In the book, quite a bit of time passes between Bonnie’s death and Melanie’s miscarriage. Scarlett and Rhett’s marriage disintergrates, and Scarlett is actually in Marietta when she gets an urgent telegram from Rhett that Melanie has collapsed.
What, what?! Is there any mention of the sisters later in the novel?
Well, Suellen marries Will Benteen and Careen goes off to join a convent, permanently heartbroken over the death of Brent Tarleton during the War.
If you’re talking about the sequel, there’s more mention of Suellen than Careen. I don’t think the book even has a dialogue between Scarlett and Careen.
My theory on Scarlett’s disinterest in her children is that Margaret Mitchell never had any children, and so didn’t know how to write about parenting.
One of the best lines in the book was spoken by Will Benteen, but in the movie Mammie spoke it. When Ashley comes limping back after the war is over and Melanie goes flying down the path to greet him, Scarlett is going to take off too. In the book Will stops her and says “He’s her husband, ain’t he?” In the movie Mammie gets that line.
With all respect, I have to say I believe you’re mistaken. Eugenia Victoria (who was clearly a fetal alcohol syndrome baby) was not in the movie, but Wade was. Recall the scene when Scarlett had just given birth to Bonnie Butler and Rhett and Wade shared a toast. Also recall that Wade was best friends with Beau, Melanie and Ashley’s son - they had to keep him in the movie, because it was his being snubbed from Rene Picard’s birthday party that led to Rhett’s realization that if he didn’t mend his social outcast ways, Bonnie would be similarly rejected and would have no chance of marrying a proper Southern gentleman.
The OP confused me, talking about Ashley in the opening sentence and then Rhett at the end. It’s definitely clearly explained that Rhett and Scarlett had a mad night of wild passion once they got up those stairs following Ashley’s birthday party. oh yeah, hubba hubba
(fyi, when Margaret Mitchell was writing GWTW, she had Clark Gable in mind)
Shit, that’s Rene Picard’s son (with Maybelle Merriweather), Raoul. That one I had to look up.
fessie, may I just say . . . HUH? I’m afraid you are sorely confused. (Or else I am being severely whooshed.)
Eugenia Victoria IS Bonnie. EV is her given name and “Bonnie Blue” is her nickname.
Wade and Ella are not in the movie at all. Rhett shared a toast with Mammy after Bonnie’s birth.
The only birthday party in the movie is Ashley’s, where Rhett made Scarlett dress up in her slutty red dress.
You tell him Miss Scarlett67!
It was EugeniE Victoria. She was named after Empress Eugenie of France (wife of Napoleon III) and Queen Victoria.
Rhett and Melanie? Fiddle-dee-dee! No way. Melanie would never have dreamed of cheating on Ashley, and Rhett would never even have made a move on Melanie, because he respected her far too much.
Also, in the movie, they combine Ashley’s two sisters into one, India. In the book, India was engaged to Stuart Tarleton and Scarlett stole him away, leaving India as an old maid. It was Honey Wilkes who was engaged to Charles.
Also, cut from the movie-Dilcey, Prissy’s mother. And in the book, it was Scarlett who first gave her wedding ring up to the charity, and then Melanie followed. Rhett returned Melanie’s, but he did NOT return Scarlett’s.
And, I don’t know why they changed it, but the green and white barbecue dress was worn by Scarlett in the first scene of the book. The next morning, she couldn’t find anything she liked to wear to the barbecue, so she just wore that dress again, even though it was an afternoon dress, and considered too low-cut for a morning party. The dress she wore in the opening scene of the movie would have been more appropriate for the barbecue, actually. (I never liked that one, anyways).
Let’s see, what else?
Oh! The red dress she wears to Ashley’s birthday party in the movie was apple green in the book-Scarlett’s favorite color. (You know, it was weird in the movie, how everyone else was just wearing less formal attire…maybe that was the point).
One thing not mentioned in the movie-Frank Kennedy is forty-three to Suellen’s fifteen. :eek:
Is Uncle Henry or Grandpa Merriwether in the movie? I can’t remember.
Gerald doesn’t die when Emme Slattery and the foreman-what was his name again? Jonas something or other?-come to the house. He dies after Scarlett goes and marries Frank-they send for her and tell her that Suellen had tried to trick him into signing a loyalty oath to the Union, and then leaped on the horse and was killed. Scarlett goes to the funeral, and is comforted by Grandma Fontaine. (a neighbor).
