One of the most beloved movies in history, Gone with the Wind made actress Vivien Leigh a star. Oddly, though Leigh will be forever associated with her Oscar-winning role of Scarlett O'Hara, she was far from the obvious choice when it came time to cast the headstrong Southern belle.
True Gone with the Wind fans are well versed in trivia about the movie, but they may not know all the details of how Leigh won the role and ran with it.
Producer David O. Selznick knew that to bring the hugely popular novel to the big screen successfully, he had to find the right actress to play Scarlett. Practically every actress in Hollywood wanted to play Scarlett and Selznick auditioned or considered more than 100 actresses before he made his decision.
Among the biggest names vying for the role were Lucille Ball, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, and Lana Turner, but Selznick rejected them all as unconvincing for one reason or another. For a while, the frontrunners were Tallulah Bankhead and Paulette Goddard but he bypassed them as well. Even Carole Lombard, Clark Gable's former costar and future wife, vied for the role. The battle for the role later inspired a film of its own—the 1980 made-for-TV movie The Scarlett O'Hara War starring Tony Curtis as Selznick.
An unlikely pick
Fans considered Leigh a dark horse in the race. As part of the search, potential audience members were polled on who they thought should play Scarlett. Out of the hundreds of ballots cast, Leigh received just one vote. The British actress wasn't well known in the United States, having appeared in less than 10 movies before she won the role of Scarlett. Plus, many fans just couldn't picture a Brit playing the book's Southern heroine.
Despite the story that Leigh first met Selznick on set one night in December 1938 during the filming of the Atlanta depot fire, one of the first scenes shot, it's unknown exactly when Selznick decided on casting her as Scarlett. It's rumored that the director signed the British actress as early as February 1938 and the widely publicized search for Scarlett was just a stunt. Regardless of how it came about, Leigh's casting was announced in January 1939. She was 25 at the time.
Author Margaret Mitchell, who wanted little to do with the filming, approved of Leigh, possibly because the actress resembled Mitchell when she was in her early 20s. (As diehard Gone with the Wind fans know, many details of the novel are modeled on Mitchell's own life and people she knew.)
During filming, Leigh smoked four packets of cigarettes a day, according to IMDB. Her non-stop smoking may have helped ease the stress of the long days on set— Leigh worked for 125 days on the movie while Gable worked for 71 days. Leigh, relatively unknown in the U.S., was paid approximately $25,000, while Gable, the "King of Hollywood," earned more than $120,000. Leigh spent 2 hours, 23 minutes, and 32 seconds on screen in Gone with the Wind, the longest performance to win an Oscar. In fact, she was in half of the movie, which ran nearly four hours, the longest running of all movies to win the Best Picture Academy Award.
Leigh hated kissing Gable, and not because she was having an affair with married British actor Laurence Olivier. Gable smoked prodigiously on and off set, and wore false teeth because of the constant habit. Leigh later complained Gable's breath smelled terrible.
Fixing imperfections
Leigh was accomplished but one thing she couldn't do was dance. In all dancing scenes that weren't close-ups, Leigh needed a dance double, according to IMDB. Another thing the British actress couldn't—or wouldn't—do was make a convincing retching sound in the "I'll never be hungry again," scene when she returns to Tara and tries to eat a radish from the ruined garden. Instead, costar Olivia de Havilland, who played Melanie, stepped in and dubbed the vomiting sound for her.
A key physical characteristic also had to be adjusted. The novel describes Scarlett with green eyes, so Leigh's blue eye color had to be changed in post-production.
As the cast member with the least name recognition among the four leads, Leigh received last billing on the original poster, underneath Gable, Leslie Howard, and de Havilland. She moved ahead of Howard and de Havilland after she won the Oscar for Best Actress.
Life after 'Gone with the Wind'
Gone with the Wind was Leigh's auspicious American debut and she followed up with a string of Hollywood movies in the 1940s and 1950s, including Waterloo Bridge, That Hamilton Woman, Anna Karenina, and A Streetcar Named Desire. At the same time, she appeared in numerous star-studded Broadway and West End plays. Ironically, Leigh considered herself a stage actress but will always be known for Gone with the Wind.
Leigh and Olivier divorced their spouses and married in 1940. But they divorced each other in 1961 after a stormy relationship, exacerbated by Leigh's increasing mental illness, which many believe now to be bi-polar disorder. Leigh died in 1967 of tuberculosis at age 53.
