85 Years Ago In Atlanta…

Today marks the 85th anniversary of the Atlanta premiere of “Gone with the Wind,” produced by David O. Selznick. Starring Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara and Clark Gable as Rhett Butler, it is a tale of survival, growth, and loss, filmed in glorious Technicolor. The art shown above and below are by Wilbur Kurtz and were used in the trailer for the film.



Below is a 1939 storyboard of Tara, Scarlett O’Hara’s home, by Dorothea Holt & Mac Johnson which I was able to see at the Margaret Mitchell Museum in Atlanta:



The production team faithfully recreated the art for the movie, as seen by these shots from the opening scenes of the film:



Leigh with Thomas Mitchell, who played her blustering land-loving father, Gerald O’Hara:



Storyboard art for the Atlanta Bazaar sequence, where Scarlett scandalously broke with the conventions of widowhood by dancing with Rhett Butler.



When Scarlett flirts with Rhett saying that she is dancing her reputation away, he replies: “With enough courage, you can do without a reputation.”



At the Atlanta History Center, a photo of the premiere accompanies a first edition of the book, with dust jacket cover art by George Carlson. Author Margaret Mitchell felt that the cover should convey a “Southern sensibility”; Carlson was from New England his mother had once served as a housekeeper for northern Civil War General Ulysses S. Grant. Oops.



In the film’s dramatic final shot, we see Scarlett silhouetted against a burning sunset sky:



Here’s what her costume looked like:



See more “Gone with the Wind” photos at my main website.

Windy Wednesday: Scarlett Makes Her Entrance!

Audiences waited three years to see the Margaret Mitchell novel, Gone with the Wind, hit the big screen. A dramatic opening tracking shot increased the anticipation by initially hiding the book’s main character, Scarlett O’Hara, from view. As Brent Tarleton, Fred Crane blocked Vivien until he stepped aside revealing the youthful face of the girl who had “the smallest waist in three counties.”



Producer David O’Selznick labored over the opening scene. In order to give audiences just the right touch, the scene was filmed five times. The first was tackled on January 26, 1939. According to the book Scarlett Fever by William Pratt, the first day of filming (under the guidance of director George Cukor) did not yield anything that was usable.

The curly hairdos of the Tarletons photographed bright orange. Four days later the scenes were repeated, with the actors’ hair styles modified to eliminate their curls and heavily darkened as well (photo below).

In the book, the Tarleton brothers (Brent & Stuart) were twins. Fred Crane and George Reeves were obviously not lookalikes. For the film adaptation, the “twins” were simply referred to as The Tarletons. You’ll also note that Miss Leigh was wearing an entirely different outfit than what is seen in the finished film. In the book, Scarlett wears this green sprig muslin dress and does so again the next day at the Wilkes’ barbecue because she knows that the Tarletons are fond of it.



On March 1, under Victor Fleming’s direction (Cukor had been let go from the film), a third attempt at the opening scene was shot. According to Pratt:

The two young actors were quite inexperienced and one things was soon evident: it wouldn’t be the last time this unlucky first scene was to be attempted.



For the next scene where Scarlett greets her father, played by Thomas Mitchell, Leigh was still wearing the green muslin dress.



However, by June 14th, Selznick had decided that Scarlett should be wearing this white frilly concoction seen below instead, thus making all of the footage shot beforehand worthless.



In the film, Leigh utters the line “I wore this old dress just because I thought you liked it” at the Wilkes’ barbecue to the Tarletons, which is a reference to the fact that that she had originally worn it in the opening scene. Oops.



On Monday, June 26, 1939 and the following day, Leigh, Crane, and Reeves tried the opening scene a fourth time. Tired from the previous months of around-the-clock shooting, Leigh did not look anything like a vivacious sixteen year old. Even the dimwitted Tarleton brothers weren’t fooled!



Finally, on October 12th, Selznick was happy with the fifth and final attempt at this scene and that’s the one we see today. While you might think it ridiculous that it took five separate times to get one sequence just right, it was Selznick’s attention to detail that made “Gone with the Wind” such a blockbuster hit.



See more “Gone with the Wind” photos at my main website.

