The movie was over three hours as it was! That’s why I agree it should be remade as a miniseries…so many interesting characters had to be cut. Or does the Mitchell family have a stranglehold on that too?
Regarding Melanie and her nightgown, Scarlett wanted something to wrap around the soldier’s head so he wouldn’t bleed across the yard. She had nothing on under her dress, presumably her petticoats and undergarments were long gone. Since Melanie was too weak to drag the body for burial, it had to be Scarlett, and she could hardly do it in her bare skin, could she?
Tidbit of trivia…the scene where Scarlett eats a radish then vomits it up, vowing she’ll never be hungry again? The retching noise is made by Olivia de Havilland…it was felt she sounded more authentic. I guess Vivien Leigh retches with an English accent.
Did anyone’s research into architecture and social structure lead to diet? I have often wondered if various foods such as chitterlings, okra and wild greens entered White’s menus after the war. A history teacher some years ago suggested looking for contemporary restaurant menus.
The novel and movie don’t picture the burning of Atlanta. They depict a smaller event that happened two and a half months earlier. On the night of September 1, 1864, the day before the city surrendered, the Confederate rearguard under General Hood deliberately set fire to a trainload of munitions and matériel, a nearby steel rolling mill, and some warehouses to prevent them from falling into the hands of Sherman’s Army, which was advancing on the city from three sides. In the novel, when Scarlett first hears of the Burning of Atlanta from Frank Kennedy at Tara, she confuses it with the fire at the Atlanta Depot she saw as she fled the city, but Frank carefully distinguishes the two events for her.
The first rough cut of GWTW ran four and a half hours, about 48 minutes longer than the final release. Most of the editing was done by eliminating minor scenes, or making trims to the remaining scenes (e.g., entrances and exits). Much excess Atlanta Bazaar and fire footage was cut this way.
One of the few complete sequences to be cut was a montage of testimony by Belle Watling’s girls before a Provost Marshal, following Frank Kennedy’s death. Other deleted scenes were the O’Hara family’s ride to Twelve Oaks for the barbecue, Rhett talking to a young man in the Twelve Oaks gardens, and Scarlett’s final return to Tara (except for the silhouette pull-back shot).
BTW, some of the deleted footage does exist in a private collection. As proof, here is a deleted close-up of Scarlett from the final scene of the movie, her return to Tara. A beautifully lit shot.
Thanks for that link. Liberty Hall must have been a ramblin’ wreck in the 1930s and since restored to better than original condition over the years, for I doubt anyone would call it an ugly house now.
Here’s a house from my own family (built 1850s, photo 1920s-1930s) that makes me think of Tara a bit as described in the book. (Long story about that picture, but it’s by far the best piece of luck I’ve had in my “adventures in online genealogy”.)
Chitlins would probably have been right out for all but the poorest whites. Even today they’re a huge class distinction; I actually know “closeted” chitlin eaters. (They’re usually professionals who hide the fact that they occasionally eat them from their upscale friends- even they won’t cook them though as they’ll make your kitchen smell like a barn for three months.) They’d have more likely used the intestine lining for sausages and the rest would have been ground up and used for flavoring or dog food. (Though you can hardly be more Yankee than Wisconsin, the LITTLE HOUSE books are great for discussing diet; as the old saying goes “the only thing wasted is the oink”- even the bristles had some uses.)
Okra I don’t think there’s ever been any taboo about, or yams or other African foods. Many people don’t know that in the 17th/18th centuries when the “direct from Africa” slave trade was still big (by the 19th century it had majorly declined) slaveowners actually had preferences in what regions/tribes their slaves came from. In South Carolina they generally wanted slaves who had come from the rice growing regions of the west coast because it’s rather skilled work, and the black slaves knew a LOT more about cultivation than their white owners.
Something surprising in my genealogical work was learning how much rice was grown in the Deep South. I knew it was grown in the deltas and swampy areas of the Atlantic coast and Louisiana of course, but it was also grown inland. It was a different variety that’s better suited for less swampy climates, but several central Alabama farm records I’ve studied showed they produced several bushels.
Another interesting thing was how relatively little acreage was actually used for growing cotton. It was “king” in that it was the cash crop, but rarely was more than 10% of a plantation’s acreage under cultivation for cotton at any given time. Corn and peas and other grains and leafy vegetables covered far more acreage, and on many small farms cotton wasn’t grown at all. One of my ancestors had a 280 acre farm that had only 3 acres in cotton (he produced about 800 pounds according to the agricultural census, which that year would have yielded $80 BEFORE the price of ginning and baling and transport), and while not rich neither was he particularly poor. One of the rich ancestors owned 1600 acres and produced 22,000 pounds ($2200) of cotton on about 120 acres (far less than he devoted to pastures and corn).
