First published on June 30, 1936,
Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone With the Wind won
a Pulitzer Prize for fiction and became an instant bestseller worldwide.
When David O. Selznick bought the film rights from Margaret Mitchell
on July 30, 1936,
he faced the daunting task of condensing the 1,037–page
novel into a film of manageable size: the studio calculated that
filming the entire book would result in a film about 168 hours
long. In addition, they had to make drastic cuts without damaging
what Selznick called the “chemicals,” or essential elements, of
the novel. Selznick feared that even filling in some of the novel’s
holes—such as the absence of scenes portraying Rhett’s smuggling
activities—would damage the film’s popularity in the eyes of the
public. Though large chunks of the film ended up being cut, Selznick
felt that the individual scenes should be left intact, sensing that
audiences would understand the need for omissions but would consider
any distortion or addition to their beloved story a betrayal.
To perform this immense task, Selznick hired Pulitzer
Prize-winning dramatist and film writer Sidney Howard to write the
script. After receiving a barrage of suggestions from Selznick,
Howard sent back a first draft that was four hundred pages long,
equivalent to about six hours of film. In an attempt to pare the
story down, Selznick and Howard then sat through several intense
editing sessions. Many of the characters who had less impact on
the narrative were cut, a list that included any of the O’Haras
not living at Tara and all of Scarlett’s children by her first two
husbands. Seeing Scarlett’s string of marriages as important to
her character development, Howard fought to keep Frank Kennedy in
the film despite Selznick’s recommendations. Selznick had Bonnie
Blue restored to the script in order to keep her tear-jerking scenes
in the film. While he doubted he would be able to film it, Selznick
also asked Howard to write a “night of love” for Scarlett and Rhett.
Despite the editing sessions, the film still ran over their desired
length of three hours, and the script was shelved.
After Clark Gable was cast as Rhett, Selznick could no
longer hold off finishing the script. He hired Jo Swerling, a noted
script “fixer,” when Howard refused to return to Hollywood. Swerling’s work
did not satisfy Selznick, and he called in a group of writers to try
their hand at reshaping Howard’s work so it would better fit Selznick’s
vision. One of these writers was the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald,
whose contribution to the script was largely judged by what he removed:
several dramatic speeches were replaced by simpler and more direct
lines taken straight from the novel. After Fitzgerald came Ben Hecht,
who worked to simplify and tighten the now haphazard script and
focus more attention on Rhett’s and Scarlett’s relationship. Selznick
contributed to the chaos by making almost daily changes to the script,
and the cast did not receive a final version of the script until
after the film was completed. Despite all of these different voices,
the essential “chemicals” remained, helping Gone With the
Wind go on to become one of the biggest box-office successes
of all time.
