NOT A REVIEW BUT MORE A REMINDER OF 'GONE WITH THE WIND'

Gone with the Wind from 1939

The same industry that's still moaning about the 70-year-old Blacklist is now banning/blacklisting a classic motion picture where the first African American actress/actor ever won an Oscar...

Heck, even George Clooney, in his own infamous Oscar Speech, took partial credit for Hattie McDaniel's victory... years before he was born... and now he's probably right on board throwing GONE WITH THE WIND into the cautious, politically-correct wind...

And yet, if it must be done, the only reason to ban such a magnificent-looking movie is that it's a tad overrated. Especially since the secondary male lead in Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes is so outrageously miscast, fitting his proper wife Olivia de Havilland as Melanie Hamilton but for the wonderfully cute and spunky, timeless beauty Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara to pathetically hold a torch for this dullard who resembles an anorexic goat is just... too much to fathom...

Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND

George Reeves and Vivian Leigh in GONE WITH THE WIND Rating: ****

Thank God for Rhett Butler, and thank Him again for Clark Gable, who brought such snarky bravado to the glorious rogue that you'll want the imperfect union to unite; Han Solo and Princess Leia weren't all that original. Scenes with Gable lecturing Leigh and Leigh bickering back are what GONE WITH THE WIND is really all about... That's if you don't count the viciously wicked fun of watching Leigh's Scarlett leap from one doomed husband to the next...

All surrounded by the Civil War's beginning in the Southern Plantation called Tara where men (including George Reeves) swoon at Scarlett's feet... the middle with the burning of Atlanta and most of what makes this an epic's epic worth watching... and the end, and after the end... Where the story hits a snag. And a pretty long snag at that...

Leslie Howard and Vivian Leigh in GONE WITH THE WIND

But at the same time is where Scarlett's desperation bares teeth: one scene involving her defense of the dying plantation seems more befitting a dark 1960's Spaghetti Western than a 1930's Historical Melodrama; then when the couple becomes a couple, it's all perfectly, deliberately downhill like any terrific Victorian-style soap opera that doesn't give a damn how pathetic it has to get...
 
But the beautiful slave who in one sequence saves Scarlett's life, Everett Brown, one of several unsung heroes like Hattie McDaniel's Mammy, who's tougher than a parent and wiser than a best friend... and at the same time, perhaps they're pointless reasons for the pointlessness of banning a classic about Southern men and women gallantly depicted holding onto what we know, and they learn, won't and simply could not last... And it didn't at that!

Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND with Hattie McDaniel

Vivian Leigh as Scarlet O'Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND

Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND

Hattie McDaniel as Mammy in GONE WITH THE WIND

Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND with George Reeves

Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND

Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND

Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in GONE WITH THE WIND

Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND with Clark Gable

Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND with Clark Gable

Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND with Leslie Howard

Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND with Everett Brown

Gone with the Wind directed by Victor Fleming bodies sequence

Olivia de Havilland in GONE WITH THE WIND

Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND

Hattie McDaniel and Clark Gable in GONE WITH THE WIND

Vivian Leigh as Scarlet O'Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND

Civil War raging in GONE WITH THE WIND

Vivian Leigh as Scarlet O'Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND

Vivian Leigh and Everett Brown in GONE WITH THE WIND

Vivian Leigh and Everett Brown in GONE WITH THE WIND

Paul Muni and Everett Brown in I AM A FUGITIVE ON A CHAIN GANG

Scorched earth and rainbow shot of a deserted Tara in GONE WITH THE WIND