“Fiddle-dee-dee… This war talk’s spoiling all the fun at every party...”
GONE WITH THE WIND
The only casting saga to have been filmed – as part of Garson Kanin’s Moviola mini-series and, majestically, in the Ted Turner company’s documentary about the making of GWTW.
Yet there nearly was no such saga.
Less than eager about Margaret Mitchell’s book – “I do not feel we can take such a gamble” – producer David O Selznick said if he were still at MGM he’d go for Gable and Crawford. Instead, in June 1938, he stupidly announced MGM’s Gable and Shearer. He was immediately shot down in flames – Shearer was far too old. She wisely gave up “the thankless role” as soon as her fan clubs disapproved.
“The one I’d like to play,”
Norma Shearer said,
“is Rhett.”
While Gable said: “Rhett is simply too big an order. I didn’t want any part of him.” His lover, Carole Lombard, talked him into it – and he saved the film by his insistence on dropping director George Cukor (“I won’t be directed by a fairy”) for Victor Fleming (“I have to work with a real man”). Cukor, allegedly, knew too much about a gay affair of Gable’s in the 20s. Plus his liaisons with Spencer Tracy. Or, Gable thought he did.
Cukor never told even his good friend, Katharine Hepburn, why he was sacked.
Kate had a great interest GWTW as she was the only actress that Margaret Mitchell had sent a copy of her manuscript to. Hepburn thought it fascinating, passed it to RKO production chief, Pandro Berman. His assistant, Joe Sistrom, felt Scarlett was unsympathetic – bad, therefore, for Kate’s career. She next found Selznick holding the book. “Don’t read it, David,” said she, “buy it.” He did so, but felt it better for his partner Jock Whitney’s Pioneer Pictures – with Gary Cooper. But Selznick had not yet read the rapid best-seller and Pulitzer Prize winner.
As public interest flared, suggestions came in the mail, in media columns and competitions, Miriam Hopkins and/or Margaret Sullavan with Ronald Colman led early polls. Selznick, however, ordered “en entire cast of new faces” and a talent hunt started all over America – and, “as God is my witness,” 500 hopefuls were seen in one day in Atlanta!
Scarlett O’Hara . Bette Davis maintained that Jack Warner offered her the role during her battle for better parts and directors. “Please don’t leave,” Warner begged her, “I just bought a wonderful book for you.” Bette wasn’t convinced and flounced out, snarling: “I’ll bet it’s a pip!”
She was right about one thing. Warner had not bought the rights, he was merely interested as other major studios shied away from a costume picture, in particular, a Civil War drama and, most of all, the $100,000 asking price.
Bette Davis said Selznick
wanted her and Errol Flynn.
David did not, refusing Jack Warner’s offer of them both plus Olivia De Havilland for 25% of the profits. “But I wouldn’t have done it with Flynn,” insisted Davis. “So I gave up Scarlett myself – my own fault, so I can’t be bitter about that. And it was really no great disappointment.” She did her own version – and got an Oscar for it. “Actually, Jezebel was the same woman. Really was! And Willie Wyler’s feeling of the South in Jezebel was more truly Southern than GWTW .” (Instead of Davis, Wyler wed starlet Margaret Tallichet, among the many testing for Scarlett. “She didn’tt get the part. She got me instead!”)
Thoroughly anti-Bette, David Selznick swore: “I’d give it to Hepburn first.” His agent brother Myron “determined” that she didn’t get it. “Call it pay back time for the contempt she’d shown me” on her arrival in Hollywood.
And so the nearest Davis ever got to Scarlett was having her actual bed in her 1939 film, All This, And Heaven Too.
Katharine Hepburn
pushed hard
Until her RKO her studio offered $45,000 for the rights, increased to $55,000 after Selznick promised $50,000. Selznick told her: “I can’t see Rhett Butler chasing you for twelve years.” And Cukor said she was wrongbecause, “first, the unquestionable and very widespread public dislike of her at the momentand second, the fact that she has yetto demonstrate that she possesses the sex qualities which are probably the most important of all the many requisites of Scarlett.”
To test her questionable (and in reality, AC-DC) sex-appeal, Kate was “auditioned” by Errol Flynn, who was also being casting-couched by George Cukor for Rhett. After their tryst, Flynn never called Hepburn back. “I guess Selznick was right,” she said, “I’m not that sexy, after all.”
Tallulah Bankhead was
the first star tested – in 1936.
