Gone with the Wednesday: Leslie Howard Speaks Scarlett

In my years of vintage magazine collecting, I haven’t come across many interviews with Leslie Howard, but here’s one! In the July 1939 issue of Hollywood magazine, Leslie discusses Scarlett and Gone with the Wind, in an interview conducted at Busch Gardens in Pasadena, while on location filming the Twelve Oaks barbecue scene.

Here’s Howard’s take on Scarlett:

“…what people seem to overlook is that Scarlett was so modern! Scarlett O’Hara was a new-fashioned girl in an old-fashioned setting She was a 1939 sub-deb…in hoopskirts.”

“Possibly my idea of Scarlett differs from that of some people. But I’ve studied her carefully. I think I’m right. She was fascinating, even more for some vital quality in her character than for her beauty. She would do what she set out to do, no matter if in doing it she went to her own destruction. You admire her determination, and her courage. When things went wrong, she didn’t submit. She smashed and hammered till she rearranged them or found a way out. But no man could endure Scarlett for a lifetime. She would drive him mad. She was ruthless, dazzling, and hard. Even Rhett Butler leaves her, you know. There is some indication in the book that he may come back–but I don’t think he did.”

“Of course I don’t mean that modern women are necessarily ruthless and hard. When I say that Scarlett was modern, I mean that she didn’t bow to fate or remain quietly at home weeping for what she wanted. She went right out and tried to get it. She had a fine confidence in her own ability, a thoroughly up-to-date self reliance. To her day, it wasn’t the thing for a owman to be aggressive, you know. A woman didn’t go out into the world and fight for what she wanted, whether it was a livelihood or anything else. The nice girl stayed at home, very ladylike, and married well.”

“Naturally, if the Civil War hadn’t come along, Scarlett might not have developed into quite the clever business woman and the shrewd oppurtunist which she became. But, mind you, those characteristics were there all the time; ready to undld under the right conditions. I’ve said Scarlett was ruthless. I’m wondering if all really great women–and she had elements of greatness–weren’t ruthless, too. Perhaps they have to be. Queen Elizabeth, Catherine of Russia…Nevertheless, Scarlett is a character whom women admire more than men do. Oh yes, I believe that. Women like her because she does what she pleases, and often gets the better of men ina  battle of wits. This doesn’t please men so much.”