2026 in-between times – part 6: Gone With the Wind Museum

Gone With the Wind first showed on TV in 1976; for me in the Midwest, it was a “picture” of life in Georgia during the 1860s-1870s from Margaret Mitchell’s point of view (more about her later). This museum’s first home was on the square in Marietta close to the rail lines we talked about in The Great Locomotive Chase story when we were in the Atlanta History Center. The museum doesn’t talk about the plot and subplots of the movie, rather it shows the time period that the movie covered, the costumes, and some of the actors we may not know much about.

characters

Typical of Hollywood movies, actors are usually not the same age as the characters they play; this was true of Gone With the Wind.

Gone with the Wind (1939) cast salaries reflected a rigid studio hierarchy. Most actors were from the United States but none from the South.

• Scarlett O’Hara was 16, turning 17, when the story started and was around the age of 27-28 during Reconstruction. Vivian Leigh was 25 when filming started.
  Vivien Leigh, despite her starring role, was paid roughly $25,000 to $30,000 for 125 days of work. She was born in India.
• Rhett Butler was in his late 20s when we first see him in the movie. Clark Gable was 30 when filming started.
  Clark Gable received around $120,000 ($4000 per week) for 71 days of work. He was born in Ohio.
• Ashley Wilkes was around 24 at the beginning of the movie. Leslie Howard, who played Ashley, was 46 when the movie started; he was the almost the same age as Thomas Mitchell (age 46-47) who played Gerald O’Hara (age 60), Scarlett’s father.
  Leslie Howard was paid $76,250 ($7500 per week) and was born in London.
  Thomas Mitchell was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey. His character was from Scotland, which was also the home of Margaret Mitchell’s father.
• Melanie Hamilton Wilkes was around 18 when we first see her in the movie; Olivia de Havilland was around 22-23 years old at the time.
  Olivia de Havilland was paid $20,000-$25,000. She was born in Tokyo to British parents.
• Ellen, Scarlett’s mother, was 32 at the beginning of the movie, only 3 years older than her on-screen daughter. Barbara O’Neil was 29 when we first saw her. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri.
• Mammy was around age 50 in the movie; Hattie McDaniel was actually 46.
  Her salary was $6459, and she was born in Wichita, Kansas
• Prissy was a young teenager in the movie; Thelma “Butterfly” McQueen was actually 26 during the filming. She was born in Tampa, Florida.

Margaret Mitchell based Tara on local Clayton County plantations (east of Atlanta), specifically Rural Home or the Fitzgerald House, the antebellum home of her grandmother.

The antebellum mansion that inspired the “Twelve Oaks” home in Gone with the Wind is still standing. Located in Covington, Georgia, (east of Atlanta) the 1836 mansion was renovated and operates as a luxury bed and breakfast called Twelve Oaks. Margaret Mitchell saw a photograph of this home in the Atlanta Journal and suggested it as the model for Ashley Wilkes’ home. The burning of Atlanta scene was filmed before the main actors were even cast.

A relative of Margaret Mitchell was hired to ensure that the South was truly depicted in the movie.

author – Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell grew up in the Flapper Years of the 1920s, but from what I’ve read she alienated many of her peers in Atlanta society. I read the following information of why this may have happened from a Wikipedia post.

In 1921 she performed in an Apache dance at a Atlanta debutante charity ball. The dance included a kiss with her male partner that shocked Atlanta’s high society and led to her being blacklisted from the Junior League. The Apache and the Tango were scandalous dances for their elements of eroticism.

What is this dance? Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:

“Apache (French), or La Danse Apache, Bowery Waltz, Apache Turn, Apache Dance and Tough Dance is a highly dramatic dance associated in popular culture with Parisian street culture at the beginning of the 20th century. The name of the dance is pronounced ah-PAHSH, not uh-PATCH-ee. In this dance, Paris young members of street gangs were labelled Apaches by the press because of the ferocity of their savagery towards one another, a name taken from the native North American indigenous people, the Apache.”

“The dance is sometimes said to reenact a violent “discussion” between a pimp and a prostitute. It includes mock slaps and punches, the man picking up and throwing the woman to the ground, or lifting and carrying her while she struggles or feigns unconsciousness. Thus, the dance shares many features with the theatrical discipline of stage combat. In some examples, the woman may fight back.”

Now we can understand why the Junior League wasn’t happy with her.

her careers

In 1922, she began her career as a newspaper reporter with the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine. Three years later she married the love of her life, John Marsh, her 2nd husband, who was a lawyer. Their small apartment, which is now the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum—and it is small—was named “The Dump,” and was a favorite gathering place for her literary friends. Margaret was a practical joker, a great storyteller, articulate, and very witty.

An accident to her foot caused an arthritic condition that made her abandon the reporter’s role in 1926. Her husband, tired of finding her new reading material, suggested that she write her own novel.

She researched everything the public library offered on the battle of Atlanta before beginning the novel. Then she started pouring out page upon page as Gone With the Wind became one of the most successful books of all time.