That, dahling, was mainly to see if she could pass for 16. She could not. Other known names before Cukor’s camera were: Nancy Coleman, Frances Dee (Joel McCrea’s wife, later adjudged too beautiful for Melanie), Alice Faye ( a contralto – but why not?) Anita Louise, an inadequate Lana Turner, blonde Linda Watkins (she quit Hollywood until the 50s for the stage) and, – in a flash of desperate, starrier tests closer to the deadline – Diana Barrymore. Plus Joan Bennett, who made it to the last four: Arthur, Goddard, Leigh.
The hunt continued… 1,400 actresses were interviewed in total. George Cukor supplied one himself, having discovered Mary Andersona student at Howard College (now Samford University) in her native Birmingham, Alabama. She lost Scarlett but became Maybelle Merriwether. Anderson was the actress asking Alfred Hitchcock during Lifeboat, 1943, which was her best side. Said Hitch: “My dear, you’re sitting on it !”
Another unknown, the Hollywood-born Fay McKenzie, even changed her surname to the more Irish Shannon to help her become O’Hara. Didn’t work. She reverted to McKenzie and became known as “the girl with the blitzkrieg eyes” and for being Gene Autry’s frequent leading lady in the early ’40s.
And another… Madge Evans, 29 at the time, had been used to cameras since shooting Fairy Soap commercials at age two. But her 30s’ images was just too darned nice for her to be Scarlett. The following year, the New York stage and screen star wed playwright, Sidney Kingsley, author of Dead End, Detective Story and she starred in his The Patriot.
Seen during the unknowns’ phase were: Katharine Aldridge, Ardis Ankerson, Fleurette DeBussy, Diana Forrest, Susan Fox, Bowles Locker, Shirley Logan, Austine McDonnel, Lynn Merrill, Mary Ray, Terry Ray,… And 14-year-old Shelley Winters, who told George Cukor in her thick Brooklynese, “I’m da only gal to play Scarlett O’Hara!” He laughed; “everybody laughed, he gave me a Coke and said: You really have to go to college.” I said: But I need your money now.”
Among those in the coast-to-coast auditions was Lucille Ball. “Me? Play Scarlett? Oh, impossible!” She worked with Southern scholar Will Price on a Georgia accent for her test – “terrified… drenched by rain and read three scenes for Selznick – all on my knees.”
Ironically, while up to his expertly tailored knees in unknowns, LB Mayer vented his spleen in the direction of the head of MGM British production for committing the grevious sin of hiring an unknown for the second female lead of A Yank At Oxford. The row ended in Michael Balcon quitting Metro and going (successfully) solo.
The unknown actress was called… Vivien Leigh.
Chosen to test were: Diana Barrymore, Joan Bennett, Nancy Coleman, Frances Dee, Adele Longmire, Anita Louise, Brenda Marshall, Marcella Martin, Dorothy Mathews, Haila Stoddard, Linda Watkins. And the Dallas gal Margaret Tallichet – she didn’t get Rhett Butler but got Oscar-winning director William Wyler instead. They were married in 1938f or 43 years until his 1981 death. “Lucky for me,” he always said, “she didn’t get the part.”
Glenda Farrell was the only contender to be buried at West Point US Military Academy cemetery, in New York. (Because she was the wife of West Point graduate Dr. Henry Ross who served on General Eisenhower’s staff).
On Selznick’s initial short list was his ex-lover Jean Arthur (she allegedly burnt her December 17, 1938 test), Dorothy Jordan (later “the best Melanie to date”) and Loretta Young. He even tested such illustrious people as Liz Altemus, the celebrated horsewoman who had married Selznick’s partner, John Hay Whitney…future publisher of the New York Times and US Ambassador to the UK. Jock Whitney had put up 50% of the money to buy GWTW and could be said to be conducting his own tests. His lovers included Tallulah Bankhead, Joan Crawford and Selznick’s eventual choice, his next door neighbour: Paulette Goddard.
Paulette was good and kept getting better in eight tests during 1938. At 29, he was, however, not young enough – and looking far better in black-white than in full colour. Scarlett was her’s, except for the lack of a marriage license… with Chaplin. And publicity man Russell Birdwell warned that her “insane an absurd attitude towards the Press… will explode in our very faces if she’s given the part.” (Goddard had her revenge – and one of her finest roles – when she won Laura Cheveley away from Leigh in An Ideal Husband, 1947).
Despite spurious claims,
33 actresses only were actually tested,
from Louise Platt on September 28, 1936,
to Lyn Swann just after Christmas 1937.
