Sorry for the lack of activity here on Vivien-Leigh.com! I’m in the middle of a very big move, and I have zero free time to keep this website updated. Don’t fear, by June V-L.com should be back up and running! In the meantime, if you’re interested in writing a guest blog post, don’t hesitate to contact me at webmaster @ Vivien-Leigh.com. Also, be sure to check out the V-L.com Facebook page!
Now I’d like to welcome my friend Sally Tippett Rains to the Vivien-Leigh.com Blog! Be sure to check out her amazing GWTW book; you won’t be disappointed!
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April 15th is known to most as Tax Day, but to Vivien Leigh and Gone With The Wind fans, April 15th was the day that Scarlett O’Hara first laid eyes on Rhett Butler. It was at the Wilkes’ Barbecue in 1961. Remember the dramatic scene? Scarlett is walking up the long, winding staircase at the Wilkes’ house and suddenly she spots a handsome stranger at the bottom of the stairs. She asks her friend Cathleen Calvert who he is.
“My dear, don’t you know?” says Miss Calvert. “That’s Rhett Butlerl He’s from Charleston. He has the most terrible reputation!” And Scarlett smiles, getting more interested in the stranger. “He looks as if, he knows what I look like without my shimmy.”
According to an on-line dictionary, one of the definitions for “taxing” is exhausting or draining. That pretty well sums up Scarlett O’Hara as she was always busy with her next scheme. As Rhett Butler said, “what a woman!”
And speaking of taxes, they came to play in Gone With The Wind. Just as we all dread filling out our tax forms today, they had to pay their taxes back in the 1800′s. When we do our taxes we try to find a way to make ends meet so we can pay them. If we can’t, we can always file for an extension. Scarlett needed the money to pay the taxes on Tara so she tried to get it out of Rhett Butler. He was in jail at the time and if you remember she wanted to look good but the aftermath of the war had left her with limited wardrobe. She got the bright idea to have Mammy sew her a dress out of a pair of green drapes.
All decked out in “Miss Ellen’s portiers” which was how Mammy had described the drapes which had been picked out by Scarlett’s mother, she went to the jail in hopes of getting the money from Rhett. She had traveled to Atlanta to see him, but Rhett Butler said his money was tied up. Not to worry tough, she did not go home empty-handed. Upon bumping into Frank Kennedy, her sister’s boyfriend, she found out he owned a business, and pretty soon set the plans in place to marry him so she could get the money to pay her taxes. Oh if we all had it so easy.
Vivien Leigh did a wonderful job of portraying Scarlett O’Hara in David O. Selznick’s production. Selznick’s executive assistant Marcella Rabwin thought she was the perfect choice. She had been there throughout Selznick’s “search for Scarlett” and was relieved and pleasantly surprised when he landed the British beauty. Leigh had everything—even the green eyes!
I had the pleasure of working with Marcella Rabwin’s sons on my new book, The Making Of A Masterpiece, The True Story of Margaret Mitchell’s Classic Novel, Gone With The Wind (www.GWTWbook.com). I will be posting some of Marcella’s memories in future blogs on http://gwtwbook.blogspot.com. I also have a Facebook page (GWTWbook.com) and Twitter account (GWTWbookdotcom) which will alert followers to the stories.
“Vivien Leigh used to go into my mother’s office and talk to her,” said Marcella’s son Mark Rabwin. “They became very good friends; my mother became her confidante.”
As we all know, Leigh won Best Actress for her role as Scarlett O’Hara in 1939 at the Academy Awards held in 1940. She was afraid to travel with her award overseas so she left it with her assistant Sunny Lash.
“Sunny held onto it, on her fireplace mantel,” said GWTW collector Dr. Christopher Sullivan, “For more than ten years, until Vivien came back to the United States to film A Streetcar Named Desire.”
Marcella Rabwin said Leigh was the hardest working of all the actors in Gone With The Wind. She worked every day and by the end of the production she was run-down and had lost weight from the stress. Now that was a “taxing” role!
By Sally Tippett Rains, Author of The Making Of A Masterpiece, The True Story of Margaret Mitchell’s Classic Novel, Gone With The Wind (www.GWTWbook.com)
Two common misconceptions about Gone with the Wind and Clark Gable: 1. That he and Vivien had either a romance or a feud on set and 2. That he sailed through the role of Rhett Butler because him and Rhett were one and the same.