December 15, 1939: Gone With the Wind Premieres

December 15, 1939, 80 years ago: The film Gone With the Wind premieres at the Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta, the city where most of the film's action takes place.

Until July 1940, the film played only advance-ticket engagements at a limited number of theaters, with a ticket price of $1.00, more than twice the price of regular features in those days -- $18.62 in today's money, so a bit more than most movie prices now.

Counting promotion costs, it took $7 million to make the movie -- about $130 million today. It has made over $390 million. It would remain the highest-grossing movie of all time until 1975, surpassed by Jaws. But, with inflation factored in, it's still the highest-grossing movie ever, at $7.2 billion. In comparison, Avengers: Endgame has generated $2.8 billion; Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope) has made $776 million, so with inflation from 1977, that's $3.3 billion, still not half as much as Gone With the Wind.

It was the most popular movie of its era because the novel on which it was based, published by Margaret Mitchell in 1936, was the most popular book of the era. It was a story of the Southern aristocracy before, during, and after the American Civil War, and it totally idealizes that culture. It indulges in the stereotypes of Southern black people of the era, and does nothing to suggest that slavery was bad. It was. And it does nothing to suggest that the South deserved to lose the war. It did.

And let's say it: There is no hero in this movie: Scarlett O'Hara is a spoiled bitch, and Rhett Butler is an asshole -- who ultimately decides that even she is too much for him.

The screenwriter, Sidney Howard, died before the premiere. On August 23, 1939, he was working on his farm in Tyringham, Massachusetts. He had turned his tractor on in his garage, but had neglected to put the brake on, and after he got out, it lurched back, and pinned him against the wall. He was only 48 years old. Having already received a Pulitzer Prize for his 1924 play They Knew What They Wanted, he received a posthumous Oscar.

Leslie Howard (no relation to Sidney), who played Ashley Wilkes -- both "Leslie" and "Ashley" were considered masculine names in 1860s America, when and where the story was set, and 1890s Britain, when and where he was born -- was killed in action in World War II, when his plane was shot down.

Mitchell was killed in 1949, hit by a car in Atlanta. Director Victor Fleming died the same year. Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy, died in 1952. George Reeves, who played Stuart Tarleton, and would go on to play Superman on television, died of a gunshot wound in 1959, officially a suicide, but this is widely doubted. Clark Gable, who played Butler, died in 1960. Producer David O. Selznick died in 1965. Vivien Leigh, who played Scarlett, battled mental illness and alcoholism, and died in 1967. Thelma "Butterfly" McQueen, who played Prissy, lived until 1995. Cammie King, who played Scarlett and Rhett's daughter, Bonnie Butler, lived until 2010.

The last surviving castmembers, 80 years later? Olivia de Havilland, who played Melanie Wilkes, is 103. Mickey Kuhn, 88, is the other remaining credited one. He played Beau Wilkes, son of Melanie and Ashley. 

Patrick Curtis, 83, played Beau Wilkes as a baby, but was not credited. He went on to become a film producer, and was, for 5 years, the 2nd of the 4 husbands of actress Raquel Welch. Caren Marsh Doll, 102, was an uncredited extra. Earlier in the year, she was Judy Garland's dance stand-in for The Wizard of Oz, making her the last surviving castmember of that film.

(UPDATE: de Havilland died on July 26, 2020, at 104. Not of COVID. Kuhn died on November 20, 2022. Curtis died 4 days later. This left Doll as the last survivor.)