Gossip Friday: Runaway Race for Rhett?

From February 1937:

...I note that Joan Crawford is gaining strong support for the role of Scarlett O’Hara, that Melvyn Douglas and Franchot Tone are threatening Leslie Howard’s lead in the race for Ashley’s role and that Clark Gable’s runaway race for the part of Rhett Butler is stirring up determined opposition.

Those who want Clark can see nobody else in the role–those who don’t wax pretty savage in their counterblasts. As, for instance:

“All I can say is ‘Heaven forbid Gable in the role of Rhett!’ and you can tell the horde who had the stupidity to choose him that they had better read the book over again. Such a marvelous character would be utterly ruined by our two-fisted modern American.

“The only one who could come near to the part would be Ronald Colman, or possibly Errol Flynn or Charles Boyer.”

So asserts Miss Marjory King, 357 South Graham St. Pittsburgh, PA. Though only 16, Miss King doesn’t think she’s too young to know a good cast from a bad one and she’s “seen too many badly-cast movies not to be able to recognize a few good ones once in a while.”

Her opinion clashes head-on with that of Iva May Kirkman, 3440 Louisa St. Pittsburgh, PA., who writes “It seems strange to me that any one could have read the book and not have pictured Clark Gable as Rhett.

“To me, Rhett Butler was Clark Gable from the time he appeared in the book until the end. Why, Rhett looked exactly like Clark, he acted just as Clark Gable acted in the majority of his pictures, especially in ‘San Francisco’–he just WAS Clark Gable.”

Then after picking Miriam Hopkins for Scarlett, Helen Hayes for Melanie and Leslie Howard for Ashley, Miss Kirkman predicts, “the picture will probably bloom forth with the handsome, wooden Frederic March and, perhaps, the attractive but worse-than-ham Joan Crawford! The advance ballyhoo might even read ‘Crawford Loves March’. Oh, me!”

Now Helen Winters of Fayette City, Pa., would argue that point with you, Miss Kirkman. It’s Miss Winter’s conviction that Joan would be a grand Scarlett for she is “fiery-looking and better-suited than blond Miriam Hopkins.”

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Don’t you love how they post people’s full home addresses?! Can you imagine?! Wonder how many Gable fans egged little Marjory’s house? Charles Boyer is about one of the most laughable choices for Rhett I’ve ever heard. A lot of people opposed Vivien Leigh as Scarlett because she was British, and you propose a Frenchman for the Charleston-born Rhett? Miriam Hopkins was a popular choice for Scarlett. Joan Crawford, while I do like her, is just a ridiculous choice.

I get flak for this, but I don’t think Leslie Howard was the ideal choice for Ashley. Don’t think Melvyn Douglas or Franchot Tone would have worked either. I always liked Jeffrey Lynn’s audition.