Gossip Friday: Snippets from the set of Gone with the Wind

From August 1939:

There’s a mad scramble between every scene on the “Gone with the Wind” set. For Vivien Leigh is an Anagram fiend and Olivia de Havilland is equally rabid on the subject of Chinese Checkers–and they like Clark Gable for a partner. Gable happens to like both girls and both games, but he’s hit upon a practical solution for the predicament. It’s three-handed bridge and now everyone is happy.

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Though Vivien Leigh has many elaborate costumes for “Gone with the Wind”, her costliest is the ugliest dress she wears in the picture. Fourteen copies of this dress had to be made, for it is the one which she wears when fleeing Atlanta–and then wears until it literally falls to pieces. Each copy of the dress had to show more wear and tear, and the last and most ragged copy made the biggest dent in the Selznick budget. For the girls in the wardrobe department worked two days to “age” it. Various trypes of knives, steel combs, brushes, sandpaper and wood rasps were used to abrade the cloth and chemical agents had to be applied with great care of that faded effect.

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Selznick Studios would prefer that the results of their recent nationwide poll be kept on the QT. They investigated the country’s reaction to the selection of Vivien Leigh as Scarlett and the result was somewhat of a blow. Though 30% approved to the 30% who didn’t, 40% of the great American public didn’t know anyone had been chosen for the role.