Seventy-five years after the premiere of the movie Gone with the Wind, research is shedding light on the racial tensions that existed at the time between the producer and city of Atlanta officials.
Emory University film studies professor Matthew Bernstein has conducted extensive research into the archives of the film's producer, David O Selznick. His findings illustrate some of David's concerns with the city's treatment of the film's black stars at the December 15, 1939 premiere.
"Producer David O. Selznick was upset that Hattie McDaniel would not be invited to the Atlanta premiere," said Mr Bernstein. "He argued over and over that she should be allowed."
David was guided by the office of Atlanta's then-mayor William B. Hartsfield. It was William that originally reached out to David to bring the premiere to the city.
"David, because he was Jewish, was very mindful of the persecution of the Jews in Europe in the late-1930s under Nazism," Mr Bernstein remarks. "And he saw an analogy between that persecution and the life of African-Americans under Jim Crow, especially in the South."
However, Katharine Brown, David's east coast assistant and story editor, concedes in a December 8, 1939 letter to David that efforts to include the black cast must end.
In contrast to the city's treatment of the movie's black cast, local black organizations performed at various events leading up to the night of the premiere.
Steve Klein, a spokesman for The King Center, confirmed the event as a reflection of the times but offered a poignant analogy for the civil- and human-rights icon. "It's kind of neat that he could go on and be awarded the Nobel Prize."
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