Читать книгу Gone With The Wind - Группа авторов - Страница 12

In early December 1939, David O. Selznick wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt and invited him to attend one of the upcoming premiere screenings of Gone With the Wind. While the president’s secretary declined on his behalf, the producer’s offer to arrange a special showing at the White House was accepted. On the day after Christmas, about 30 people gathered at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., including the president, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, several of the Roosevelt children, the president’s mother and other guests. At the beginning of the fourth reel, just as Sherman began lobbing shells into Atlanta, President Roosevelt was called away by the secretary of state, according to a Loew’s projectionist sent to Washington for the occasion. The president did not return, but the others enjoyed the film “tremendously” and gave it “a really terrific and enthusiastic reception,” the projectionist reported.

A decade later, Eleanor Roosevelt, in an interview with the Associated Press, remembered a showing of Gone With the Wind — she did not say when — quite differently. As she recalled, the president fell asleep in the middle of the film. When he awoke and found the picture still running, he declared, “No movie has a right to be that long.”

Later that afternoon, at a private cocktail party at the exclusive Piedmont Driving Club, Mitchell finally met Rhett Butler.

Premiere day, Dec. 15, was cold. The city’s newspapers devoted their front pages to the events of the day before: “Rhett Butler at Five Points” and “300,000 Screaming Fans Acclaim Gable in Wildest Welcome in City’s History” were two of the headlines. Some of the actors visited the Cyclorama, the city’s famed circular painting of the Battle of Atlanta. After the Cyclorama tour, Selznick and Gable stopped by the governor’s mansion, where both men were named honorary Georgia colonels. Others attended a “Christmas at Tara” luncheon hosted by the Atlanta Better Films Committee. At the same time, Mitchell, who had kept a low profile, was honored along with other Southern writers at a lunch at Rich’s department store.

The day before the movie premiere, Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable and Olivia de Havilland visited the Cyclorama in Atlanta with George Simons, the city’s parks manager.

Later that afternoon, at a private cocktail party at the exclusive Piedmont Driving Club, Mitchell finally met Rhett Butler. The author and Clark Gable stepped into a private dining room and chatted briefly; Gable later told reporters that she was “the most fascinating woman I’ve ever met.” By 6:00 p.m., the guests began returning to their homes or their hotel rooms to prepare for the moment they had all been waiting for. Atlantans, after three and a half years, finally would see what Hollywood had done with their story.