I can't deny it, but the frantic search for Scarlett O'Hara fascinates me. I love watching the screen tests, and just skimming through the list of actresses tested or at least considered for the role. The casting for GONE WITH THE WIND in general is fascinating to me.
Producer David O. Selznick knew that the search for Scarlett would provide entertainment for a Depression-weary America and keep public interest alive in a film he had neither the script, the money, or the guts to make. Selznick sent one of his associates, Kay Brown, through a tour of multiple Southern states, where AMERICAN IDOL-like open auditions took place. Women showed up in period costumes, clamoring to be Scarlett. Of her trip to Atlanta, Brown said she saw "every Miss Atlanta from twenty years back" and that she saw every woman from everyday housewives to small-town theater players.
Silvia Schulman Lardner, secretary to Selznick, said that "many, many women in Hollywood of stature also saw themselves as Scarlett" and that screen tests were made endlessly. The echo from the South was that Scarlett needed to be played by a Southern woman. Tallulah Bankhead, a native of Alabama, was apparently the first actress to screen test for Scarlett. Bankhead's film career had failed to take off in the early 1930s, and she had gone back to the theater by 1933. Selznick apparently found her test to be good enough, but since "innocence was never her vibe", had concerns about her ability to play the teenage Scarlett necessary for the first part of the story. Still, Selznick thought Bankhead had a place in the cast and would later offer her the role of saloon owner Belle Watling. Bankhead turned him down.
There were many suggestions for Scarlett—Luise Rainer, Mae West, ZaSu Pitts, Clara Bow, even a young Lucille Ball. None of these women received a test, but Selznick did reportedly announce once that Mae West had been cast to play Belle Watling, although West, like Bankhead, rejected the role as too small. Norma Shearer was publicized as being cast as Scarlett in 1938, but the public response to this was so negative that Selznick and Shearer both issued statements to the contrary.
Gossip columnist Jimmie Fidler announced on his radio show in early 1937 the six actresses who received the most public votes to play Scarlett by the public—Bette Daivs, Katharine Hepburn, Miriam Hopkins, Joan Crawford, Margaret Sullavan, and Barbara Stanwyck.
Bette Davis wrote in her autobiography that the nationwide search for Scarlett "infuriated" her. "It was insanity I not be given Scarlett," she wrote. She sought the role hard, it seems, but Selznick never saw her as a serious contender. She later starred in JEZEBEL (1938), a Southern melodrama sharing many structural similarities with GONE WITH THE WIND, a fact that upset Selznick. Even so, Warner Brothers still offered a package deal of Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, and financial support to Selznick, to which he refused. In later life, Davis would chuckle off missing out on playing Scarlett in interviews. She weaved it into a story of her turning down the role when Jack Warner offered to buy it for her, saying she thought it would be another of the poor-quality scripts she had been boycotting.
Katharine Hepburn lobbied hard to play Scarlett, and was aided by her good friend, director George Cukor. Selznick apparently felt Hepburn was ill-suited to the role, citing her lack of sex appeal and declining box office power in the late 1930s as his primary reasons. Selznick said in a memo: "If we line-up a cast of people like Hepburn and Leslie Howard, we'll have a nice picture for at least eight years ago."
Miriam Hopkins was apparently the actress that got Margaret Mitchell's endorsement, if you can call it that. Hopkins was born in Georgia, and had played similar roles in the past, but in her late thirties, she was thought too old for Scarlett.
Joan Crawford had been a big star for MGM for the last decade, but her box office popularity was slipping, too. She was also in her mid-thirties at the time and had played nothing on screen that would've made one see her as a plausible candidate for Scarlett. However, as the story goes, Selznick allegedly said had he still been at MGM, he could've assigned Crawford and Clark Gable to play Scarlett and Rhett and "called it a day".
Margaret Sullavan was a strong and popular actress in the 1930s, and she had played in a couple of Southern romances previously. This, I'm sure, aided her chances (with the public, at least) at being Scarlett. I have never found anything, however, that states what Selznick thought about Sullavan's possible casting, or even if he met with her.
Barbara Stanwyck had given some strong performances on film in the 1930s, and from that standpoint, would've been a good candidate for Scarlett. But whether Selznick saw her as a legitimate contender is something I have yet to find.
There were many, many other actresses to be screen tested for Scarlett. Terry Ray, Anita Louise, Margaret Tallichet, Nancy Coleman, Shirley Logan, Doris Jordan, Marcella Martin, and Mary Ray all tested on more than one day according to records from Selznick International Pictures. A pre-fame Lana Turner, then new to MGM, tested on two days in November 1938, but was dismissed as being "completely inadequate" for the role. Future Oscar winner Susan Hayward (under her given name Edythe Marrenner) also tested and was actually pretty good.
As of December 1938, Selznick had narrowed down his pick for Scarlett to four actresses: Jean Arthur, Joan Bennett, Paulette Goddard, and Vivien Leigh. As much as I like Arthur, I cannot understand why she was being considered for the role. She was just not right for the role from what I've seen in the tests she did. I thought Bennett was good, maybe a good alternative, and Goddard was good, too, which is why Selznick had her test so many times. Selznick practically convinced himself Goddard could play the role. She was the first to film a Technicolor screen test on December 20. Of course, Goddard's real-life romance with Charlie Chaplin stirred up controversy. There was a question on whether the two were married or living together in sin. Selznick feared negative publicity if Goddard were given the role, and she was ultimately passed over when she refused to produce a marriage license joining her and Chaplin together.
Vivien Leigh was introduced to David O. Selznick by his brother, agent Myron Selznick, at the filming of the Burning of Atlanta. "Hey, genius," he said to David, "meet your Scarlett O'Hara." David wrote to his wife, Irene Mayer Selznick, saying, "Leigh's the Scarlett dark horse." Leigh was told she had the part on Christmas Day 1938, and her casting was announced publicly on January 13, 1939.
