PANSY O’HARA. JUST doesn’t sound right, does it? That’s what Margaret Mitchell (1900–1949) had named her heroine in the initial version of Gone with the Wind (1936), the hit book that almost wasn’t. A newspaper reporter, Mitchell tried her hand at writing fiction while she recovered from a horseback-riding accident. Ashamed of the novel, she kept it secret from her closest friends—until one of them egged her on by suggesting that she probably couldn’t write a successful novel. Mitchell impulsively delivered the manuscript to an eager editor, and the rest is history: Pansy became Scarlett, Gone with the Wind won readers’ hearts (and the 1937 Pulitzer), and on the silver screen Clark Gable told Vivien Leigh, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” If you do—give a damn, that is—take this quick Gone with the Wind quiz.
1. After Gone with the Wind, what was Mitchell’s bestselling novel?
2. What word was changed or added to Rhett Butler’s most famous line in the film version (“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”) ?
3. What was Alexandra Ripley’s 1991 Gone with the Wind sequel called?
4. What 2001 parallel novel recast Gone with the Wind from the point of view of Cynara, Scarlett’s mixed-race half sister?
5. Why was Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to win an Oscar—she won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her role in the movie version of Gone with the Wind—unable to attend the movie’s premiere?
ANSWERS
1. There wasn’t one—Mitchell published only one novel in her lifetime.
2. “Frankly.” In the book, Rhett tells Scarlett, “My dear, I don’t give a damn.”
3. Scarlett.
4. The Wind Done Gone, by Alice Randall.
5. The movie theater was segregated.