Omigod, you’re right
RETRACTION RETRACTION
Okay, it’s the daughter she had w/Frank Kennedy who was the fetal alcohol baby. Her name was Ella Lorena.
I would have SWORN there was a scene in the movie when he discovered Wade had been snubbed from Raoul’s bday party, but since my memory has already proven faulty, I might be wrong on that as well. But I can picture it so clearly!!!
egads
mea culpa
The scene I thought was in the movie was Rhett leaping over the porch rail to get to Bonnie when the pony throws her. Probably just a fetal alcohol thing on my part. 
He runs around the railing.
I can’t believe they cut Will Benteen and Archie from the movie. Will was such an integral part of getting Tara back up to speed, and Archie quitting as Scarlett’s driver is why she was attacked, which led to the KKK cleaning out Shantytown and Frank getting killed.
They glossed over the Klan in the movie, which I think is rather understandable. Surely the Klan wasn’t the chivalrous organization Mitchell made it out to be?
The black actors had some say in the content of the movie, IIRC – for example, they would not say “nigger” (recall Pork’s plaintive “We’s house workers”). Perhaps they had some say in the depiction of the Klan as well. I confess that I am not up on all the production details of the movie.
According to a book I have about the filming of the movie, David O. Selznick thought that having Scarlett wear the same dress for the first 20 minutes of the movie was too long to be in one costume. The opening scene was actually filmed first in the green-and-white dress. It was only later in the filming that Selznick dcided that a second costume would be needed. This left a continuity gap when Scarlett says to the Tarelton boys (“boys” in the movie, “twins” in the book-- no amount of makeup could make the two actors identical) “I only wore this old dress because I thought you liked it.” (Also notice that Scarlett’s necklace suddenly appears on the staircase scene where she first spots Rhett Butler.)
You know, I may just have to check this movie out.
Reason I was asking is, the male lead in my story is called Ash, short for Ashley. Yes his parents are Southern. I was thinking ahead to the scene where he and the female lead make love for the first time, and wondering if I could get away with having her say, “Oh, Ashley!” without people taking it for a GWTW reference. Again, nothing against GWTW, but I don’t want to detract from the scene by having it look like a parody or a cliche.
To me, all sex scenes in books read like cliches 
Actually, I heard it was Groucho Marx(or was that who she suggested during the casting process?).
And as big a Groucho fan as I am(Owning all the Marx Bros. movies and some other parapheilia), I don’t think it would have worked. You wouldn’t be able to take him seriously, even if he did play it perfectly.
Oh, and Scarlett’s name was originally Pansy.
I know-I can’t see it working either.
I’ve never heard it suggested that Ella was a fetal alcohol syndrome baby. What evidence is there is the book? Ella is dismissed by Scarlett as being lackluster; Scarlett likes Bonnie much more because she’s pretty and vivacious. More evidence of Scarlett’s vacuity. 'Why, a cat’s a better mother than you are," Rhett tells her. I don’t think Margaret Mitchell didn’t know what to do with children. I think she was writing that Scarlett, as an immature, self-centered spoiled brat herself, didn’t know what to do with children.
As for the alcohol, I don’t recall it being mentioned that Scarlett nipped from the bottle very much until after Frank’s death. And then later, when things were falling apart with Rhett, she was nipping pretty heavily, long after Ella’s birth. While she was pregnant with Ella, she was busy from dawn til way past dark, trying to sell lumber and get enough money set aside for when she couldn’t work any more. I don’t recall any descriptions of her drinking while pregnant, but I could be wrong.
It was definitely Wade Hampton that was excluded from the party, in the book, which was the impetus for Rhett currying favor with the “Old Guard” so that Bonnie could have a future as a proper Southern belle. IIRC, he comes to this conclusion all on his own in the movie. “Daddy and the Democwats” and all that.
Trivia: Belle Watling was based on Belle Breezing, a notorious Lexington, Ky., madame.
Some books about Mitchell and about the movie claim different things. Some say that Mitchell wrote GwTW with a eye toward the movie rights, where some biographies vehemently insist that she did not.
One biography says that Mitchell wrote the book for her own entertainment, and never intended to publish it at all. It was a pet project which she only showed to a few friends, who enjoyed it, and talked about it. An acquaintance mocked her, saying that Mitchell’s book must not be very good, else she would have submitted it to a publisher. Mitchell was so irritated, the book says, that she submitted it to a publisher she knew. The manuscript was in terrible shape. “Peggy” Mitchell had kept chunks of it stored in cupboards, under the bed, in boxes, etc. Chapters (including the first) were entirely missing, and the whole book was out of order. Nevertheless, the publisher read it on his trip back to New York and fell in love with it.
