MMD. JRM to FMZ, 1 Aug. 1936.
67. MMD. JRM to FMZ, 1 Aug. 1936.
68. UGa. MM to Clark Howell, 28 June 1936.
69. MMD. JRM to his mother, 26 June 1936.
70. UGa. MM to Julia Collier Harris, 29 June 1936.
71. UGa. MM to Julia Collier Harris, 29 June 1936.
72. Interview with MS.
73. MMD. JRM to his mother, 19 July 1936.
74. MMD. JRM to this mother, 19 July 1936.
75. MMD. JRM to his mother, 19 July 1936.
76. Herschel Brickell, “The Best Friend GWTW Ever Had,” in “Gone With the Wind” as Book and Film. Ed. Richard Harwell (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1983), 25.
77. AHC. John R. Marsh, “Margaret Mitchell and the Wide, Wide World,” AHB 9, no. 34. 35.
78. In William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair 1847-1848), Amelia Sedley is a kind, gentle girl; Lord Steyne is the brutal, cynical man of the world; and Becky Sharp is the cunning, selfish, and cynical, but never bitter, heroine whom readers enjoyed seeing defeat less admirable characters. St. Elmo is in Augusta Evans’s popular novel St. Elmo (1896). Another famous character named Amelia is the virtuous, devoted heroine in Henry Fielding’s novel Amelia (1751).
79. Julia Peterkin, Book of the Month Review, in “Gone With the Wind” as Book and Film. Ed. Richard Harwell (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1983), 21.
80. AHC. Marsh, AHB, 36.
81. AHC. Marsh, AHB, 37.
82. AHC. Marsh, AHB, 37.
83. AHC. Marsh, AHB, 36.
84. UGa. MM to Stark Young, 29 Sept. 1936.
85. Farr, 141.
86. AHC. Marsh, AHB, 34.>
87. Farr, 132.
88. Farr, 140.
89. NYPL. MM to LDC, 3 July 1936.
90. NYPL. MM to LDC, 3 July 1936.
91. MMD. JRM to his mother, 19 July 1936.
Chapter 10
Unbelievable Days
1. UGa. MM to HB, 8 July 1936.
2. NYPL. Lois Cole’s memorandum to Hutchinson, Blanton, Brett, Putnam, Beaty, 7 July 1936. “I have just had a call from John Marsh in Atlanta telling me that a copy of a letter which their cook, Bessie, wrote to the Atlanta Journal about Peggy and himself is being forwarded by Miss Baugh to someone in this office with a suggestion that it be used for publicity. He asked that we do not use this letter in any way. Of course he does not mind our reading it here, but he asks that it neither be used for publicity nor given to the salesmen to use. His point of view is quite understandable. I have promised him that the letter will not be used in any way. Will whoever receives this copy from Miss Baugh, please give it to me so that I may return it to Mr. Marsh?”
3. Interview with JK.
4. Interview with JK. Also MMD. JRM to HM, 29 Sept. 1934.
5. UGa. MM to HB, 7 July 1936.
6. UGa. MM to HB, 7 July 1936.
7. Interview with MS. JRM instructed her to make the arrangements for the cabin to be cleaned and ready for MM when she arrived. He always had another employee, named Mr. Machine, the supervisor of the Tallulah plant, look after Peggy whenever she went there alone with Bessie.
8. MMD. JRM to his mother, 17 July 1936.
9. UGa. MM to HB, 7 July 1936.
10. UGa. MM to GB, 8 July 1936.
11. UGa. The reviews of Gone With the Wind are in the Hargrett Library. John’s mother also kept a scrapbook of the reviews.
12. UGa. MM to Gilbert Govan, 8 July 1936.
13. UGa. MM to Julia Collier Harris, 8 July 1936.
14. UGa. MM to Edwin Granberry, 8 July 1936.
15. Edwin Granberry, “The Private Life of Margaret Mitchell,” in “Gone With the Wind” as Book and Film. Ed. Richard Harwell (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1983), 46.
