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By Elizabeth McLeod
There are films, there are movies—and there are Motion Picture Events.
Our feature today was definitely a Motion Picture Event—without doubt the biggest motion picture event of its day. From the moment it was announced that Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel was to be filmed, throughout the production process, to the very moment of its premiere, Gone With The Wind captured the interest and imagination of the moviegoing public like no other film of the 1930s. Who would play Scarlett? Who would play Rhett? How could they ever hope to capture the sweep and the scope of the novel and bring it to the screen? How could the burning of Atlanta ever possibly fit into your local neighborhood theater?
Well, it could, and it did—and through the winter of 1939-1940, Gone With The Wind was the blockbuster success of the season. The film had its world premiere in Atlanta in December of 1939—an event so huge it had to be spread out over three days to accommodate all the festivities planned, including parades, testimonial speeches, and even a group of Civil War veterans were on hand to walk the red carpet for the premiere.
Most of the cast was on hand as well—but two performers were conspicuously absent. Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen were told that, because of Georgia state law, they could attend only if they agreed to sit in the segregated balcony section. They refused to do so—and rather than subject themselves to that humiliation, they chose not to attend the premiere. When Clark Gable heard of this, he was outraged—and told Selznick that, in solidarity, he would also refuse to attend the Atlanda premiere. But McDaniel urged him to go, for the sake of the picture—and, reluctantly, he agreed.
McDaniel and McQueen did participate in the second huge premiere, held the following week in New York, and then again in Hollywood—and then, finally Gone With The Wind went into national release.
Wherever it went over the course of that winter, Gone With The Wind played as a reserved-seat attraction, with some cities seeing ticket prices as high as two dollars—at a time when the standard ticket price for a major first run theatre was rarely more than fifty cents. The film didn't make its way to Rockland until March of 1940—and it didn't appear here at the Strand. Instead, the film was booked into the nearby Park Theatre, which went all out with promoting the event. This wasn't a competitive coup, however: the Strand and the Park were under the same management in those days, so it was all in the family.
At that time, both the Park and the Strand operated on a policy of three features a week—usually booking lower-budget B pictures on weekdays and prestige A pictures over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. But the Park booked Gone With The Wind for a full week's run—something rarely attempted in that era—and began advertising its arrival in the pages of The Courier-Gazette nearly a month before it was scheduled to premiere. Advance tickets went on sale in early March, with all seats reserved for nighttime performances and Sunday matinees at a flat price of $1 plus tax. But to ensure that everyone who wanted to see the show had a chance to get a seat, the Park offered weekday matinees on a continuous-performance basis, from 9 am to 6 pm, with all seats first come first served, at 75 cents. That was still a steep price, but the prestige of the film and the enthusiasm of the audience made it a worthwhile expense.
Local businesses jumped on the bandwagon for the film as the opening approached. In its issue of March 21st 1940, The Courier-Gazette featured a full-page spread of tie-in ads, many of which tried to find a connection between their products and the film. A men's clothing store insisted that if Rhett Butler were alive today, he would be wearing a Van Heusen shirt. A radio dealer suggested that if Rhett owned a radio, he'd choose a Delco. A beauty parlor urged Rockland's ladies to come in and get their hair styled just like Melanie. And a draper's shop claimed, rather desperately, that it carried the very same brand of curtain rods used at Tara.
(Let it never be said that product placement is a modern invention.)
Finally, the film opened in Rockland to a sold-out house on March 24th 1940—fittingly, a windy, stormy Sunday night. The 1939 Academy Awards had been presented less than a month before, with Vivien Leigh, Hattie McDaniel, and director Victor Fleming among those carrying away honors, giving the picture a fresh burst of publicity. There are no surviving photographs of how the Park was dressed up for the occasion, but we can safely assume it was a festive evening all around, complete with banners and bunting and other appropriate decor. Maybe they even had their own Rhett and Scarlett for the evening—if not, well, they should have.
After that week's run, Gone With The Wind moved on, continuing to show at advanced prices all over the US until well into 1941. The film wouldn't return to Rockland until 1947, when it appeared right here at the Strand as part of a nationwide re-release. It would return again in 1954—and again in 1967 and 1976, each time drawing healthy crowds. And also in 1976, when the film made its first appearance on television, it prompted a rush on an expensive new gadget called a video cassette recorder—even though such devices sold for nearly a thousand dollars.
The print we're about to see is fully restored—and if we're not the first theatre to show it, we're one of the first. The print was made in the original Technicolor process—from three separate black and white negatives shot through colored filters, which are synched up to create the final print. The result is an image that's as close to the original 1939 presentation as you'll ever see. The print also includes the original entrance, exit, and intermission music—which will ease the viewer into the film and allow time for everyone to settle in for the experience.
Today, although much of its content has become dated by the passing of time and the evolution of our own understanding of the Civil War era, the film itself has lost none of its mystique. Books have been written about it, academics have picked at its racial and sexual politics, sequels have been made—but the original remains, nearly seven decades after it was made, the greatest epic of Hollywood's golden age. And in honor of the First Anniversary of the Newly Restored Strand Theatre, the Saltwater Film Society is proud to present a Major Motion Picture Event—Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh—in Gone With The Wind.
A longtime Rockland resident, Elizabeth McLeod is a nationally-known historian of American popular culture. She is the author of The Original Amos 'n' Andy, an award-winning biography of the first major stars of American radio, and has published numerous articles on the history of broadcasting in the United States. She's also an avid movie enthusiast, and is proud to be a member of the projection staff at the Strand, as well as a member of the Programming Committee of the Saltwater Film Society.
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