Cyclorama: The Battle of Atlanta

It was quite by accident that I stumbled upon the Civil War Cyclorama exhibit during my 2007 visit to Atlanta (photo above of the original Grant Park location). I had very little time before I had to catch my plane, so my tour of the museum was extremely rushed. Always so much to do with so little time! If you’re not familiar with the Cyclorama, here’s the description from a 1937 brochure:

The painting, measuring fifty feet in height, four hundred feet in circumference and weighing eighteen thousand pounds, was painted in 1885 and 1886 in Milwaukee by three German artists, Lohr, Lorenze and Heine. Eight thousand pounds of paint was used in the production of this painting whose landscape, looking in any direction from the reviewers’ platform, covers a radius of twenty-five or thirty miles. So realistic and so unmistakably true is this landscape that one familiar with Atlanta may point out many individual places. Thousands of blasted tree stumps, bushes and shrubbery, shell-torn in effect; hundreds of life-like plastic figures of Confederate and Federal soldiers; torn rails and cross-ties; shells, cannons and other familiar fragments of war have been placed so effectively in the circular area forming the battlefield surrounding the painting that it is difficult in viewing it to determine the ending of the real and the beginning of the illusion.

I remembered reading that during the premiere of “Gone with the Wind” in 1939, the stars were allowed to walk through the Cyclorama.





Clark Gable (who played Rhett Butler in the film) was accompanied by Margaret Palmer, a local Atlanta Junior League girl who just happened to fit into Vivien Leigh’s Scarlett O’Hara BBQ costume and was allowed to wear it during the tour. She even made it into LIFE magazine as a result!



The section of the Cyclorama where Gable posed with Palmer:



Gable commented that the only thing wrong with the exhibit was that he wasn’t in it. As a result, he was later added in as a dead northern soldier. What would Rhett have thought about that?



Dead Mr. Gable, I am writing this to you…





By 1983, the brochure text for the Cyclorama had been changed a bit:

…it was painted in 1885-6 by a group of German and Polish artists brought to America for this purpose by Mr. William Wehner, owner of the Milwaukee studio where it was set up and completed. First exhibited in Detroit in 1887, the painting traveled all over the United States before coming to its final resting place in the City whose destruction it commemorates.…In 1921 the painting was transferred from an old, wooden structure at a location in Grant Park to its present location in the imposing marble building on a hillside in the central part of the park. In 1936, by means of a WPA grant, the painting was made three-dimensional by the addition of blasted tree stumps, bushes and shrubbery that are shell-torn in effect, broken rails and cross-ties, life-like plaster figures of Confederate and Federal soldiers, and other fragments of war which form the battlefield surrounding the canvas.…The facility was re-opened in 1982 after 2 years of extensive conservation of the painting/diorama and renovation of the building, which now includes a revolving seating platform.

From 2015-2019, the painting was relocated and restored (again) to its present location at the Atlanta History Center in Buckhead where I was able to see it. Sections of the painting that had been chopped out in 1921 were put back in and the panoramic piece of art is now much closer to its original 1886 incarnation. Edited from the current Atlanta History Museum placard:

This painting tells us about a battle in the American Civil War. It also tells us about how people have thought about that war for more than 150 years. German artists painted the panorama 22 years after the battle. it was intended for Northern audiences interested in the U.S. Army victory at the Battle of Atlanta, July 22, 1864. Its creators made it for people who could and would pay to see it. The painting depicts a Union victory with Union heroes. It tells may stories. It does not tell others. Over more than a century, The Battle of Atlanta has been retouched, rebranded, and reinterpreted. People have seen in it stories of the victory of good over evil, a tribute to a reunited nation, and symbol of a mythical “Old South.” For a time, people saw in it the story of a Confederate battlefield victory. That is the opposite of what it was originally meant to be - and is.

Photos were not allowed in 2007; always the rebel, I managed to capture this one:



Sixteen years later, the policy was changed. This is approximately the same portion of the Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama painting that I shot before. MUCH better!



When I first saw this incredibly large “painting in the round,” I didn’t pay too much attention to what was depicted in the background painting or the figures/set pieces in the foreground. Being able to read the information in the outer foyer was extremely interesting and speaks volumes to how over the years  “history” can become cloudy, reinterpreted, and used to further personal agendas, rather than be an accurate depiction of what truly happened.



Accurate or not, the Cyclorama is an impressive piece of art that attempts to tell a story.





While some of the scenes depicted may seem disturbing, they are surely no match to the reality of that battle.



Here is Robert Schade’s oil on canvas figure study for the Cyclorama, painted prior to work beginning on the actual piece. It was painted on the same canvas as the larger painting, and probably was one of several such studies used to position groupings on the Cyclorama. It is the only known surviving study.



A few shots of the artisans behind the Cyclorama:





Want to see the backside of the Cyclorama?



The one area for improvement for the Cyclorama would be the lighting. The painting is brightly lit, yet the figures in the foreground are extremely dark. Whether this was an intentional decision to throw focus on the painting instead of the plaster figures that were added years later is unknown. Regardless, it detracts from the ability to fully immerse the guest into the illusion of this faux reality.
 
