The Rocky Road to Tara

It seems fitting that David O. Selznick was raised on a Hollywood back lot. His father, Lewis J. Selznick, was a Ukrainian Jew who gave up a thriving career in the jewelry business in Pittsburgh to move his family west in 1920. Lured by the siren’s song of glitz, glamour and easy money that the fledgling silent-movie industry promised, the elder Selznick amassed and squandered several fortunes during his lifetime before finally going bankrupt in 1925 and retiring from the film business. Still, his sons, who had grown up tagging along with their father to daily studio meetings, never doubted that their futures resided in Hollywood’s dream factory.

The eldest son, Myron Selznick, would become one of the most powerful talent agents in town, while David quickly established himself as one of the most agile minds in motion pictures, rapidly bounding up the studio ranks at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount and RKO, where, as the head of production, he oversaw 1933’s classic King Kong.

Both men wanted veteran screenwriter Sidney Howard to have first crack at adapting Gone with the Wind. Mitchell’s novel would need to be mercilessly streamlined without sacrificing its historical sweep or smoldering air of moonlight-and-magnolias romance, which millions of readers had come to adore. It was no small task. And one that Mitchell herself couldn’t fathom, calling her creation “unfilmable.” (Of course, that didn’t stop her from cashing Selznick’s check.) Howard, a Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright who had recently adapted Sinclair Lewis’s Dodsworth for the screen, took the assignment in October 1936, under one condition: that he work alone, free from Selznick’s infamous meddling, 3,000 miles away on his farm in Massachusetts. Selznick reluctantly agreed.

Before shooting was set to begin, in January 1939, Selznick went to Bermuda for some sorely needed R&R, hauling along four suitcases filled with various drafts of the script. He quickly realized that he’d have to swallow his pride and ask Howard to return. Selznick pleaded with the battle-scarred scribe to come back on the project, but Howard refused. Selznick cycled through a string of second-choice screenwriters, including Oliver Garrett, John van Druten and even F. Scott Fitzgerald. He rewrote them all.

And still, Scarlett eluded him. Cukor had always envisioned Hepburn in the role. The 31-year-old Oscar winner had already starred in Little Women, Morning Glory and Alice Adams. Years earlier, Hepburn had even lobbied RKO to buy the rights to Mitchell’s book for her. She and Cukor argued their case before Selznick, but the producer couldn’t be convinced. He didn’t think Hepburn had sex appeal. In the back of his mind he’d begun to settle on Goddard. But deep down, he wanted a newcomer—someone whom both he and the public would feel like they’d had a hand in discovering.

Vivien Leigh was a relatively unknown 25-year-old British actress who also happened to be Laurence Olivier’s lover. In the winter of 1938, she and Olivier came to Hollywood—he to star in Wuthering Heights, she to finagle an introduction to Selznick, who was in possession of the role she yearned to play. Ever since first reading Gone with the Wind, Leigh had become convinced she was Scarlett O’Hara. When she arrived in Los Angeles, she shrewdly signed on with Myron Selznick as her American agent.

Myron brought his fresh-faced discovery to Selznick International to watch his younger brother film the burning of Atlanta sequence. Even though he wouldn’t be ready to start filming in earnest for several months, Selznick needed to get something in the can. The lot was still crowded with sets from RKO’s past glories King Kong and The King of Kings, which would now be serving as kindling for Gone with the Wind’s most spectacular set piece. Stunt doubles for Rhett and the still-uncast Scarlett were filmed from afar, their faces obscured as they raced in a horse-drawn carriage through the inferno.

During the epic shot, Myron walked up to his brother amidst the flames and introduced him to Leigh with the line “Hey, genius, meet your Scarlett O’Hara.” After two years of searching, could it really be this easy? Indeed it was. On Christmas Day 1938, Leigh was told she had the part. A few weeks later, Leslie Howard was signed to play the object of Scarlett’s desire, Ashley, and Olivia de Havilland was cast as her future sister-in-law, Melanie.

On January 26, 1939, principal photography finally began on the Culver City back lot. But despite all the months of chaos and melodrama, the trouble was just beginning. Selznick had torn through so many writers he decided to rewrite the final script himself, fueling his all-nighters with Benzedrine and Scotch. Leigh, who was cloistered for several hours every day with a dialect coach to help disguise her British accent, was told by Selznick that she would no longer be allowed to live with Olivier while making the film. Although the producer had once courted publicity for his movie, he could not afford to stir up any more headlines.

Meanwhile, Gable stubbornly refused to speak in a Southern dialect as Rhett, and it was becoming clear to everyone on the set that he and Cukor were not getting along. The director had a kinship with Leigh and de Havilland, but he could not work with Gable. After the first 10 days, Cukor had shot just 23 minutes of film—half of which had to be reshot. Selznick was apoplectic over the director’s snail-like pace. Cukor blamed the script and argued for Howard’s first draft to be restored. Selznick had heard enough. Cukor was out.

Leigh was crushed. She adored Cukor and now, without him, she was feeling insecure, alone and adrift. She later said, “He was my last hope of ever enjoying the picture.” Selznick’s choice as a replacement was Victor Fleming, an imperiously macho director who was in the middle of filming The Wizard of Oz for Mayer’s MGM. Again, Selznick’s father-in-law would come through, tearing Fleming away from Munchkinland and reassigning him to Selznick’s fiscal sinkhole.

Fleming was one of the top directors in Hollywood. Even better, he was Gable’s pal—the two had recently made 1938’s aerial adventure Test Pilot together. In February 1939, Fleming dutifully reported for work at Selznick International. Already behind schedule, Gone with the Wind was shut down so its new director could get up to speed (the cost: $10,000 a day). Fleming took one look at Selznick’s mammoth screenplay and brusquely informed his new boss, “You haven’t got a script.” Ben Hecht was called in for rewrite duty. The overhaul had to be done so quickly that Selznick decided Hecht shouldn’t even bother opening Mitchell’s book. Instead, he and Fleming stayed up all night acting out the story for him—a pantomime fueled by pep pills, adrenaline and panic. Hecht cranked out a draft in two weeks.

Back on the set, Fleming proved to be just the shot in the arm that the production needed. He was a tireless field marshal whose abrasive manner and salty patois appealed to the beleaguered cast and crew—everyone except Leigh, with whom he quarreled constantly. And there was more strife elsewhere. Unhappy with the footage, Selznick fired the cinematographer, Lee Garmes, and replaced him with Ernest Haller. Several other key technicians were purged by the frazzled producer, whose stomach was by now coated in ulcers and whose hair had turned completely gray. The film continued to go over budget, and this time, Selznick’s father-in-law was of no mind to bail him out. So the producer turned to financier John Hay “Jock” Whitney, who staked Selznick $1 million of his own fortune to keep the cameras rolling.