16. UGa. MM to Stephen Vincent Benét, 9 July 1936.
17. UGa. This passage is quoted from only a draft of a letter.
18. UGa. MM to K. T. Lowe, Time magazine, New York, 29 Aug. 1936.
19. MMD. JRM to his mother, 26 Sept. 1936.
20. NYPL. MM to HSL, 13 Oct. 1936.
21. UGa. MM to Kate Duncan Smith, 24 July 1936.
22. UGa. MM to HB, 17 Jan. 1937.
23. Harwell, “Gone With the Wind” as Book and Film, 50.
24. UGa. MM to Gilbert Govan, 8 July 1936.
25. NYPL. LDC to JRM, 8 July 1936.
26. NYPL. LDC to MM, 8 July 1936.
27. Finis Farr, Margaret Mitchell of Atlanta (New York: Morrow, 1965), 145.
28. UGa. JRM to MM, 15 July 1936.
29. UGa. JRM to MM, 15 July 1936.
30. NYPL. LDC to JRM, 11 July 1936.
31. NYPL. JRM to LDC, 13 July 1936.
32. NYPL. LDC to JRM, 15 July 1936.
33. MMD. JRM to FMZ, 1 Aug. 1936.
34. UGa. JRM to MM, 15 July 1936.
35. UGa. JRM to MM, 15 July 1936.
36. UGa. JRM’s letter to MM, 17 July 1936. These three letters that John wrote to Peggy while she was at Blowing Rock in July 1936 are among the ones that Anne Edwards misquotes in her Road to Tara (New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1986), 230-32, and thus gives the wrong impression of the Marshes’ relationship.
37. UGa. Faith Baldwin, “The Woman Who Wrote Gone With the Wind: An Exclusive and Authentic Interview,” Pictorial Review 38, no. 8 (March 1937), 4, 69-70, 72.
38. UGa. JRM’s letter to MM, 17 July 1936.
39. UGa. JRM’s letter to MM, 17 July 1936.
40. MMD. JRM to his mother, 19 July 1936.
41. Interview with FM.
42. Julia Peterkin’s review of GWTW appeared in the 12 July 1936 issue of the Washington Post.
43. NYPL. Memorandum, 15 July 1936.
44. NYPL. Marion Saunders to Macmillan, 16 July 1936.
45. Interview with FM. During this time and thereafter, John and Peggy would occasionally telephone different members of the family, usually on Sunday evenings, to fill them in on the news. This bit about the dialects spoken in the foreign languages was a joke among those in the Marshes’ circle for a while.
46. NYPL. LDC to SM, 17 July 1936.
47. NYPL. SM to LDC, 21 July 1936.
48. UGa. MM to HB, 18 Sept. 1936.
49. UGa. MM to Julia Peterkin, 26 July 1936.
50. UGa. MM to Douglas S. Freeman, 13 Oct. 1936.
51. UGa. MM to Thomas Dixon, 15 Aug. 1936.
52. Farr, 142.
53. UGa. MM to Mrs. E. L. Sullivan, 18 Aug. 1936.
54. Interview with FM.
55. UGa. MM to Sara Helena Wilson, 13 Nov. 1936.
56. Farr, 159.
57. NYPL. LDC to Jim Putnam, 27 July 1936.
58. NYPL. JRM to Macmillan, 27 July 1936.
59. UGa. MM to Norma Brickell, 27 July 1936.
60. UGa. MM to Stephen Vincent Benét, 23 July 1936.
61. UGa. MM to Kate Duncan Smith, 24 July 1936.
62. UGa. MM to HB, 9 Oct. 1936.
63. Farr, 147.
64. UGa. SM’s Memoir.
65. UGa. JRM to HB, 14 Aug. 1936.
66. MMD. JRM to his mother, 12 Aug. 1936.
67. UGa. JRM to HB, 14 Aug. 1936.
68. UGa. JRM to HB, 14 Aug. 1936.
69. UGa. MM to Dr. William Lyon Phelps, 23 Sept. 1936.
70. UGa. JRM to HB, 14 Aug. 1936.
71. MMD. JRM to FMZ, 1 Aug. 1936.
72. Interview with FM. Also found in JRM’s letter to his mother.
73. UGa. MM to HSL, 13 Aug. 1936.
74. Interview with FM.
75. NYPL. SM to GB, 21 Sept. 1936. Stephens quotes Brett’s letter in his own.
76. NYPL. MM to HSL, 23 Sept. 1936.
77. NYPL. HSL to MM, 6 Oct. 1936.
78. NYPL. Annie Laurie’s letters prove that Paramount, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Universal, Columbia and Major Productions were never interested in buying Gone With the Wind, and RK0 would not buy the story for Katharine Hepburn no matter
how much Hepburn insisted on having the role of Scarlett O’Hara. Annie Laurie explained: “They felt she might not be sympathetic in the part and also that the production would be too expensive.”
She sent Latham the letters she had received from Mr. Costain at Twentieth-Century Fox and from Doris Warner Leroy of Warner Brothers. T. B. Costain thought that the story was not worth as much to him as Latham wanted to get for it and withdrew his offer. At the start, Macmillan had asked for one hundred thousand dollars. The daughter of one of the Warner brothers and wife of Mervin Leroy, who directed Anthony Adverse, Doris Warner Leroy wrote that she was terribly disappointed in the asking price for Gone With the Wind and found it impossible to do business at that figure. She also pointed out that Anthony Adverse had sold for forty thousand dollars and that she was still interested if the price came down.
