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“Technicolor (using a new process) has never been used with more effective restraint than in Gone With the Wind. Exquisite shot: Gerald O’Hara silhouetted beside Scarlett against the evening sky at Tara while he propounds to her the meaning of the one thing she has left when everything else is wrecked — the red earth of Tara.”

— Time, Dec. 25, 1939

Four days after the Atlanta premiere, Gone With the Wind opened in New York at the Astor (left) and Capitol theaters.

The crowd roared its approval when one of the opening frames announced “Margaret Mitchell’s Story of the Old South.” The mood was light as Scarlett O’Hara flirted and schemed her way through the opening scenes and met her match in the dashing Rhett Butler.

Audience members were not shy in expressing their Southern sympathies. At the Atlanta Bazaar, when Dr. Meade announced that Gen. Robert E. Lee had swept the Yankee army from Virginia, the cheers in the theater drowned out those onscreen. As the tide of war turned, quiet gasps and sobs could be heard as Scarlett searched for the doctor among the hundreds of wounded Confederate soldiers. In the second half, when the word “Sherman!” flashed on the screen, the audience hissed “like a pit of angered snakes,” a reporter noted, and when Scarlett shot the Yankee deserter at Tara, the cheers shook the roof.

An Atlanta crowd welcomed stars Evelyn Keyes (Suellen O’Hara) and Ona Munson (Belle Watling).

Tears flowed freely when Scarlett and Rhett’s beloved daughter was thrown from her pony and killed, and again when Melanie died. Finally, Rhett walked out the door with his declaration that he didn’t give a damn and Scarlett collapsed on the stairs, seemingly defeated. As she was roused by voices reminding her of Tara and the camera moved in on her tear-stained face, the music swelled to a crescendo. The audience rose to its feet with a thunderous ovation.

As he had hoped, Selznick conquered Atlanta. And Atlanta had out-Hollywooded the film capital itself when it came to throwing a premiere party. Now, it was on to New York, where the movie had a twin Broadway opening at the Astor and the Capitol theaters on Dec. 19, and then to Los Angeles, where it showed Dec. 28 at the Carthay Circle — just under the wire for qualifying for the 1939 Academy Awards. •

John Wiley, Jr., is author of Gone With the Wind: Atlanta’s Film, Atlanta’s Night.