Gone with the Wednesday: Clark Gable Reflects Back on Rhett Butler

Clark Gable didn’t want to play Rhett Butler–mainly because everyone else wanted him to. He often described how, even before he himself had read the book, people would call him “Rhett” and ask him when he was signing on for the film. He thought it was a great role, certainly, but the pressure was too great. In the end, it wasn’t really his decision, as he was traded like cattle to Selznick for MGM to have the distribution rights.

Clark remained nonchalant about the film for years afterward. He had done his work, gotten his paycheck, that was the end of it to him. I’ve had people say to me at Gone with the Wind events in recent years, how wouldn’t it have been wonderful if Clark was alive to attend such events? My answer is always that there is no way in God’s green earth he ever would. I imagine he would be amazed at how much people still love the film to this day.

It’s interesting to hear him talk about Gone with the Wind when he was older, as he reflected back on it.

From an interview in 1957:

“I don’t see how you could have avoided playing Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind,” I said. “The whole country cast you in it long before the cameras began to roll.”

“That was exactly the trouble,” Gable said. “Not only that, but it seemed to me that the public’s casting was being guided by an elaborate publicity campaign.”

I disagreed. “That casting was a natural thing,” I said. “No studio or producer controlled it. I sat in any number of bull sessions in friends’ homes while we cast that picture. Nobody said we ought to cast it, we just did. And the way we non-movie employees cast it was the way it was eventually cast on the screen. Almost everybody agreed on you as Rhett Butler, Leslie Howard as Ashley, and Olivia de Havilland as Melanie.”

“My thinking about it was this,” Gable told me; “that novel was one of the all-time best sellers. People didn’t just read it, they lived it. They visualized its characters, and they formed passionate convictions about them. You say a lot of people thought I ought to play Rhett Butler, but I didn’t know how many had formed that opinion.”

“Enough,” I said.

“There are never enough,” he told me. “But one thing was certain: they had a preconceived idea of the kind of Rhett Butler they were going to see, and suppose I came up empty?”

I’d never head that phrase before, so he explained, “I thought, all of them have already played Rhett in their minds; suppose I don’t come up with what they already have me doing. Then I’m in trouble. If they saw one little thing I did that didn’t agree with their remembrance of the books, they’d howl. I’d done the same thing myself when I’d wanted to be a Shakespearean actor. I’d taken a copy of ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Richard II’ or ‘Othello’ to the theater with me and I’d sat in the balcony—I couldn’t afford to sit anyplace else—and I’d checked on the Shakespearean actors. I’d say, ‘Why that—missed an ‘and’ or he left out a ‘but.’ He can’t do that.’”

“I’ve seen Gone with the Wind three times,” I told him, “and I had the feeling you enjoyed it.”

“It was a challenge,” he said, “I enjoyed it from that point of view. But my chin was out to there. I knew what people expected of me and suppose I didn’t produce?”

“But you did produce,” I said.

“Maybe so,” he said noncommittally.

“When did you finally get it through your head you’d done all right?”

He said, “The night we opened in Atlanta, I said, ‘I guess this movie is in.’”

“How did you figure that?” I asked. “Did you enjoy it yourself or did you gauge it by other people’s reactions?”

“Other people’s reactions,” he told me.

From 1956:

 I asked Gable what he thought of the continued success of GWTW.

“Those revivals are the only thing that keeps me a big star,” he said. “Every time that picture is re-released, a whole crop of young moviegoers get interested in me.”

“What do you remember about the film’s premiere in Atlanta?” I asked.

“You should have seen the way those Southern belles looked at Carole. She was so damn beautiful.”

“How did the audience react to that first screening?” I asked.

“You’da thought I’d won the second Civil War for the South. The Atlanta papers called it the biggest news event since Sherman.”