79. UGa. JRM to GB, 6 Oct. 1936.
80. UGa. JRM to GB, 6 Oct. 1936.
81. NYPL. JRM to Jim Putnam, 9 Oct. 1936.
Chapter 11
Reaping the Whirlwind
1. MMD. JRM to his mother, 26 June 1936.
2. NYPL. Jim Putnam to MM, 22 April 1937. Also, NYPL. MM to Miss Hutchinson, 5 Feb. 1937.
3. UGa. MM to HB, 6 July 1937.
4. Interview with FM.
5. UGa. MM to LDC, 5 March 1937.
6. UGa. MM to HB, 10 Sept. 1936.
7. UGa. MM to HB, 10 Sept. 1936.
8. UGa. MM to HB, 7 July 1937.
9. UGa. MM to HB, 17 Jan. 1937.
10. FMZ’s Narrative. 16-17. Narrative quotes JRM’s letter to his sister.
11. FMZ’s Narrative. 16-17. Narrative quotes JRM’s letter to his sister.
12. MMD. JRM to his mother, 26 Sept. 1936. Interview with FM.
13. UGa. MM to Harry S. Slattery, 3 Oct. 1936.
14. AHC. MMMP.
15. Interview with FM.
16. E. I. “Buddy” Thompson, Madame Belle Brezing (Lexington, KY: Buggy Whip Press, 1983), 1.
17. William M. Singerly owned the Philadelphia Record, a newspaper, and owned the street railway system in Philadelphia. In addition, he owned a large brick yard, lumber yard and planing mill, knitting mill, paper mill, gleaning and binder factory, theaters, commercial buildings, and over a thousand houses he had built and rented. He was the president of two banks. He owned Record Farm in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and several hundred acres on which he raised Holstein cattle and high-grade sheep. He loved horses, particularly trotting horses. Many charitable organizations benefited from his generosity. A Democrat, he lost his bid for governorship of the state. In early 1898, the financial empire he had built collapsed, and he died in February 1898.
Notables from all over the nation sent expressions of sympathy to his family. Presidents Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison, and McKinley, many governors, senators, and other dignitaries sent messages of condolence (Thompson, 88-89).
18. Thompson, 179.
19. Thompson, 4.
20. Thompson, 85.
21. GWTW, 649-50.
22. Thompson, 1.
23. MMD. JRM to his family, 3 April 1937.
24. Thompson, 2.
25. Thompson, 2.
26. Washington Post, 29 Sept. 1936.
27. Richard Harwell, ed., “Gone With the Wind” as Book and Film, (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1983), 58.
28. Interview with MS.
29. UGa. MM to Harry Slattery, 3 Oct. 1936.
30. Interview with JK.
31. UGa. MM to Dr. Thomas H. English, 11 July 1936.
32. UGa. MM to Dr. Thomas H. English, 11 July 1936.
33. NYPL. HSL to MM, 15 Oct. 1936.
34. NYPL. Order form to insure and return MS to MM. 15 Oct. 1936.
35. UGa. MM to HB, 8 Dec. 1936.
36. NYPL. GB memo to department heads, 15 Oct. 1936.
37. FMZ. JRM to FMZ, 1 Aug. 1936.
38. MMD. JRM to his mother, 26 Sept. 1936.
39. MMD. JRM to his mother, 26 Sept. 1936.
40. NYPL. MM to LDC, 23 April 1937.
41. NYPL. MM to Jim Putnam, 22 April 1937.
42. UGa. MM to Sam Doerflinger, Thanksgiving Day, 1936.
43. UGa. MM to HB, 28 June 1937.
44. UGa. MM to HB, 28 June 1937.
45. UGa. MM to HB, 20 Oct. 1937.
46. AHC. John R. Marsh, “Margaret Mitchell and the Wide, Wide World,” AHB 9, no. 34. 34.
47. Finis Farr, Margaret Mitchell of Atlanta (New York: Morrow, 1965), 161.
48. NYPL. News Release, 10 Oct. 1936.
49. UGa. MM to HB, 9 Oct. 1936.
50. UGa. MM to HB, 13 Nov. 1936.
51. Atlanta Constitution, 9 Nov. 1936.
52. NYPL. HSL to MM, 7 Oct. 1936.
53. NYPL. MM to HSL, 13 Oct. 1936.
54. Farr, 168-69.
55. MMD. MM to Mother Marsh, 29 Nov. 1936.
56. MMD. MM to Mother Marsh, 29 Nov. 1936.
57. UGa. MM to HB, 22 Oct. 1936.
58. Farr, 162.
59. UGa. MM to HB, 9 Oct. 1936.
60. UGa. MM to John Macleay, Liverpool Daily Post, Liverpool, England, 23 Nov. 1936.
61. UGa. MM to HB, 9 Oct. 1936.
62. GWTW, 820. Also Farr, 162-63.
63. Charles E. Wells, “The Hysterical Personality and the Feminine Character: A Study of Scarlett O’Hara.” Comprehensive Psychiatry 17 (1976): 353-59. Also in Harwell, “Gone With the Wind as Book and Film,” 114-23.