Plus Susan Hayward (still known then as Edythe Marrener, and using her test to start her career with a Paramount contract). Only Goddard and Vivien Leigh were tested in colour.
For Selznick it was down to Jean Arthur, Joan Bennett, Paulette Goddard and a British outsider. Paulette was due for her ninth test on December 22, 1938, when – fiddle-dee-dee! – she was withdrawn and Vivien Leigh substituted for her second test… in a dress “still warm from the previous actress.”
Now Hepburn refused to test,
knowing she’d be dumped
for some winning unknown.
And that is exactly what happened… In 1991, Kate revealed that right down to the wire – “the day before they had to start – the day before!” – the final arrangement was that she was Scarlett. Then, Myron Selznick brought a client to watch the burning of Atlanta shooting, turned to David and said: “Hey, genius, meet your Scarlett O’Hara.” Vivien Leigh. She had bowled Myron over in Fire Over England, 1936.
Although needing work on her accent, Viv had won – being paid a mere $25,000 for her 125 days as Scarlett. And no one seemed to notice that Selznick’s official 1938 announcement of Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh and Olivia De Havilland was made on Friday the 13th of January. And no oneknew that George Cukor would secretly coach Vivien…
Shooting began two weeks later – January 27 – with Hedda Hopper was outraged at a British Scarlett. “I’m sure a million Americans will stay away as a protest.” The South said: “Better a Brit than a Yankee!” One Selznick aide said Viv was perfect because she was “cunning, conniving and manipulative.” Just like Scarlett – or, Pansy in Margaret Mitchell’s first draft.
And tomorrow was indeed another day for two Scarlett wannabes – the only ones winning other roles in the epic. Marcella Martin played Cathleen Calvert… and Evelyn Keyes, from CB DeMille’s contract books, became the even bitchier O’Hara – Scarlett’s sister Suellen. “Of course, my role was much larger,” she told Mike Fitzgerald, “but they whittled it away – leaving Vivien Leigh’s part intact, of course.”
Finally, when Vivien married her Larry Olivier in Santa Barbara on August 31, 1940, her (last minute) matron of honour (!) was… Katie Hepburn.
Rhett Butler . Although Margaret Mitchell had a preference for… Groucho Marx, it was Gable who topped everyone’s list for the “visitor from Charleston” – with scant competition from Ronald Colman, Fredric March, Selznick’s Australian contract player, Alan Marshall, and the author’s other choice, Basil Rathbone. Mrs Selznick said David entertained the idea of Humphrey Bogart “for a a week before sanity took ov
Signing Gable meant a release deal with MGM – for 50% of the profits. (No wonder Selznick preferred Gary Cooper!) Both, he said, were true gentlemen. Better still, men liked them as well as women. Producer Samuel Goldwyn balked at loaning Cooper and so Rhett was the people’s choice… and his $50,000 signing-on bonus, on August 24, 1938,enabled him to divorce his second wife, Rhea Langham, and marry Carole Lombard (they had met, of course, at a Jock Whitney party). So everyone was happy. Even Selznick, forced by LB Mayer to stump up a third of the bonus, plus Gable’s $4,500 a week salary “for a period reasonably necessary to complete the role.” That worked out at $120,000 for 71 days’ work. .
Ashley Wilkes . Margaret Mitchell always saw him as Randolph Scott. With reason, said director Michael Curtiz. “He’s the only gentleman in this business of self-promotiing sons-of-bitches.”
Selznick favoured Leslie Howard, but
he’d had his fill of “weak, watery” ineffectuals.
Also seen: Lew Ayres, Richard Carlson, Melvyn Douglas, Ray Milland, Tyrone Power, Vincent Price… and DOS also requested a test of the North Carolina actor who was John Shepperd in Hollywood and Shepperd Strudwick (his real name) on Broadway.
Jeffrey Lynn and Douglass Montgomery played Ashley (stolid and wooden) in numerous tests – of potential Scarletts. Selznick finally won Howard over by making him the star and associate producer of Intermezzo.
Melanie Wilkes . Selznick’s first Melanie notions were Hollywood wives. 1. Dorothy Jordan, retired actress wife of King Kong producer Merian C Cooper (also seen as a possibleScarlett). 2. Frances Dee, Joel McCrea’s wife – who lost out because Selznick fretted that her beauty would outshine Vivien Leigh’s. (Dee had tested for Scarlett). 3. The RKO secretary-turned-RKO star Dorothy Wilson (wed to scenarist Lewis R Foster). “I was retired at the time and Melanie was in the only role that could have persuaded me to return to movies.”
