In an effort to further his popular culture education I’ve been showing
classic movies to a high school kid I know, and last night I hauled out one
of the big guns. He is 17 years old and he had never heard of Clark Gable,
much less Vivian Leigh or the others. So it was time.

Once again I had fun watching a newbie’s reaction to a film I’ve known and
admired practically all my life. (I like to claim I’m doing all this for
him, but actually I am doing it for me.) Some of his comments were a bit
surprising and often delightful. For instance, he had been admiring the
movie for quite a while and then Aunt Pittypat showed up and he turned me
and said, “you know, the actors in this movie are great!” He really liked
Rhett Butler — thought that Clark Gable guy was a great actor and he was
going to try to remember his name so he could tell his boss at work who
also likes old movies. We even agreed Gable knew how to wear a tuxedo as
well as that Fred Astaire guy I introduced him to a few months ago. He
loved Mammy, didn’t like Prissy at all, was surprised the former slaves
didn’t leave Tara as soon as they could, was conflicted about whether Belle
Watling was actually a good character, was overwhelmed by all the dead and
dying in the Atlanta railroad yard, was shocked when Rhett Butler left
Scarlett to join the Confederate army, and when all was said and done he
didn’t much care for Scarlett.

As for me, I had forgotten just how bogged down in overwrought melodrama
the second half of the movie is. (Oh Ashley Ashley!) The kid is right:
Scarlett is stupid.

But we both stuck with it all the way to the damn, and when it was over and
I asked how he liked it, he grinned ear to ear and said “it was great.” And
despite whatever flaws our modern eyes and ears think they detect, for its
pure entertainment value GONE WITH THE WIND remains one of the greatest
motion pictures ever made. So there.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

On 11/11/2023 5:25 PM, Bill Anderson wrote:
> In an effort to further his popular culture education I’ve been showing
> classic movies to a high school kid I know, and last night I hauled out one
> of the big guns. He is 17 years old and he had never heard of Clark Gable,
> much less Vivian Leigh or the others. So it was time.
>
> Once again I had fun watching a newbie’s reaction to a film I’ve known and
> admired practically all my life. (I like to claim I’m doing all this for
> him, but actually I am doing it for me.) Some of his comments were a bit
> surprising and often delightful. For instance, he had been admiring the
> movie for quite a while and then Aunt Pittypat showed up and he turned me
> and said, “you know, the actors in this movie are great!” He really liked
> Rhett Butler — thought that Clark Gable guy was a great actor and he was
> going to try to remember his name so he could tell his boss at work who
> also likes old movies. We even agreed Gable knew how to wear a tuxedo as
> well as that Fred Astaire guy I introduced him to a few months ago. He
> loved Mammy, didn’t like Prissy at all, was surprised the former slaves
> didn’t leave Tara as soon as they could, was conflicted about whether Belle
> Watling was actually a good character, was overwhelmed by all the dead and
> dying in the Atlanta railroad yard, was shocked when Rhett Butler left
> Scarlett to join the Confederate army, and when all was said and done he
> didn’t much care for Scarlett.
>
> As for me, I had forgotten just how bogged down in overwrought melodrama
> the second half of the movie is. (Oh Ashley Ashley!) The kid is right:
> Scarlett is stupid.
>
> But we both stuck with it all the way to the damn, and when it was over and
> I asked how he liked it, he grinned ear to ear and said “it was great.” And
> despite whatever flaws our modern eyes and ears think they detect, for its
> pure entertainment value GONE WITH THE WIND remains one of the greatest
> motion pictures ever made. So there.

Probably too young to be amused that Deep South archetypes Scarlett and
Ashley were both played by Brits...

On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:01:57 PM UTC-5, moviePig wrote:

> Probably too young to be amused that Deep South archetypes Scarlett and
> Ashley were both played by Brits...

Or that Superman is in the movie.

wlah...@gmail.com <wlahearn@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:01:57 PM UTC-5, moviePig wrote:
>
>> Probably too young to be amused that Deep South archetypes Scarlett and
>> Ashley were both played by Brits...
>
> Or that Superman is in the movie.
>

That, of course, was the first thing I pointed out to him.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

On 2023-11-11 22:25:10 +0000, Bill Anderson said:
>
> GONE WITH THE WIND (1939 as if there’s another one)

Well, according to IMDB (for what that's worth), there are three versions:

Gone With the Wind (1939)
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031381>

Gone With the Wind (1954)
Set in then-modern day Iran!!
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371564/>

Gone With the Wind (2018)
No inforamtion about it, but does have a cast list.
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8451354/>

Plus of course the "Scarlet" TV miniseries.

There's also a Winnie the Pooh story by Disney with the same "Gone With
the Wind" title, but that's the only connection. :-)
<https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Gone_with_the_Wind>

Bill Anderson <bill.anderson@my-deja.com> wrote:

>In an effort to further his popular culture education I've been showing
>classic movies to a high school kid I know, and last night I hauled out one
>of the big guns. He is 17 years old and he had never heard of Clark Gable,
>much less Vivian Leigh or the others. So it was time.

This was a nice story; thanks. Glad both you and he had a wonderful
time.

