1939 The world premiere of the MGM adaptation of Gone with the Wind was held at Loew’s Grand Theater in Atlanta (the town so memorably burned in Margaret Mitchell’s novel and the David O. Selznick film) on 17 December 1939. ‘The South’ – it was said – would be mortally offended if it were held anywhere else. The New York and Los Angeles opening showings were duly postponed to 19 December.
The stars and their spouses (Clark Gable and Carole Lombard; Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier), together with the author and a host of film dignitaries, attended a grand reception at the Georgian Terrace Hotel; while, opposite on Peachtree Street, spotlights played over the cinema and the crowds massed to catch a glimpse of their screen idols.
Guests at the celebration in the hotel were entertained by the allnegro Ebenezer Church Choir, under choir-mistress Alberta Williams King. They were dressed in slave costume and sang negro spirituals. Among the choir was the leader’s son, ten-year-old Martin Luther King, dressed as a handsome little pickaninny.
Loew’s was a white-only theatre and the choir would not have been able to join the ecstatic audience that night – or any night until 1940, when GWTW (as enthusiasts called it) was shown to segregated audiences.
Although MGM tempered the unreconstructed elements in Mitchell’s text (Rhett, for example, does not ride with the Klan), it is unlikely that the future leader of the civil rights movement would have found much to entertain him in the film, other than the spirited performance of Butterfly McQueen as Scarlett’s maid, Prissy.