1) Relate what was discussed in
class or the text to the screening.
In class, we learned
that during the early days of Hollywood, black actors and actresses were used
mostly marginally in menial, domestic roles or as tertiary characters with no
problems or development of their own. Oftentimes, black characters were
portrayed by white actors in blackface.
Black actors had to rely on parts in musicals and comedies rather than
serious, dramatic roles, an example being Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who
frequently danced with Shirley Temple. Between 1915 and 1950, around 500 “race”
films were produced for black audiences and starring all-black casts. Most of
these films were produced and funded by black filmmakers, but some had white
financial backers as well.
Early black filmmakers
include George and Perry Johnson, who founded the Lincoln Motion Picture
Company in 1916 and in 1918, made Birth
of a Race in response to D.W. Griffith’s earlier film Birth of a Nation. The movie focused on black soldiers, families and
heroes. Oscar Micheaux was the most prolific black filmmaker, of his time,
having directed over 40 films over the course of his career. He founded the
Micheaux Film Corporation in Chicago which stayed in business from 1918 until
1940. Micheaux’s films were scripted and produced exclusively by
African-Americans though he eventually joined forces with white investors. He
also frequently collaborated with Paul Robeson.
Gone with the Wind was based on a 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell, who took over ten
years to write it. David O. Selznick purchased the film rights for $50,000.
Mitchell never published another book in her lifetime and refused to comment or
advise on the film once the rights were sold. She was killed after being hit by
a car while crossing the street in 1949, only ten years after the film was
released. The film starred Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable as the lead characters
Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, while the supporting cast included Leslie
Howard, Olivia de Havilland, Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen.
Gone with the Wind was a huge success and swept the Academy Awards, earning Best
Picture for David O. Selznick, Best Director for Victor Fleming, Best Actress
for Vivien Leigh, Best Supporting Actress for Hattie McDaniel, Best Screenplay,
Best Cinematography, Best Editing and Best Art Direction. Clark Gable was
nominated for Best Actor but in a shocking twist, lost to Robert Donet for Goodbye, Mr. Chips.
McDaniel’s win was also
historic as she was the first African-American to ever win an Academy Award and
the first to be invited to the ceremony as a guest. The American Film Institute
ranked Gone with the Wind 4th
in their list of the Top 100 Best American Films of All Time. The film was also
selected for preservation by the National Film Registry and was the highest
grossing film of all time until 1966, though when adjusted for inflation, it
still has the highest box office earnings. It was the longest film ever made at
the time, running 3 hours and 44 minutes. It was also one of the first films
shot in Technicolor.
In addition, the film
provided the famous line “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” ranked by AFI
as the #1 movie line quote. In order for the phrase to be said exactly as it
was in the book, Selznick had to get special permission from the Motion Picture
Association, who passed an amendment to the Production Code to ensure that the
film would be in agreement with the code. As a result,, the words “hell” and
“damn” could only be spoken when their usage was “essential and required for
portrayal, in proper historical context, of any scene or dialogue based upon
historical fact or folklore ... or a quotation from a literary work, provided
that no such use shall be permitted which is intrinsically objectionable or
offends good taste."
Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta in an elaborate 3-day celebration beginning
Dec. 15, 1939. Due to Georgia’s Jim Crow laws, Hattie McDaniel and the other
black actors were prohibited from attend the premiere. Clark Gable was so
angered that he threatened to boycott the premiere himself, but McDaniel
persuaded him to attend. The production budget of the film was $3.9 million.
The domestic gross brought in $198,676,459, with an additional $400,176,459
coming in from foreign markets. Overall, the legacy of Gone with the Wind endures, as the all-time (when adjusted for
inflation) highest-grossing box office earner.
2) Find a related article and summarize the
content. (on the film, director, studio,
actor/actress, artistic content, etc.) You can use the library or the internet. Cite the article
or copy the url to your journal entry. Summarize in your own words the
related article but do not plagiarize any content.
Vivien
Leigh was first introduced to producer David O Selznick by his brother Myron
during the burning of Atlanta scene in early production of Gone with the
Wind. Over two and a half years had been spent auditioning over 1,400
actors, costing more than $50,000, yet the Selznicks agreed that Leigh was “Scarlett
O’Hara.”
The romance between Scarlett O’Hara and Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler, is
now movie legend. Gone with the Wind received ten Academy Awards,
including one for Leigh, making her the first British woman to win Best Actress.
It is also the most watched film in UK film history, with over 35 million
theater attendances since 1939.
Like
Scarlet, Leigh was beautiful, passionate, charming, and ambitious. They both
had obsessive love affairs and both ultimately lost the man they loved. They
lived through tragedies and illness. Leigh, whose birth name was Vivian
Hartley, was born in India, where her English parents lived while her father
worked for a brokerage company. Before reaching the age of seven, Leigh was
sent back to England to attend boarding school. Between the ages of 13 and 17, Leigh traveled with her parents, who had by then left India, across Europe, finally settling
again in London in 1931.
After
dancing together at a ball, Leigh fell in love with Herbert Leigh Holman, who
was 13 years older than her. Leigh was already set on becoming an actress and attending
the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the time but Holman assumed she would
settle down once she became a mother. They had a daughter named Suzanne in 1933
but Leigh continued to act and received her first taste of stardom in 1935,
when she received rave reviews for her role in the play Mask of Virtue. Leigh
was able to secure a $50,000 contract with director Alexander Korda and was
ready to continue on to superstardom, saying “‘I loved my baby as every
mother does but, with the clear-cut sincerity of youth, I realized I could not abandon all thought of a
career. Some force within myself would not be denied expression.”
