Cinema 1939: Stars Attend GONE WITH THE WIND Premier in Atlanta

G With the W

Last week the cinema event for which the U.S. has palpitated for three years took place in Atlanta, Ga.—the premiere of Gone With the Wind.

Atlanta's Mayor William B. Hartsfield proclaimed, a three-day festival. Hartsfield urged every Atlanta woman to put on hoop skirts and pantalets, appealed to every male to don tight trousers and a beaver, sprout a goatee, sideburns and Kentucky colonel whiskers.

While the Stars and Bars flapped from every building, some 300,000 Atlantans and visitors lined up for seven miles to watch the procession of limousines bring British Vivien Leigh (in tears as thousands welcomed her "back home"), Clark Gable, his wife Carole Lombard, Producer David O. Selznick, Laurence Olivier and others from the airport. Crowds larger than the combined armies that fought at Atlanta in July 1864 waved Confederate flags, tossed confetti till it seemed to be snowing, gave three different versions of the Rebel yell, whistled, cheered, goggled. Highest point in the high jinks was a Gone With the Wind costume ball night before the premiere, attended by 6,000 celebrants, movie stars and executives galore. One girl looked at Gable a little too long, gasped: "Lord, I can't stand this any longer," fainted.

The film has almost everything the book has in the way of spectacle, drama, practically endless story and the means to make them bigger and better. The burning of Atlanta, the great "boom" shots of the Confederate wounded lying in the streets and the hospital after the Battle of Atlanta are spectacle enough for any picture, and unequaled.

After the Hollywood press preview, Producer Selznick stood in the lobby, scanning the faces of the "toughest audience in the world" with as much eagerness as any tyro at his own first play. Most of them were dabbing their eyes, and for those who were not the impact of the picture was too powerful to talk about. Said Selznick of Gone With the Wind: "At noon I think it's divine, at midnight I think it's lousy. Sometimes I think it's the greatest picture ever made. But if it's only a great picture, I'll still be satisfied."