>. . . and when all was said and done he didn't much care for Scarlett.

Hehehehehehe

She's still a great character and she does get her comeuppance more than
once. You know, the Civil War really was a great personal inconvenience.

>. . .

>But we both stuck with it all the way to the damn, and when it was over and
>I asked how he liked it, he grinned ear to ear and said "it was great." And
>despite whatever flaws our modern eyes and ears think they detect, for its
>pure entertainment value GONE WITH THE WIND remains one of the greatest
>motion pictures ever made. So there.

That's wonderful.

On 2023-11-11 22:25:10 +0000, Bill Anderson said:

> But we both stuck with it all the way to the damn, and when it was over and
> I asked how he liked it, he grinned ear to ear and said “it was great.”

He didn't say "frankly my dear I don't give a damn" so there may be hope.

I first saw GWTW in 1967 in its fourth theatrical re-release, I wasn't
anywhere close to 17 at the time but was pretty impressed by it (even
though I doubt I'd ever sat through a film so long in my life -- looks
like The Ten Commandments is 1 minute shorter and Ben-Hur is 9 minutes
shorter).

On Sun, 12 Nov 2023 03:46:32 +0000, Bill Anderson
<bill.anderson@my-deja.com> wrote:

>wlah...@gmail.com <wlahearn@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Saturday, November 11, 2023 at 6:01:57?PM UTC-5, moviePig wrote:
>>
>>> Probably too young to be amused that Deep South archetypes Scarlett and
>>> Ashley were both played by Brits...
>>
>> Or that Superman is in the movie.
>>
>
>That, of course, was the first thing I pointed out to him.

Did you forget Ward ("Wagon Train") Bond, and Jack Benny's Eddie
"Rochester" Anderson?

On Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 12:31:49 AM UTC-5, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
> Bill Anderson wrote:
>
> >In an effort to further his popular culture education I've been showing
> >classic movies to a high school kid I know, and last night I hauled out one
> >of the big guns. He is 17 years old and he had never heard of Clark Gable,
> >much less Vivian Leigh or the others. So it was time.
> This was a nice story; thanks. Glad both you and he had a wonderful
> time.
>
> >. . . and when all was said and done he didn't much care for Scarlett.
>
> Hehehehehehe
>
> She's still a great character and she does get her comeuppance more than
> once. You know, the Civil War really was a great personal inconvenience.
> That's wonderful.

The late Roger Ebert pointed out something I had never thought of...but he was right. (Bill may want to point this out to his friend.)

Namely, Scarlett isn't really a girl of the 1860s. Even in the book, she's a girl of the 1930s.

Specifically, a semi-liberated teenager. (Keep in mind that women had had the right to vote for more than a decade and had already been through the Roaring Twenties.)

That explains a lot about her personality. In multiple ways.

Why else would she believe - early on - what the twins, her father and Mammy herself warned her NOT to believe - that Ashley wanted to marry HER when he was already engaged to Melanie? Why wouldn't she have pursued him for years before the war in the same demure, sneaky way that "proper ladies" of that time were SUPPOSED to, instead of taking his "love" for granted?

And naturally, she causes scandal everywhere she goes, just by existing.

But more importantly, the movie doesn't make it clear that Rhett is...practically old enough to be Scarlett's father. (He's 17 years older.) So of COURSE she would have been turned off by him at first; it took her twelve years to learn to love him! Nothing strange about that.

(By the 1930s, the typical age difference between a husband and wife was...three years. In fact, Laura Ingalls Wilder, in her 1940 book "The Long Winter," which takes place in 1880-1881, made it look as though her future husband was only five years older, so as not to shock her readers. In real life, he was ten years older. Also, the median marriage age for a woman in the 1930s was a little over 21.)

Not to mention that, in the book, Rhett was constantly making fun of her near-illiteracy. How romantic is that?

(He also made it sound, in his marriage proposal, as if sex with him would make it worthwhile to have unwanted babies - that is, he knew perfectly well she didn't want them, and ignored that. Sheesh. But of course, in the movie, her two previous children don't exist.)

Anyone can argue that Scarlett O'Hara is not "likeable" and not someone anyone would want as a friend or a spouse, since she's too selfish to do anything for anyone unless there's something in it for her, but if YOU were on the losing side of a war and facing starvation, how hard would she be to understand/relate to, as a character?

I.e., would you really rather be Melanie under those circumstances? I wouldn't. Melanie only survives as long as she does because of Scarlett; even her loving relatives wouldn't have been able to keep her fed when she was recovering from childbirth. As Rhett said: "She hasn't your strength. She's never had any strength. She's never had anything but heart." Or, as Scarlett said to herself about her late mother Ellen:

...."Nothing, no, nothing, she taught me is of any help to me! What good will kindness do me now? What value is gentleness? Better that I'd learned to plow or chop cotton like a darky. Oh, Mother, you were wrong!" She did not stop to think that Ellen's ordered world was gone, and a brutal world had taken its place a world wherein every standard, every value had changed. She only saw, or thought she saw, that her mother had been wrong, and she changed swiftly to meet this new world for which she was not prepared...