See more Cyclorama/Atlanta History photos at my main website.

Margaret Mitchell on Monday, Pt. 2

During my 2007 trip to Atlanta, I was bowled over to see this inside the Margaret Mitchell Museum. The front door to Tara from “Gone with the Wind” (1939) AND the original painting that Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) threw a drink at! From the museum descriptive placard which prevented me from getting “up close and personal” with the painting:

Scarlett in the blue dress, by Helen Carlton, oil on canvas, 1939. This portrait of Scarlett after the war hung on the wall in Rhett’s bedroom in their Atlanta mansion. Joseph B. Platt, head of the large New York decorating firm, coordinated the set interiors for Selznick’s art department, including the selection of appropriate furniture, wallpapers, carpets, and accessories for “Gone with the Wind.” In 1939, the portrait traveled from California to the movie’s premiere in Atlanta, where it hung in the windows of downtown Davison-Paxon Department Store. More recently the painting hung in the cafeteria of the Margaret Mitchell Elementary School in northwest Atlanta. Loaned by the Atlanta Board of Education.

Here’s a shot of the aforementioned department store:



The downtown Atlanta Davison’s store was located on Peachtree Street. A vintage postcard:



The store was owned by the Macy’s chain for sixty years. Over time, the Davison-Paxon Company name was shortened to Davison’s. By early 1986, all Davison’s stores were renamed Macy’s. In 2003, the Atlanta store was also closed, but the building still remains.



Yes, I will be checking it out this fall. As for the Margaret Mitchell Elementary, it opened in 1954. According to the Margaret Mitchell Civic Association website:

The Margaret Mitchell neighborhood was originally developed during the 1950's as Cherokee Forest. The neighborhood included the Margaret Mitchell Elementary School located on Margaret Mitchell Drive and thus evolved into the the Margaret Mitchell neighborhood (Peggy Mitchell never lived this "far out"). Morris Brandon Primary School (k-2) now operates at the previous site of the Margaret Mitchell Elementary School. Our neighborhood includes old and new homes and streets which are located on the west side of I-75 along West Wesley Road, from Moore's Mill Road to Nancy Creek.

Based on a November 2018 online article by Darla McCammon from the Ink Free News, it sounds like the Carlton painting was still in the hands of the Mitchell home museum:

Today we are very fortunate because you can visit Margaret Mitchell’s home and tour it in Atlanta. Featured prominently among the many artifacts and information you will see on the tour is the original portrait of Scarlett in that daring blue dress that hung in Rhett Butler’s bedroom in the mansion he built after the war. Not much information exists about Helen Carlton, who did the painting of actress Vivien Leigh in 1938, but her other work included her daughter’s portrait, likenesses of Einstein, Marilyn Monroe and Bing Crosby.



Carlton was a multi-talented actress, artist, and singer. As you can see from the photo of her painting, she was also a master at all of it. As with many creative types, talent seems to flow out of their pores in many directions. Oddly in my research I noticed a remarkable resemblance between Vivien Leigh, Margaret Mitchell, and Helen Carlton. Not only were all three remarkably talented, but they could almost have been triplets.

Let’s take a closer look at the painting itself:



Even closer:



Yes, she nailed it. An incredible likeness of Vivien Leigh. Note the wedding band on her finger, courtesy of Rhett Butler.

I continued down the internet rabbit hole and hit pay dirt, stumbling upon a November 23, 2010 article from which the 2018 one most likely gleaned its info. Written by Carlton’s granddaughter, it allowed me to see what the artist looked like:

My Grandma Carlton passed away when I was just 8 years old, and I feel like I'm just now getting to know her. All I remember from my childhood is going to visit her in the nursing home where she would give us hand-drawn birthday cards and Big League Chew.



I've always known that she was a talented woman, but the more I learn about her, the more in awe I am of what she accomplished in her life, especially as a woman in the early 1900s. She was a successful actress, singer, and artist.Helen painted this portrait of Vivien Leigh/Scarlett O'Hara for Gone with the Wind. She's pictured here in front of the portrait for Redbook Magazine as she was nominated as Mother of the Year (at the time, she was very pregnant with her only child - my mom). She actually didn't like this painting very well.



What?!? Didn’t like her painting? How can that be. While I was writing this post, I recalled the other time that I saw a piece of Tara. In 1984, I was visiting my best friend at his school, Washington and Jefferson College. Yes, that’s me in the Members Only jacket. No, I didn’t borrow it from Rosario. I proudly wore my own, along with my perfectly styled coif courtesy of yellow Conair hair dryer. No wonder my scalp is still so dry.



