A Photographer’s View on Gone with the Wind and Carole Lombard

In 1940, Fred Parrish, a well-known Hollywood photographer, mused on some of his favorite moments.

Gone with the Wind

For a scene of the evacuation of Atlanta in GWTW, a horse-drawn ammuniton wagon was to come down the street and explode just as the horse passed [a lamp post]. I picked the safe side of the street, but when the bomb in the wagon went off, the horse went the wrong way so fast he made Seabiscuit look sick. If it had not been for the iron safety bowl used in the wagon, I would have been blown right off the lot!

I’ll bet the hardest work [Clark Gable] ever did was the scene in “GWTW” in which he carried Scarlett up a long staircase. He did thirty times at almost a dead run before the “take” was okayed!

Ask me who I like the most, and the answer is Vivien Leigh.  While shooting the evacuation of Atlanta, she started work every morning at 6:30. At 11:30 at night she was still running through the streets, dodging horses and being bumped around by extras. At midnight I thought she was ready to collapse. “You’re too tired to take a still,” I said. She grinned. “I’m not too tired if you’re not–I can pose for ’em as long as you can shoot ’em!”

[And also] the gamest star is Vivien Leigh. In “GWTW,” standing at the top of a staircase, she tells Gable she is to have a baby. Sarcastically he asks who is to be the father. She swings at him, he ducks and she falls. We shot the beginning of the fall three times, the end fifteen in a whole day!

Carole Lombard

Carole IS a lady! Too many gossip writers harp on Carole Lombard’s language. She does what she feels–but never swears unless it fits the situation, while some cuss to be vulgar. As a gag when I took this picture she hit me smack in the stomach with the ball. She’s unpredictable!

Carole’s Stand In

This was censored. Imagine what Carole Lombard would look like running around on the screen in this costume. The picture above shows her stand-in being light-tested in a “skeleton suit” on the “Nothing Sacred” set. Later, powers-that-be decided the idea was not so good. Carole is an agreeable subject for “gag” pictures; she is never snobbish with photographers or co-workers.