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In the book, Ashley's a metaphor for the old world for which Scarlett pines. In the movie, her fixation for him just seems designed to piss off Rhett.
In the book, Ashley's a metaphor for the old world for which Scarlett pines. In the movie, her fixation for him just seems designed to piss off Rhett.
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He was wooed to play Butler and said of that time: "It was one of the best roles ever offered in Hollywood ... But I said no. I didn't see myself as quite that dashing, and later, when I saw Clark Gable play the role to perfection, I knew I was right."
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Gosh, I just realised that I have no idea who Gary Cooper is. I looked him up and his face doesn't look familiar at all.
I thought I knew him from the PUTTIN' ON THE RITZ song "dressed up like a million-dollar trouper, trying hard to look like Gary Cooper" but subconsciously I have always been thinking of Cary Grant, apparently.
I thought I knew him from the PUTTIN' ON THE RITZ song "dressed up like a million-dollar trouper, trying hard to look like Gary Cooper" but subconsciously I have always been thinking of Cary Grant, apparently.
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Cooper is the most underrated actor of his era, from today's POV. He was ultra-beautiful when he was young, ultra-charming in his comedies, and ultra-convincing in his dramas. In this case, the Academy did right by giving him 2 Oscars. For a while, I thought that Kevin Costner should have played him in a biopic. Besides, if you look at him, you can see a bit of James Dean or Brando in him (who of course debuted many years after him). He played every role with dignity and quiet strength. His career is worth discovering, and you´d be surprised many times by how versatile he was.
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He looks like a Baldwin!
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Well Cooper was right in that regard. He wasn't well suited to Rhett; "scoundrel" wasn't his specialty. Cooper could have been suited for Ashley if Ashley was what Scarlett thought he was. But Ashley was a mundane fraud, not the idealistic golden boy that Scarlett imagined.
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Cooper was very beautiful in his youth. Not only did he anticipate the Deans and the Brandos in looks, but he patented a very naturalistic acting style that some would have you believe never existed prior to the 50s.
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Well, it hasn't been released yet.They won't let you have it??
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See, now that's a good choice, Cooper for Ashley; Ashley may have been a fraud (I haven't read the book in 30 years) but anything is better than Miss Leslie Howard.
David O. Selzick wisely resisted having a contrived "happy ending":
I agree, sometimes there are no happy endings or second chances in life. I actually love how the movie ended. It's a classic and it stayed true to the book. I wouldn't change a thing. That said I did enjoy the sequel series "Scarlett" that finally gave us a happy ending too. I especially like how it had Scarlett go back to find her Irish roots and reconnected with her family.
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The ending is the best part of the movie. Conclusive yet ambiguous, a comeuppance for Scarlett and also an affirmation of her determination.
I didn't do more than peek at the mini-series sequel. Aside from being impossible to match the original cast -- although Ann-Margret as Belle was inspired -- there's no need for follow-up. The tantalizing possibilities left by the original is the ending, not an invitation for answers.
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I sometimes like when a film changes the ending from the original material because it makes it more original and surprises the audience. My favourite example of this is the 1979 Hair in which a totally different character dies at the end.
However, that alternative ending for Gone With The Wind doesn't work because it shows Scarlett as being weaker and more dependant on Rhett whereas Margaret Mitchell's ending shows her being strong, defiant and in control. They were right to consider alternative endings and also right to reject that one.
However, that alternative ending for Gone With The Wind doesn't work because it shows Scarlett as being weaker and more dependant on Rhett whereas Margaret Mitchell's ending shows her being strong, defiant and in control. They were right to consider alternative endings and also right to reject that one.
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Yes, the sequel was something I only saw bits of -- Joanne Whalley came off more like Pam Ewing than Scarlett O'Hara. Like Hitchcock observed: casting is character. And after Selznick searching the world for the correct Scarlett and finding the right one with Vivien Leigh, how likely is it that some by rote TV miniseries more than half-a-century later will get it right again? Especially when they're just thinking feministically that Scarlett is "a strong woman" and that's all.
I don't find Scarlett to be such a strong person in particular. She was spoiled and predatory, and exploited men like Ashley, Rhett (who at least knew what she was doing), Frank Kennedy, and anyone who could do her some good. Some people might call that "strength" and believe that Scarlett reciprocating anything would make her weaker and dependent.
She was always totally dependent on men like Rhett, but as long as she was unconscionable about it and refused to genuinely care about them in return, she remains "strong and independent." Scarlett was a narcissist, probably with sociopathic tendencies, but that seems like "strength, defiance and control" to some.
The final ending in GWTW exposes Scarlett as her own victim, one so selfish that she ran off the only wealthy man who (thought he) loved her despite his thinking he understood her flaws and issues and accepting it all... But Rhett realized in the end that he was projecting his own psychology -- that of an iconoclastic rapscallion with deeper sense of fairness underneath the veneer -- onto that of Scarlett, a grasping, shallow woman who really cared about no one after all was said and done.
It was no coincidence that Scarlett "suddenly realized" she "loved" Rhett just as he was walking out the door. Her "tomorrow is another day!" optimism is only about her future perseverance in finding yet another rich man off of which to glom. After he dies (and he will) she'll exist, if she's lucky, as a bitter and statured dowager who's eventually credited with the accomplishments of the men she'd exploited.
Like what they say about old buildings, politicians and whores if they last long enough.
But Margaret Mitchell herself didn't (last long enough). The poor thing dying on Peachtree Street less than a decade after the movie -- a movie that eerily showed almost the exact same thing happening to Scarlett on the very same street.
I've often found that a fictional project that gets it as "right" as possible will tap into an objective frequency and accidentally reveal things well in advance. Like the better years of THE SIMPSONS where even the presidency of Donald Trump is prognosticated decades earlier.... A man named Kennedy "shot through the head" always hits me as weird.
BTW: In my teens and twenties, I had a friend who really resented Rhett Butler because she felt he'd gone back on the deal he and Scarlett had struck, that he had dumped her for just being herself. The fact that Rhett had overrated Scarlett's internal character simply his fault and his own miscalculation about what he could handle... All I could do was SMH silently.
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I agree that Joanne Whalley doesn't compare to Vivien Leigh nor did Timothy Dalton compare to Clark Gable. But I am still fond of the mini tv-series.
Wow! That's an interesting character analysis of Scarlett. Have you come up with that one simply from watching the movie or have you read the book too?
I tried reading the book when I was a teenager but got stuck in the middle somewhere because I found it quite different from the movie. If memory serves me right Scarlett came off as more unlikable in the book than in the movie. Maybe it was Vivien's charm that made you forgive the bad things she did?
Wow! That's an interesting character analysis of Scarlett. Have you come up with that one simply from watching the movie or have you read the book too?
I tried reading the book when I was a teenager but got stuck in the middle somewhere because I found it quite different from the movie. If memory serves me right Scarlett came off as more unlikable in the book than in the movie. Maybe it was Vivien's charm that made you forgive the bad things she did?
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Oh, I've read the book a few times, and certainly seen the movie (and have owned a copy since about 1990).
My analysis of Scarlett O'Hara is far from unusual -- even the movie itself calls her out on her treachery. They all but call her a bitch multiple times. The book probably makes her look worse because a book can get into the details, and movie -- even a four-hour one -- has to gloss over her behavior and rationalize it to a degree.
If anything, they should have allowed Scarlett to become a bit grittier by the latter half of the picture, and Leigh could do it, but they kept a wee bit too shrill, with Lucille Ball flashes, for my taste as the story winds down.