Leigh developed
adoration for actor Laurence Olivier after seeing him perform on stage and
engineered an introduction, telling a friend that one day she would marry him,
despite the fact that both she and Olivier were already married to other
people. They began a passionate affair, ultimately leaving their respective
spouses and children and marrying each other, becoming the olden couple of
acting in the process. Katharine Hepburn drove them to their wedding ceremony. Together,
the Oliviers’ had a lavish life filled with theatre tours, haute couture and
luxurious parties. They entertained celebrity friends such as Humphrey Bogart,
Lauren Bacall, Orson Welles, Bette Davis and Judy Garland.
Though
she was an Oscar winner, Leigh often doubted her own talent in comparison to
Olivier. She put herself under tremendous stress trying to match him on stage.
She suffered two miscarriages. Meanwhile, Suzanne was raised by her father and grandmother
and only saw her mother occasionally growing up. During the 1940’s, Leigh
suffered from tuberculosis and mood swings brought on by bipolar disorder.
By 1951, when she portrayed her Oscar-winning role of Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, her real-life persona matched her onscreen antics of madness, mania and depressing vulnerability. Leigh was terrified people would learn the truth about her illness. Eventually, however, the secret got out.
She
suffered a mental breakdown in 1953 during the filming of the film Elephant Walk in Sri Lanka. She suffered
from insomnia and hallucinations which made her try to jump out of a plane
while travelling back to Los Angeles. Leigh had to be sedated and flown back to
Britain where she was sent to a psychiatric hospital. At the time, there were
not many treatments for mental disorders, and Leigh was subjected to electric
shock therapy.
While he
still loved her, Olivier couldn’t take anymore and the couple divorced in 1960,
when Olivier finally left her for actress Joan Plowright. Leigh had been having
an affair with actor Jack Merivale at the time. She later told her stepson
Tarquin, “Herbert taught me how to live, your father how to love, and John how
to be alone.” In her 40s, Leigh developed a closer relationship with her
daughter and grandsons before dying in 1967 at the age of 53 from tuberculosis.
Though her life was relatively short, the legacy of Vivien Leigh lives on as
one of Great Britain’s most legendary actresses.
3) Apply the article to the film screened in
class. How did the article support or change the way you thought about
the film, director, content, etc.?
Though
I had known about the personal troubles of Vivien Leigh before now, reading
about her life more in-depth so soon after seeing the film again impresses upon
e the truly intense way Leigh encapsulated the role of Scarlett O’Hara. Leigh
was beautiful and charming, but she had to fight for everything. While she had
a very privileged life, she also endured much suffering that others would not
have been able to bear, making her much closer to the character of Scarlett than
I had previously thought.
Watching
the film growing up, I had always admired Scarlett’s resolve to never give up
and keep fighting for what she felt was important, even as her priorities
changed by the film’s end, I now also have a deep appreciation for Leigh’s
similar devotion to the things she loved, even when her life was being torn
apart by things outside of her control. Also like Scarlett, Leigh could have
been judged harshly for her sometimes unscrupulous behavior, but at the end of
the day, Vivien Leigh was a good person and has earned the right to be
remembered as one of Britain’s greatest actresses.
4) Write a critical analysis of the film, including your personal opinion,
formed as a result of the screening, class discussions, text material and
the article. I am less interested in whether you liked or disliked a
film, (although that can be part of this) than I am in your understanding
of its place in film history or the contributions of the director.
Gone with the Wind is one of the
best-loved films in cinema history, and with good reason. The historical aspects
of the plot were implemented masterfully; all the while combining the perspectives
of a southern belle during the Civil War and Reconstruction era with a modern (at
the time of the film’s release) take on the time period with a nostalgic
outlook thrown in. As someone who had family in Georgia at the time who lost
3000 acres to the burning of Atlanta by General Sherman’s troops, the setting
fascinated me greatly.
The casting of the film was spot-on and the actors
all played their parts to perfection. Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable and Olivia de
Havilland in particular brought life to their characters in ways that made them
jump from the screen. Even the smaller roles, such as Thomas Mitchell as Gerald
O’Hara and Hattie McDaniel as Mammy, provided memorable and enchanting
characters that I wished had had happy endings.
In the countless times I’ve viewed the film, never
once did it feel like I was watching a dated period piece. Though some of the
characters displayed questionable behavior at times, they remained sympathetic
to me. The film was also able to show the transitioning of time very well,
without awkward scene shifts, something that even modern films can have trouble
with. The special effects that went into creating the illusion of grand
Southern plantations and the exquisite costuming both help entwine the viewers
in the lives of the gentry of the Old South.
From casting to costuming, Gone with the Wind remains
vibrant and entertaining over seventy-five years after its premiere. The film
has not only left an enduring legacy, but has become an icon of the South,
American history and Hollywood itself, and there is no doubt it will continue
to be remembered and enjoyed for many more years as other films aim to emulate its
renowned and celebrated status.
CHECKLIST FOR PLAGIARISM
1) (x) I
have not handed in this assignment for any other class.
2) (x) If
I have reused any information from other papers I have written for other
classes, I clearly explain that in the paper.
3) (x) If
I used any passages word for word, I put quotations around those words, or used
indentation and citation within the text.
4) (x) I
have not padded the bibliography. I have used all sources cited in the
bibliography in the text of the paper.
5) (x) I
have cited in the bibliography only the pages I personally read.
6) (x) I
have used direct quotations only in cases where it could not be stated in
another way. I cited the sources within the paper and in the bibliography.
7) (x) I
did not so over-use direct quotations that the paper lacks interpretation or
originality.
8) (x) I
checked yes on steps 1-7 and therefore have been fully transparent about the
research and ideas used in my paper.
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