Gone With The Wind

The making of the Greatest movie ever made

The Beginning of filming

   The first scene which was shot was the burning of Atlanta.  Selznick scheduled a time to use all the available Technicolor cameras.  He did this, because the scene was too expensive to be shot more than once, so he would shoot it at many different angles simultaneously. 

   They started filming the scene on December 11, 1938.  To get it to this stage it took two weeks of preparation.  The preparation consisted of crews running pipes into all the building fronts.  When shooting time came the pipes would have coal-oil poured through them to feed the flames, then water to extinguish the fire.  The technicians made several dry runs to rehearse for the fire.  Firemen from the Culver City Fire Department stood by, to help the studio's firemen. 

   On the night of filming, six different burnings were filmed, and pretty much the whole sequence was filmed within an hour.

   Gable was played in this scene, by his double of many years Yakima Canutt.  Whose role consisted of driving a horse and buggy through the streets.  Scarlett (who was not yet chosen) was doubled by a smaller stuntman. 

   Gable's double actually doubled for Vivian Leigh in a few scenes, and played the man who attacked Scarlett in Shantytown.

 Main Production

   The director of the movie was George Cukor, he began working on the film when production began on January 26, 1939.  Cukor was a great director, and the film which was shot while he worked was excellent, but filming with Cukor did not go well.

   Leigh was thriving off of Cukor's direction.  Gable did not seem to be giving a great performance, because of his lack of confidence in himself as an actor, he felt as though Cukor had been overlooking him.  Cukor resigned, because of this, and because Selznick felt now that he didn't have enough experience to deal with Gone With The Wind.

   Vivian Leigh and Olivia de Havilland were both upset at the loss of Cukor, but Selznick did not change anything despite their protests.  Selznick asked Gable who should be the replacement.  Gable chose his good friend Victor Flemming from a list of directors.  Flemming had been working on The Wizard Of Oz, but left and started Gone With The Wind. 

   Flemming had studied the script and film which had been shot, during a two week production halt, because of changing the directors.  When production started again Flemming took charge.  Late during the filming  the strains on the director became too much, he was unable to continue.  So two other directors stepped in, Sam Wood and Sidney Franklin. 

   Filming ended on July 1, 1939. The film was way over budget. (It's final cost was about $3,957,000 when it was only suppose to cost at the most $2,500,000.)  Still Mr. Mayer had high hopes for the film.    

Last updated February 26, 2000