Gossip Friday: Tara Lives Again

From December 1958:

Some 20 years ago, an acre of real estate in Culver City, Calif. hypnotized millions of movie-goers. It was the site of the mansion Tara in the silver screen epic, “Gone with the Wind.”

Hollywood artizans had fashioned a structure that probably out-dazzled any of the real “plantation palaces” which dotted the southern landscape at the time of the Civil War.

Two decades later, time has taken its toll on the bleak location.

The once brilliant white colonades, where Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh and the late Leslie Howard strolled, have become shades of faded gray. Still they stand, majestic and formidable, guarding the entrance to the make-believe building.

Those bright, colonial green shutters are now only hinged frames through which a howling wind spins dried autumn leaves into what were grand drawing rooms graced by ornate circular staircases.

Once again, however, a filmland’s Tara is working for the celluloid cameras.

The TV series, “Yancy Derringer,” set in the post-Civil War era, uses the dilapidated building and adjacent structures in many episodes where the script calls for a war-ruined mansion.

When David Selznick’s cameras rolled on “GWTW” the beautifully landscaped grounds formed a colorful backdrop for the movie’s stars.

Now the lush gardens are overgrown with brush. Tumble weed has rolled against the mansion from a western movie set on the other side of the forlorn hill.

Tara is merely a ghost of its former self. But it still remains a thing of beauty in the yes of some.

There are sentimental stagehands and prop men who occasionally stroll out to the old building during their lunch breaks.

Some linger in the sun hear the smoke house. Others munch sandwiches on the brick steps which stretch the length of the building.

Tara, as someone has said, is a monument of a sort to an era out of the past.

Only it is a monument which is living and breathing again–this time in the era of television.