64. UGa. MM to Astride K. Hansen, 27 Jan. 1937.
65. UGa. MM to Dr. Charles E. Mayos, 22 Aug. 1936.
66. FMZ’s Narrative.
67. Ronald Haver, David O. Selznick’s “Gone With the Wind” (New York: Bonanza, 1986), iv.
68. UGa. MM to R. W. Bingham, 23 Feb. 1937.
69. UGa. MM to Jackson P. Dick, Jr., 16 Feb. 1937.
70. UGa. MM to Rev. R. W. Burns, 14 June 1937.
71. UGa. MM to Very Rev. Mons. Jas. H. Murphy, 4 March 1937.
72. UGa. MM to Very Rev. Mons. Jas. H. Murphy, 4 March 1937.
73. UGa. MM to HB, 9 Oct. 1936.
74. Munnerlyn was Peggy’s middle
name and the name of her ancestors on her paternal grandmother’s side of the family.
75. UGa. MM to HB, 13 Nov. 1936.
76. UGa. MM to HB, 13 Nov. 1936.
77. UGa. MM to HB, 13 Nov. 1936.
78. UGa. MM to Georgia D. Trader, 18 Nov. 1936.
79. NYPL. Memorandum from LDC to MM, 7 Dec. 1936.
80. MMD. JRM to his mother, 25 Nov. 1936.
81. MMD. JRM to his mother, 25 Nov. 1936. Renny is Renny Marsh, Ben Gordon and Francesca’s son.
82. UGa. MM to HB, 22 Oct. 1936.
83. UGa. MM to HB, 22 Oct. 1936.
84. UGa. MM to HB, 22 Oct. 1936.
85. NYPL. JRM to Jim Putnam, Dec. 1936.
86. Interview with FM.
87. Farr, 173.
88. NYPL. MM to LDC, 5 March 1937.
89. NYPL. MM to LDC, 5 March 1937.
90. NYPL. MM to LDC, 5 March 1937.
91. Interview with JK.
92. JRM to Mary Louise Nute, 14 Dec. 1936.
93. Farr, 175.
94. NYPL. MM to LDC, 4 Dec. 1936.
Chapter 12
Publicity, Pirates, and Power
1. MMD. JRM to his mother, 17 Jan. 1937.
2. MMD. MM to Mother Marsh, 14 Jan. 1937.
3. MMD. JRM to his mother, 17 Jan. 1937.
4. MMD. MM to Mother Marsh, 14 Jan. 1937.
5. MMD. JRM to his mother, 17 Jan. 1937.
6. MMD. JRM to his mother, 17 Jan. 1937.
7. UGa. MM to Mabel Search, 2 April 1937.
8. Interview with Deon Rutledge.
9. UGa. Granberry’s draft and John’s thirteen pages of notes are in MMMP.
10. This law is the Feld Crawford Trade Act 1935, Laws of New York, Chapter 976.
11. NYPL. New York Herald Tribune, 29 March 1937.
12. Finis Farr, Margaret Mitchell of Atlanta (New York: Morrow, 1965), 232-33. UGa. MB’s Notes.
13. UGa. MM to HB, 22 Feb. 1937.
14. UGa. MM to HB, 8 April 1937.
15. UGa. MM to HB, 18 Feb. 1937.
16. UGa. MM to HB, 8 April 1937.
17. UGa. MM to Mabel Search, 4 March 1937.
18. UGa. MM to Mabel Search, 23 Feb. 1937.
19. In the New York Daily Worker, 29 Oct. 1936, David Platt wrote: “The film must be stopped. The Klan must not ride again. Send your protest to Selznick International Pictures, Hollywood, to make sure that it doesn’t.”
20. Ronald Haver, David O. Selznick’s “Gone With the Wind” (New York: Bonanza, 1986), 17.
21. Haver, 17.
22. UGa. MM to HB, 8 April 1937.
23. Interview with MS.
24. MMD. JRM to his mother, 6 May 1938. From May 1936 to the time JRM wrote this letter in May 1938, the Georgia Power Company and seventeen other southern power companies had been involved in a lawsuit against the TVA in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. Basing their case on broad constitutional grounds, the power companies tried to enjoin the TVA from the generation, distribution, and sale of electric power in the areas the companies served. The District Court denied the injunction, and the power companies subsequently appealed to the United State Supreme Court, which affirmed the judgment of the lower court in January 1939. As a result of the Supreme Court’s decision, several companies serving the same areas as TVA went under, having had no alternative but to sell their electric properties to the TVA. But Georgia Power held its own grounds because, prior to the Court’s decision, it had made some peaceful adjustments with the North Georgia Electric Membership Corporation, a rural electric cooperative fostered by the TVA.
Margaret Mitchell & John Marsh Page 74