Author: Herb Bridges
Publisher: Mercer University Press – 283 pages
Book Review by: Paiso Jamakar
A large (12”x 9”) paperback book filled with almost 1,000 photographs, this is a must-purchase item for fans of this classic movie. It is an illustrated story of the making of Gone With the Wind, an epic historical romance between Rhett Butler, played by Hollywood legend Clark Gable and Scarlett O’Hara, played by the ravishing Vivien Leigh.
This book is a daily pictorial and narrative chronicle of a great movie-in-the-making. On-the-set views of this very memorable film released in December 1939 would delight those who loved watching it and want to preserve their memories of it in one single, large collection.
Many photographs in this book have been never been previously published, so by this feature alone, the book could have a collector’s value in the future. It is also a sort of well-preserved, organized history of costumes of a particular era in the southern United States, a valuable resource for those interested in this subject.
The Macmillan Publishing Company of New York City published Margaret Mitchell’s epic 1,037-page novel Gone With the Wind on June 30, 1936. As quickly as the next month – in July – film producer David O. Selznick purchased the movie rights to it for $50,000.
Gone With the Wind is a love story set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, and the later period of reconstruction, with a large cast of characters as members of several families.
The movie made Hollywood history by winning ten Academy Awards (eight competitive and two honorary) at the 12th Annual Academy Awards presentation in 1940. It not only set new records for the total number of wins, but also the largest number of nominations until then.
This movie was also one of the highest-grossing ones until then. Upon its release in 1940 it grossed $32 million, and after release of a revised edition in 1963, it took in $67 million. There have been films (during and after its release) that have garnered higher revenues, but adjusted for inflation, Gone With the Wind ranks as the highest-grossing film in Hollywood history, according to Wikipedia.
Much of the story written by Mitchell took place in Atlanta and its environs in Georgia, but none of the filming was done there. The movie was made essentially on sound stages and back lots in and around Hollywood, California.
So how did Selznick International Pictures reproduce as closely as possible the scenes in Atlanta and other parts of Georgia when they filmed Gone With the Wind? The company dispatched some of its employees in 1936 and 1937 to Atlanta, Jonesboro and Clayton County, Georgia to “thoroughly research the locale of the story,” the author Herb Bridges writes.
He adds: “Detailed notes were made and hundreds of photographs were taken of houses, buildings, landscapes, trees, shrubs, streams, etc. An intricate system of identifying these photographs was devised as noted by the handwritten notes on each picture.” He then gives an example of the note written on the back of a photograph.
This is a well-researched book by Herb Bridges. There are many other books out there on the filming of Gone With the Wind, but this one really sets itself apart as a unique pictorial history.
