Frankly, my Dear: Gone With the Wind Revisited by Molly Haskell

The book appeared in 1937 and became a sensation. Not just in the South, as might be expected, but all over the country, south, west, east and north. And then, the next year out came the film- another blockbuster success that would forever immortalize it in the ranks of stage and screen. The stars of the Film became known for it as nothing else, becoming the first real stars. Yearly showings keep "Gone With the Wind" immortalized forever. But is it really as perfect as it seems on the surface?

This book examines not only the film, or the book, but also the author, Margaret Mitchell- and shows how much resemblace she had in her own life to the women she wrote about in her book. Her background, and her own curious passive-aggressive behavior in the way she went about sending the book around to the publisher and afterwards, when the film was being made, reveals more about Margaret Mitchell and her mindset than anything else. For to understand Mitchell is to understand the book she wrote and why it became a publishing, and later a film sensation.

The great furor over the book, and the film is examined as well, from the scorn heaped on the black stars for performing in the film by their own, to the excuseable parodies and retellings of the film and book from other points of view, such as "The Wind Done Gone", about a half-black half sister of Scarlett observing the action and so on, every part of the film is exposed to the light, even why it captures the southern imagination so strongly- as, "history not as it was, but as it should have been".

Perhaps I wasn't the best reviewer for this book, as I have never had the patience to sit through the film, but some of the points addressed definitely struck chords in me. Such as when the author describes why the character of Ashley didn't seem such a far-fetched love for Scarlett when the book and movie first came out- while as today he is seen as a milksop that no one could possibly look up to as their ideal man, much less the tempestuous and impulsive Scarlett.

But more, Haskell lays bare the true heart of the film, and shows how Scarlett's conflicts rose out of Margaret Mitchell's life- who went from a pretty debutante to a matronly, dowdy wife- the very conflict that caused Scarlett to resist marriage- her horror of losing who she was to become nothing more than a wife, constrained by the bounds of matrimony and the role of married women. And Mitchell loved a bad boy of her own- and that marriage, her second, ended badly.

As an insight into familliar characters and into the mind of their author, this book is first-rate. It's also short enough that it doesn't become boring, even for people who aren't completely fans of the book or film. And the tales of the film and its making are just wonderful and captured my attention easily. Recommended.