This building is Lazear Chemistry Hall. When my friend Kevin gave me a tour of the campus, he was sure to take me inside to show me a piece of Tara. I thought he was full of crap.



Turns out he wasn’t. Inside this building on the door to the Troutman Library on the first floor of Lazear is the original doorknob from the movie version of Tara. I could not find the photo that I shot of it, but online I was able to learn that it was donated to the college in May 1940 by the film’s producer and Pittsburgh native David O. Selznick, who had family in the Washington area. I couldn’t find any photos online, either, and have no idea if it’s still there or not. Readers?

See more Margaret Mitchell Museum photos at my main website.

Temple Tuesday: Shirley’s Peers

Shirley Temple’s films often featured other child hopefuls of the day, including the Kibrick brothers. Sidney Henry Kibrick (born July 2, 1928) made his first film appearance with Shirley in the feature “Out All Night” (1933), followed by “Kid’s Last Fight” (1933), part of the Baby Burlesk series. The freckled young boy can be seen above center, just before he and his cohort attempt to kidnap Shirley so that her boyfriend will lose the big fight. Film producer Hal Roach saw Kibrick performing with Shirley and cast him as one of the kids in the “Our Gang” series (also known as “The Little Rascals” for TV syndication). Kibrick is one of the last surviving members of the classic comedies. He performed in them from 1933 to 1943. He played a thug again (uncredited) in Shirley’s 1938 film, “Just Around the Corner.” In the photo below, he stands with his arms outstretched, fourth from the right. This was a deleted musical number from the end of the film. Kibrick remembered this about working with Shirley: “She tried her best to teach me how to dance, but I couldn’t do it!”



In an interview last summer, Kibrick shared his memories of working on the “Our Gang” comedies:

Myself and Butch [Tommy Bond] were the two tough kids who picked on Alfalfa [Carl Switzer] and Darla [Darla Hood]. My character’s name was Woim or “The Woim.” That was pretty much the basis of the show.…[Alfalfa] was a difficult kid. I didn’t bond with him. I don’t think a lot of the kids did. He created problems for everybody on set. He often wouldn’t do the job the way he was supposed to. It got to a point where he only wanted to do things the way he wanted to do them. He wouldn’t listen to the director Gordon Douglas all that much. Nobody really got along with him. Spanky was very popular with the kids. He was really friendly. And Darla was a gem. She was terrific. But Alfalfa really had a chip on his shoulder. He created problems for the rest of the kids. He treated me the same way he treated a lot of the other kids. He tried not to get along and ignored me. He picked on me. Now, I’m talking about him as a kid, you know?

Leonard Kibrick (photo above, center, wearing a hat) was four years older than his brother Sidney, and was in three Shirley Temple movies: “Poor Little Rich Girl” (1936, as Freckles, uncredited, in a deleted scene shot in Pasadena for the opening sequence of the film), “Dimples” (1936, children’s band member #1, seen below, on Shirley’s right):



…and “Just Around the Corner” (1938, gang member, uncredited, seen below, putting the coin in Shirley’s collection box for the Benefit for Uncle Sam):



Leonard also appeared in the “Our Gang” comedies (1934 to 1936), usually portraying a bully. Tommy Bond replaced Kibrick as the villain in the series (as “Butch”) in 1937, and Leonard's younger brother Sidney Kibrick portrayed Butch’s sidekick, “The Woim” (aka “The Worm”). A native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Leonard Kibrick died of cancer on January 4, 1993 in Rancho Mirage, where he is buried. His tombstone reads: “Beloved Husband, Father, and Poppy.”

Another frequent young costar of Shirley’s was Diane Fisher, seen here in a bit part from “The Blue Bird” (1940). Afraid she won’t get called to join the other children on the silver ship that would reunite them with their earthbound parents, Fisher’s character sheds a tear. Of course, her name is called at the last minute!



Born in Gilmer, Texas on July 16, 1932, the adorable little girl lived with her mother in Hollywood, garnering bit parts in a number of big budget pictures, including “Gone with the Wind” (1939). This photo of Diane with Vivien Leigh shows that the little girl was involved in the production and dressed for the barbecue scene. Whether or not she can be seen in the finished film is doubtful. Anyone out there with a sharp eye?



Diane was so popular in “The Blue Bird” that she was cast again with Shirley in “Young People” (1940), as Susie.



You can see Diane patiently waiting for a piece of Shirley’s birthday cake below, distributed in between takes of “Young People.”





Fisher made one more film after “Young People,” and retired in 1940 at the ripe old age of eight, moving back to Texas. You can read her obituary here.

See more Shirley Temple photos at my main website.