DOS also saw Priscilla Lane, Andrea Leeds (who had made 22 films during 1936-1940). Martha Scott almost lost her screen debut – and only Oscar nod – as Emily in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town due to a bad test. She won through having played Emily 338 times on Broadway. Madge Evans had been a Fairy Soap model at age two – Baby Madge – and grew into The Nice Girl in 30s’ stage and screen scripts – often with one or more of the Barrymores,
George Cukor called Joan Fontaine in to discuss Melanie. “I made a tremendous mistake and I’ve regretted it always… Because it was George Cukor, I wore some rather chic clothes. Oh, you’re much too stylish for the role that I want you to do. And I said: Well, what about my sister? Who’s your sister? I explained. And he said: Thank you. And that’s how Olivia got that role.”
Hmm, that suggested that Olivia (Joan’s deadly rival and vice-versa) was not first choice, was less stylish than Joan and, indeed, owed her biggest break to her sister. Olivia’s version is, naturally, different. Totally! Cukor had called her up, asking if she’d be open to doing something highly illegal… to secretly read for him and Selznick, even though she was under contract to Warner. If she was right for Melanie, they would make it work. She went, did her thing but Jack Warner would not do his and refusef to loan her. Olivia then did something else illegal. She secretly chatted up Mrs Warner to take her side… What chance did Jack have!
Result: The first of Olivia’s five Oscar nods. Joan was also nominated for Rebecca. The following year they were the first siblings up for same award – Best Actress. Olivia for Hold Back the Dawn, Joan for her second Hitchcock film, Suspicion – Joan won. Olivia, of course, then went one better and won twice for To Each His Own, 1946, and The Heiress, 1948.
Before Jack Warner gave in (resulting in a cash-plus-swop deal for James Stewart), Marsha Hunt was actually given the roe by Selznick…
“I read the book as everyone did – the idea of being a part of the film was almost beyond my wildest dreams” she told MovieMaker magazine’s Jeremy Kinser nine months months before 100th birthday on October 17, 2018. “I loved the role. I understood her and I think I would have been pretty good at it… I auditioned with Paulette Goddard. Then, of course, if I recall – and this was a while ago – I was told the role was mine. I called my mother… swore her to secrecy. Selznick told me not to announce it because he wanted to make an announcement in his own time…
“Warner Brothers had Olivia under contract, so Selznick couldn’t have her. Then, they made an exchange where Selznick could cast Olivia… and he must have simply forgotten that he committed the role to me! I never received any contact or apology. I think I went out of his mind once he got the actress he originally wanted. I saw him years later in Paris and we talked about it then, how the role of Melanie was mine and the only people who knew were him, me and my mother.
“I vowed to never have my heart broken again and I haven’t. When you are given the role of your dreams and sworn to secrecy… only to have your mother call you with the news in The Hollywood Reporter that Olivia is going to play your role. That wasthe day I grew up and understood show business.”
She did not, alas. understand all if it. (Who did understand McCarthyism?) Marsha made more than 50 movies. From 1950-1958, Then a paltry three in the next eight, and just about survived (better than most in her position) in TV, after being shamefully blacklisted due to membership of the Committee for the First Amendment. “I was punished by being denied work by the industry I went to defend!… Because I had espoused some liberal causes, that was enough to blacklist me. Liberals had to be Red. I don’t know if anyone believed I was a Communist. I certainly wasn’t the Communist type, whatever that might be.” She came back and retired at 90 after her 115th screen rôle, havingg survived (better than most in her terrible position) in TV. And telling all in Roger C. Memos’ excellent documentary, Marsha Hunt’s Sweet Adversity, 2014.
Mammy . Another Hattie – Hattie Noell – also tested, but “T’ain’t fittin’ – it just ain’t fittin’.” Also considered: Louise Beavers, Ruby Dandridge (Dorothy’s mother) and Etta McDaniel, older sister of Hattie McDaniel who famously remarked:
“I’d rather play a maid
than be one.”
Hattie Mac tested with Vivien Leigh, among others, and became the first black actor to be nominated for and to win an Oscar – one of the eight.
Belle Watling . In a surprising image-switch, silent ikon Lilian Gish asked to play the brothel madame. Selznick asked Warners for Ann Sheridan – and having already loaned De Havilland, Warners insisted on star billing for Sheridan. Nothing came of it. Considering Betty Compson and Marjorie Rambeau, the producer settled on Ona Munson as the “dyed-haired woman.”
