C or D: David O. Selznick's 1939 production of "Gone with the Wind"

KJB necessitates revival of ILF

I actually watched "Ben Hur" the other night, by coincidence.

I'd held off getting the "Jazz Singer" set, because they screwed up the Gold Diggers..." excerpts, and included a reel from something like "Show of Shows" instead of the "Tiptoe through the Tulips" section (also held off b/c I think "The Jazz Singer" is a bit of a bloater, and Al Jolson gets on my nerves something rotten). I'll eventually pick it up for the disc with all the vitaphone sound shorts on it. The GDoBW remnants are also going to be on the "Gold Diggers of 1937" disc in the forthcoming second Busby Berkely set apparently.

I'd read in a couple of places that GDoBW was the biggest drawing film of its day, that people would go and see it multiple times etc. I have the horrible feeling that one of the places I read that was Wikipedia, so, er.... In any case, given that it was a massive hit, and and that it was the first in a popular series, it just amazes me that it's mainly lost. Reading the story of how the various surviving bits washed up is pretty far out too, like last year or the year before last someone bought a vintage toy projector off ebay and one of the strips of film included with it was about a minute's worth from one of the earlier reels. Eh, maybe some more of it will be found over the next few years. It would be great.

OMG! I was wondering why I didn't hear "Tiptoe through the Tulips" in, well, the "Tiptoe through the Tulips" section. Still, amaaaaazing box set if only for the Vitaphone shorts. Spat into the wind here:

If you dig American vaudeville, get thee to the 3-DVD Deluxe Edition of THE JAZZ SINGER (1927)!

Morbs, you're sweet. I'll start posting on ILF.

I watched this recently on AMC. I haven't watched it since college, where it was campy entertainment for us.

Scarlett O'Hara's curtain couture wasn't THAT different or less ridiculous from Carol Burnett's send-up. I never noticed before how ridiculous Scarlett is. The South is portrayed as some exotic place.

Worth watching for the sets. Surely since this was after the depression, the excess would have invited scorn? Hard to know.

My mother was a teenager when this came out and she thought Clark Gable was a dreamboat. When GWTW was rereleased to theaters in the mid-60s she took all of her four children to the Music Box theater downtown (something unprecedented) so we could soak in the glory, just as she had when young. She talked it up a lot before we went.

As a 10 year old (approx.) I thought the first half was fairly snappy but the second half after the intermission was pretty damned boring. Clark's big line of "frankly, my dear..." just wasn't worth all the tedium that swathed it. I expect the movie was true to the book, but I never bothered to read the book.

Scorn from whom? Surely the masses enjoyed their escape into lavish mansions being burned and looted.

I saw some of it on AMC too, like when Scarlett shoots the rape-intent Yank in the face. I suppose there was a 75th anniv screening in Atlanta, as the premiere was in early December.

de Havilland interview in Garden & Gun:

http://gardenandgun.com/article/interview-olivia-de-havilland

I remember seeing this as a little girl and could not figure out Clark Gable's appeal. I remember talking about it with my mom - "women liked THAT?? That slick hair and stuff?" Burt Reynolds was the hottie in those days - that I understood.