The publisher insisted that the name “Pansy,” which had an entirely different meaning in the North, be changed. Mitchell later claimed that she combed through old family bibles, tax records and diaries for a name for her heroine, but some books suggest that “Scarlett” was in her mind all along. (After all, she used it in the scene in which her heroine gets drunk after finding Tara in near ruins.) Mitchell later said that she liked the name, because to her it suggested “scars” which, undoubtedly, Scarlett had. How she settled on it, however, is still a matter of debate.
A couple of biographers also speculate that Rhett’s inspiration was Mitchell’s first husband, whose knickname, interestingly enough, was “Red.” He was a wild, dashing, handsome young man, who had a temper. (He put Peggy in the hospital by beating her.) John Marsh (the possible inspiration for Ashley) was a gentle, scholary man, who “rescued” her from the horrible marriage. (He was actually Red’s best friend, and had been the best man at the wedding.) Some say that despite the beatings, turmoil and pain, Peggy never got over Red, and never really loved John with the same intense passion.
Mitchell was extremely jealous of her copyrights on GwTW, and persued violations of them personally and vigorously. In a vault in Atlanta, there is an envelope containing “proof” that Mitchell wrote GwTW in case her authorship is ever seriously challenged. (Some claim that it contains the “missing” chapter in which Rhett buys horses for Beatrice Tarelton after the war. John Marsh, Mitchell’s husband, mentioned the chapter after her death, but no record of it exists. Hence, some speculate * that * is what is in the envelope.)
Mitchell had several problems with the movie, but didn’t grouse too publicly. Her first was the portrayal of Tara and Twelve Oaks. For Tara, she had pictured a home like that of her grandparents, which was a simple two story Victorian-style home, with a small front porch. (I’ve seen pictures. It’s not “plantation-like” at all.) Twelve Oaks was pictured as looking like Tara. Mitchell was irritated at the movie Twelve Oaks’ grandure, saying nothing like it could be found in Clayton County. She also objected to a few constume decisions, such as having Scarlett wear a hat indoors at the bazaar scene. “Even Scarlett would not have such bad taste,” she said. Because of her zealous defence of her copyright, Selznick felt he needed to get permission to dress Scarlett in other colors than green and black, which were the only colors Scarlett wore in the book. Mitchell laughed, a little self-conciously, perhaps, and gave it. She also was not too pleased with Vivien Leigh’s selction at first, but loved her performance.
When it comes to the black characters having some say in the filming of the movie, they did-- to a certain extent. Some of the black characters resented having to speak in dialect. (The man who played Pork was particularly angry about it, and for the way his “stupid darky” character was portrayed, but went along nevertheless. I’ve seen costume stills. His face looks like a thunder cloud of anger.) During the scene in which Scarlett slaps Prissy, Vivien Leigh actually stuck Butterfly McQueen the first few times they filmed it, until Butterfly began to cry and refused to do the scene again, saying, “She’s hurting me!” The director came up with the innovation of filming the slap from behind Vivien’s back to disguise the fact she wasn’t really hitting Butterfly, and clapped loudly next to the boom mike.
Hattie McDaniel, the woman who played Mammy, was the first black American to win an Academy Award. Her acceptance speech, in which she pledged to be a “credit to her race” was written for her by Selznick’s people. She was so excited, she stammered through it, and broke down in tears afterward. Olivia DeHavilland, who played Melanie, also cried, but for different reason. She was up for the same award, but when McDaniel’s name was called, she burst into tears and ran into the kitchen, refusing to come back out for a long time. She did manage to graciously congratulate McDaniel afterward.
The filming of the movie had its difficulties. Vivien Leigh made things difficult for all by trying to keep the movie closer to the book, and pontificating on why each scene should be different. (Some called her “The British Bitch.”) Clark Gable and she never really “clicked.” She disliked kissing him because of his denture odor, and he thought she was stand-offish. The girl who played Suellen complained that her costumes were too rich. The petticoats she wore contained row upon row of expensive lace, even though they would never be seen by the camera. She thought it wasteful. Selznick was anal about being in control of every single scene, causing the directors to have nervous breakdowns. They went through several before George Cukor finally managed to deal with it. Clark Gable disliked him heartily, and not just because Cukor was gay, though that was part of it. He thought Cukor paid too much attention to the women, and not enough to his role.
All in all, the backstory behind the book and the movie make an interesting story in of themselves.