Pittypat Hamilton . Melanie’s Aunt became Laura Hope Crews, after Selznick and Cukor dropped Billie Burke for a rare reason for Hollywood actresses. Too young!
Ellen O’Hara . Lilian Gish had been the first – very symbolic – choice for Scarlett’s mother – eventually played by Barbara O’Neil, who was just three years older than Vivien Leigh.
Carreen O’Hara . “A nothing part,” said MGM’s chief lion, LB Mayer dubbed as an excuse for not loaning anyone out to Selznick’s company, Judy Garland had Scarlett’s sister in the bag untilher Andy Hardy series co-star, Ann Rutherford, took it on when Judy was rather too busy with a little something called The Wizard of Oz.
Brent Tarleton . Victor Mature tested for Scarlett’s Beau later won by his Pasadena Playhouse pal George Reeves, the future Superman .
Jonas Wilkerson was inherited by Victor Jory following the death of Robert Gleckler during the first month of shooting.
Bonnie Blue Butler . “Daddy! Daddy, let me!” There has been many an imposter claiming to have played the doomed daughter of Rhett and Scartlet.
Selznick tried to make up for rejecting Joan Bennett as Scarlett by offering hewr daughter When he passed over Joan Bennett for Scarlett, DOS offered to cast her oldest daughter, Diana Markey, as Rhett and Scarlett’s daughter, Bonnie Blue. Bennett refused. And Selznick was lying, anyway. Diana was way too old at ten. . Bonnie Blue was a four-year-old.
But the one and only and true Bonnie was Cammie King. Eventually… First off, because she could ride so well – on her horse, Chiquita, at 1939 San Francisco World’s Fair – the role went to young Sugar Dawn. “I had been fitted for contact lens and had my hair dyed to fit the part,” she told Mike Fitzgerald. “I still have some 35mm color footage taken at the time, Then, a politician from the South came in, saying the picture would not be shown in the South unless his niece played the part. So I was out, but they wanted me to double for her in the riding scenes, but I refused!”
Cammie was, in fact, the god- and later step-daughter of the Technicolor Corporation founder Dr Herbert T Kalmus. Before Cammie, her sister Diane was booked (they both looked possible daughters of Gable and Leigh). However. Diane grew too tall; so did Cammie but following her four weeks and $250. She never believed the Diane story, positive it was her mother’s way of avoiding any sibling jealousy). Elizabeth Taylor, the newest beautiful Brit kid in town, was also seen for Bonnie (she would win National Velvet away from Sugar Dawn in 1943). Cammie was born Eleanore, just as Bonnie was really Eugenia Victoria, until Rhett admires her blue eyes and Olivia de Havilland’s Melanie says “as blue as the bonnie blue flag.”
The role was pivotal, as Bonnie’s tragic horse-fall death destroyed the Rhett-Scarlett couple. “I wasn’t able to play dead real good,” Cammie recalled. “My eyes were fluttering. I’m awfully glad, though, I played Bonnie. The role really didn’t change my life, but I don’t recall ever meeting people, either in business or socially, where it doesn’t come up. I was in GWTW and Bambi, 1941 [voicing the young doe, Faline). Imagine being in two classics and never doing another thing after that. I peaked at age five!”
And Millicent Miller claimed she had to beat off some
300 other hopefuls… to be Vivien Leigh’s stand-in!
That’s Millie hiding under the bridge, pulling a turnip from Tara’s fields, pulling the revolver to shoot a Union soldier, etc. She died aged 81 in 1990.
During the shooting, Gable and Fleming disliked Viv – and it would have been worse if they had discovered that George Cukor was secretly advising, coaching, indeed, “directing” her Scarlett! (And De Havilland’s Melanie).
Inevitably, the drained Selznick could never match his $4,085,790 masterpiece. – still the #1 film in box-office history in inflation-adjusted figures ( $1,329,453,600) , ahead of Star Wars, The Sound of Music, ET and The Ten Commandments. Continual re-issues of “that damned picture” – 1954’s had GWTW signifying: Greater With The Wide Screen – annoyed him. “When I die, the paper will read: Producer of Gone With The Wind died today.”
He was right.
The New York Times, June 23, 1966… DAVID O SELZNICK, 63, PRODUCER OF GONE WITH THE WIND DIES .