'Gone with the Wind' turns 75: Tomorrow is still another day

“Tomorrow is another day,” Scarlett O’Hara says at the very end of Gone with the Wind. We are still always looking towards tomorrow in this country, but today, it is important to confront the past. Seventy-five years ago today, MGM and David O. Selznick hosted the Atlanta premiere of the movie, based on Margaret Mitchell’s beloved novel.

In the three quarters of a century after that, the film has eclipsed the status of “just a film.” Gone with the Wind has become a cultural icon, even with its lead stars long dead. “The stars are ageless, aren’t they?” Norma Desmond asks in Sunset Boulevard and the fact that Clark Gable will always be 38 and Vivien Leigh will always be 26 to generations of Americans who may only know them through GWTW proves that.

Of course, both of them made countless other great movies, but GWTW is the one that cemented their statuses. Gable may have already been the King by 1939, but Leigh was barely known at all in the U.S. It was a gamble for Selznick to pick the British actress to play Scarlett, but now we can’t see anyone else in that part. It’s like Mitchell created the character with her in mind, just like she had Gable in mind while creating Rhett Butler.

GWTW lasts 233 minutes, over 10 minutes longer than another cinematic behemoth, Lawrence of Arabia. While they have little in common, they have one major element that is missing from today’s epics: humanity. Sure, they both have their action sequences, but there’s no gimmick. Each paint a fully-formed portrait of a person and every single frame goes towards building that.

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Has there ever been a more fully defined screen character than Scarlett O’Hara? We experience her ups and downs, her romances and her tragedies. We go from the best days at Tara to the worst. Leigh runs through just about every conceivable emotion in the film and that, again, is one reason why it stands up today. Both she and Gable give powerful, modern performances. Long gone is the stagey acting of the early talkies by 1939.

It would be impossible to not talk about the film’s problems with race. African-Americans in the film are portrayed as happy to serve their masters. Mammy, played by Hattie McDaniel, sticks to Scarlett like glue and the other characters are often used for comic purposes. The issue of slavery isn’t really taken up in the film as a reason for the Civil War.

But the film still endures, like Scarlett herself. Perhaps its long life can be attributed to the fact that “they just don’t make ‘em like they used to.” And it’s true. Films today are not usually the brainchild of a producer, but GWTW was Selznick’s baby. Director Victor Fleming was hired because Gable didn’t want to work with George Cukor. The film would have turned out very differently had Cukor helmed it, but Fleming was the right choice. If you’ve seen his films other than The Wizard of Oz (yes, he directed that too), his strengths suited GWTW. He knew how to put action in an emotional story without burying romance.

GWTW won eight Oscars, plus two others for special technical achievements. It was first color film to win Best Picture and beat an astonishing line-up of films. Sadly, Gable didn’t win Best Actor, but he already got it for It Happened One Night.

Every time I visit GWTW, it’s an event, even at home. It’s rare that you can find a four-hour block when you aren’t busy and when you can, seeing GWTW is like visiting old friends. The moment Max Steiner’s sweeping overture begins, you get lost in the Georgia of days long gone.