There were several reasons for this, one of course being manpower. Cotton is very labor intensive and a family who’s main goal is to feed themselves doesn’t have the time to do that and their staple crops. Also, as was known then, cotton depletes the soil; after 3 or 4 years you’ll need to rotate and let that field set fallow for as many years as you possibly can and let your mules/cattle/chickens have at to get even part of its nutrients back or else you’ll have to fertilize it constantly. (Sidenote: It’s always been surprising to me that “chicken shit” is an insult when it’s worth its weight in silver as fertilizer.)
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, which ultimately caused the Civil War, was due to what cotton was doing to the soil. Southerners were always on the lookout for new cheap land because even profitable farms often failed after a few years- rotate all you want but the soil eventually just wears out. (Pictures of Alabama during the time of G.W. Carver look like Rwanda or Uzbekistan in soil quality- that’s of course why he was obsessed with creating a market for peanuts, which actually reverse much of cotton’s damage to the soil.) Kansas-Nebraska seemed like a wilderness or a good refuge for small farms at first but by the 1850s it was starting to look pretty good to many slave owners.
A bit gross, but another non-money related thing that often drove farmers off their land was outhouses. Even on a small farm and with lime and lye you can only have so many people using an outhouse for so long before it gets into the water supply. You can imagine what this must have been like on plantations with 100 people adding to the cesspools every day. The water in places like Charleston and New Orleans and NYC must have just been absolutely disgusting. (On some farms, including the one my father [and later I] grew up on, before plumbing people often relieved themselves in the gardens for the fertilizer value.)
Another Scarlett discrepency: In GWTW, Scarlett clearly goes to visit her aunts and their husbands in Charlotte. In the idiot sequel, her aunt Eulalie is presented as the fiance of Rhett’s mother’s brother, who died during their engagement after being thrown from a horse, and she never married.
I thought Scarlett just wanted Rhett to give her the money for the taxes, not marry her. She reminds him that he once said he was not the marrying kind, so she intended to offer herself as his mistress, the only way she could get him. She sees (or thinks of Belle, I can’t remember which) and thinks to herself, “Well, if I’m successful before the day is out we’ll be equals.”
Also Rhett says something later about her “charming collateral,” and reminds her that if she intends to offer herself in the future, she should throw a little coquettery into it.
That’s the kind of dialog that makes me love this book so much.
I found the reference. It wasn’t Belle she saw, but on her way to Rhett in prison she hitched a ride from an old country woman.
Sampiro, earlier when you were discussing the marriages in the book, you mentioned Ellen’s mother, saying that she was Catholic, although multi-married. Where in the book is this addressed? I don’t remember it at all. Really the only thing I remember was that on two occasions, her wildness as a girl is referenced — something about rinsing out her underclothes with cold water so they’d stick to her, and then again about not wearing many underclothes at all.
The whole bit about modesty and clothing in the book I find interesting. Here we have a previous generation doing wet T-shirts and then in Scarlett’s, it’s not correct to show your bosom in the morning. Is this the influence of the Victorian Era, or too early for that? You know, when even table legs had to be covered for the sake of propriety.
Apparently a myth, tis true, though I can’t find anything particularly authoritative on it at the moment. From what I’ve read, it was something that British satirists came up with in the era to make fun of Puritanical American mores, but later got reversed on them when people, later, made fun of the repressed British.
She runs into Rhett while married to Frank and they discuss the morals of their grandparents and the hypocrisy. Rhett mentions that the Butler fortune was founded by a pirate ancestor but the family has cleaned it up to a “sea captain”. Scarlett mentions Solange.
Gotta love that searchable text!
The notion of a Charleston fortune being founded by a pirate is quite believable incidentally. The city had many pirates in its history and once was even held hostage by Blackbeard.
Prophetic words for a sequel perhaps- Rhett on Scarlett’s children and grandchildren in the same scene:
Of course the irony to the above is that when Rhett becomes a father (officially anyway, with Bonnie- there’s probably some Butler DNA out there that’s not named in the book) Rhett couldn’t possibly spoil her more. As for hardship he won’t even let her sleep in a dark room when (due to Mammy) she becomes afraid of the dark. The kid reminded me of Caligula’s horrible little daughter in I, CLAUDIUS.
(They’re usually professionals who hide the fact that they occasionally eat them from their upscale friends- even they won’t cook them though as they’ll make your kitchen smell like a barn for three months.) They’d have more likely used the intestine lining for sausages and the rest would have been ground up and used for flavoring or dog food. (Though you can hardly be more Yankee than Wisconsin, the LITTLE HOUSE books are great for discussing diet; as the old saying goes “the only thing wasted is the oink”- even the bristles had some uses.)