Wikipedia described how an image of “the South” was fixed in her imagination when at six years old (1906) her mother took her on a buggy tour through ruined plantations and “Sherman’s sentinels,” the brick and stone chimneys that remained after General Sherman’s “March and torch” through Georgia.

promotional products

Gone With the Wind was the first movie to ever have promotional products produced to sell to the general public. Such items authorized by Selznick International to promote the film were brightly colored rayon handkerchiefs and scarves showing characters from the film; “Scarlett Chocolates,” produced by Nunnally’s Candy Co.; a series of “Scarlett O’Hara” marble games from Marietta Games; paper dolls; coloring books; and reproductions of brooches worn in the film that sold for $.15 with wrappers or box tops from Lux soap

Ricarde of Hollywood made their jewelry pieces. He is known to have duplicated 5 different sets of jewelry from the film, which were worn by Scarlett, Belle, and Mammy.

clothing from the movie

It is one of the most familiar costumes in the film world, and one of the most photographed dresses in Scarlett’s wardrobe. It required 45 yards of fabric and 160 hours of labor to make. The skirt is in 3 layers, and the ruffle has over 1400 buttonholes.

The next picture is of some of the hats Scarlett wore during the movie.

Initially her sister Suellen’s suitor, Frank Kennedy, is a shy, older store owner. Desperate for money to pay taxes on her home, Tara, during the Civil War, Scarlett lies and tricks him into marrying her, taking him away from her sister. Frank runs a lumber business and is killed in a raid involving the Union army.

The next picture is the original of Bonnie Blue‘s costume in the famous Gone With the Wind scene in which she fell from her pony.

Tara and other characters

In July 1936, producer David O. Selznick secured the screen rights to the Pulitzer Price-winning novel, Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. He then began the process of bringing her work to the silver screen.

While Tara was an important as any character in the story, in typical Hollywood fashion, Tara that we saw had no rooms inside; it was only a facade. Only part of the interior entrance hall was created behind the facade.

The Tara facade was constructed of wood framework and covered with a plaster faux brick material. When the movie filming was completed, the set remained standing for 20 years until Desilu Productions, the then owners of the lot, had it dismantled in the spring of 1959.

The most durable portions of the facade were salvaged, including windows, shutters, doors, railings, and other elements. The facade was then moved by an organization that had a vision to reconstruct the set on 300 acres of land in Northern Georgia to recreate the Tara plantation in his entirety, but this vision never came to light.

The Tara facade remained in storage until 1979 when the late Mrs. Betty Talmadge, wife of US Senator and Georgia Governor, Herman Talmadge, rescued it with the intention of restoring it. Eventually today’s museum acquired some of the pieces on display in an auction in June of 2019.

The role of Prissy was Thelma McQueen’s breakthrough movie performance in Hollywood.

Later she was a featured player on the TV show BEULAH, which reunited her with Hattie McDaniel.

Thelma died in 1995 at age 84 from critical burns. In her obituary, she said, “I didn’t mind playing a maid the first time, because I thought that was how you got into the business. But after I did the same thing over and over, I resented it. I didn’t mind being funny, but I didn’t like being stupid.” I think that’s a good way to remember her, especially since she earned a bachelor’s degree at age 64 from the City College of New York.

From a young age, Hattie McDaniel loved performing. She toured primarily with her father and brothers and their minstrel group when she was young and helped to write programs that the group performed.

In 1939, she was cast for her memorable part in Gone With the Wind. The competition for this part was fierce; even First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt asked the film’s producer to hire her own maid, but luckily Hattie was selected for the role.

Hattie was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1939. She was the first Black actor to have been nominated and win an Oscar, but the site of the Oscar’s ceremony had a whites-only policy.

She continued to work in Hollywood, but by 1952 she was battling breast cancer and died in October of that year.

famous scenes

• 1. “Tighter, mammy! Mr. Butler will be at the ball. I must be beautiful.”
• 2. Her widow’s weeds are no barrier to a flirtation with Rhett!
• 3. A trapped Scarlett resists the advances of the brutal, marauding Union soldier!
• 4. Rhett turns to Belle Watling for understanding and consolation!
• 5. The charity ball with the flower and chivalry of the Old South!
• 6. Though Ashley loves another, he too becomes an easy victim of Scarlett’s charms!

• 7. A clash of wills! Proud, dashing Rhett! Tempestuous, wilful Scarlett!
• 8. Flight from doomed Atlanta! A once-proud city is now consumed by flames!
• 9. Honeymoon in New Orleans! Rhett and Scarlett find moments of happiness together!
• 10. Barred from Scarlett’s room, Rhett savagely attempts to kick his way in!
• 11. Scarlett pursues Rhett after a stormy scene and she falls down stairs!
• 12. The beleaguered city where an army waits for the final blow—surrender!

Such an amazing movie and cast. I’m so glad to share this information with you.