Gone with the Wind inscribed by Vivien Leigh

Oct 13, 2017 | Uncategorized

“The girl I select must be possessed of the devil and charged with electricity” (G. Cukor, pre-production and casting director of Gone with the Wind)

Vivien Leigh’s journey towards being cast as Scarlett O’Hara in David O. Selznick’s epic production of Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel Gone with the Wind is the stuff of movie legend.

The search for the right actress to play Scarlett was the biggest casting call in the history of cinema, taking two-and-a-half years, with over 1,400 actresses interviewed for the part. But, as shooting began on 10 December 1938, the role had not yet been cast.

That very night, as cameras began rolling for the filming of the iconic “Burning of Atlanta” scene, Selznick was introduced to Vivien Leigh for the first time: he’d finally found his Scarlett O’Hara.

Leigh had been waiting for this moment a long time. The story goes that, having read the novel at Christmas 1936, she’d felt an overwhelming affinity with the lead character and become obsessed with the idea of winning the role in the forthcoming film. Despite her relative obscurity as an actress at the time, her determination never wavered. She was so sure that she would get the part, various biographers have claimed, that she presented copies of the book to her fellow actors on the opening night of the theatrical play she was starring in at the time — two years before she was cast as Scarlett!

Stuff of legend? Well, we have proof-positive that this long-held piece of Scarlett/Vivien folklore is in fact true: a 1937 copy of Gone with the Wind inscribed by Vivien Leigh to one of those very cast members. Until now, none of these copies had come to light.

This is not only a stunning piece of Gone with the Wind memorabilia, but also a testament to Leigh’s self-belief and strength of will in pursuing the role of a lifetime, vindicated by her Oscar-winning performance and the film’s enduring success.

Read on for the full catalogue description.

A grail-like object for Gone with the Wind collectors, this is one of a handful of copies rumoured to have been inscribed by Leigh to her fellow cast members on the opening night of one of her earliest West End appearances. She presented them as a token of her personal certainty and powerful determination that she would be cast as Scarlett O’Hara, the Oscar-winning role that was to establish her as Hollywood’s brightest new star. Asserted by successive biographers but never properly referenced, prior to the emergence of this one the existence of these copies might have been consigned to the apocrypha of wishful Hollywood anecdotage. No other such copy has been traced institutionally or in commerce, and just a single dead-end reference on the net, placing one with a Boston dealer sometime in the distant past, offered evidence of them outside of the pages of the biographies.

This is the fifth printing, published January 1937 (first published May 1936). The book was inscribed shortly after Leigh first read the novel, an apparently sibylline act, but in reality epitomising her insatiable ambition in pursuit of securing her iconic role. Leigh had discovered Gone with the Wind over the Christmas 1936 holiday during her recuperation from a skiing accident, and she read it as rehearsals started for Because We Must, “a light effort by playwright Ingaret Giffard” in which she played Pamela Golding-Ffrench, her first lead role in a West End play (Edwards, p. 73). “Her enthusiasm for Gone with the Wind grew every day as she voraciously read through the 1,000 pages” (Capua, p. 36). Anthony Holden asserts that “the most memorable thing about the first night of Because we must … was that she happened to give all her fellow members of the cast copies of a new novel she had just read, Gone with the Wind, with whose heroine she felt a strong and urgent sympathy” (Holden, 1988).

She inscribed this copy on the front pastedown to Anthony Ireland, who played Hugh Greatorex: “Anthony Ireland, from Vivien Leigh. (Because we must.) February 5th 1937.” Ireland was hastily cast, “commandeered from rehearsals of As You Like It” the day before the opening night, as a last-minute replacement for the actor Anthony Bruce, who had been taken ill with appendicitis (Variety, 7 February 1937, p. 4). The play was short-lived, running 5–20 February, and “Vivien’s role was the only dimensional and theatrical one in the play. Need overbalanced judgment, for it is doubtful that she would have accepted the part in view of her lack of belief in the play’s merits if she thought there was another choice” (Edwards, p. 73).

It is interesting that her handwriting here is very neat and controlled. It’s a significant contrast to her later handwriting, which, though still legible, became much more scrawling. The change in how she wrote “Leigh” for example, is demonstrated below. The first image, taken from her 1932 appointment diary, shows her pre-fame hand: it’s neat and closely written. The second, a copy of Gone with the Wind signed by the entire cast, displays a much spikier, more scrawling hand — this is the hand autograph collectors will be more accustomed to seeing.

 

(left) One of Vivien Leigh’s appointment books (currently held in the V&A) used to match the hand to the ‘Because we must’ copy (right)

Gone with the Wind signed by the entire cast (image via The Hollywood Reporter)

The mythical status of these presentations was almost confirmed, entirely incorrectly, when the inscription in the present copy was rejected by a London auction house as being in a hand other than Leigh’s. However, close comparison with Leigh’s contemporary appointment diaries in the V&A shows a perfect match. By undertaking a thorough examination of those diaries, our experts were able to authenticate this as being entirely in her hand at the time of presentation.

Ironically, just two nights before she inscribed this copy, David Selznick had noted “I have no enthusiasm for Vivien Leigh” in a cable to his New York production executive (Spicer, p. 166). Her agent John Gliddon relayed the news, but Leigh nevertheless remained unwavering in her conviction that the role would be hers. Caroline Lejeune, The Observer’s film critic, vividly recalled a conversation in mid-1937 about the casting of Gone with the Wind, in which it was suggested that Olivier could play Rhett Butler. Leigh drew herself up, and foretold: “Larry won’t play Rhett Butler, but I shall play Scarlett O’Hara. Wait and see.” (Spicer, p. 166).

It is difficult to imagine a piece more eloquently evocative of her defiant certainty. Whether the myth exaggerated Leigh’s generosity, and that this was in fact the only copy that she presented, cannot be asserted definitively. However it is the only known surviving example, and the absolute confirmation of this celebrated demonstration of Leigh’s almost uncanny certainty.


Sources

Capua, Vivien Leigh: A Biography, 2003; Edwards, Vivien Leigh, 1978; Holden, Olivier, 1988; Spicer, Clark Gable: Biography, Filmography, Bibliography; Variety, New York, Wednesday 17 February 1937 (“Appendicitis seized Anthony Bruce on eve of production of Because We Must at Wyndham’s. Anthony Ireland hastily commandeered from rehearsals of As You Like It and show opened the following night”).

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