Gone with the Wednesday: Facts for Your Own Gone with the Wind Trivia Game

In 1940, Photoplay magazine supplied its readers with facts on Gone with the Wind so that they could play their own GWTW trivia game…

Hollywood can talk of nothing these days but Gone with the Wind. It’s crept into every luncheon and dinner party until hostesses, in despair, have invented a Gone with the Wind game. Pencils and papers with questions to be answered concerning the mighty epic are passed around at every gathering. The one winning the highest score gets the prize. Why not try it at your parties, too? With [us] supplying all the answers to facts and figures, you can make up your own questions.

Here goes:

The Margaret Mitchell book was purchased by David Selznick for $50,000 on June 3, 1936. Garbo was rumored as Scarlett. Other Hollywood producers offered Selznick as high as $1,000,000 for the rights. They were refused.

Gable was signed om August 25, 1938 for Rhett Butler and Shearer was announced as Scarlett. The nation went crazy. Shearer withdrew.

There is no wind in the picture, but there were 4400 people employed directly by the studio for the picture. The largest number who worked at one time was 1, 730. In all, 2,400 extras were employed.

Leslie Howard, an Englishman, and Olivia de Havilland, born in Tokyo of English parents, were signed for Southern Ashley Wilkes and Melanie.

Three talent scouts were dispatched to the South to find a Scarlett. Twenty-eight actresses were tested for the role and a total of 149,000 feet of black and white film and 13,000 feet of Technicolor were filmed in the testing. Cost of testing was $92,000.

First scene shot without a Scarlett on December 10, 1938, was the burning of Atlanta. A visitor to the scene, Englishwoman Vivien Leigh, was signed as Scarlett, January 13, 1939. Official starting date of the picture was January 13, 1939. Final shot was made November 11, 1939.

Seven hundred mustaches, 500 pairs of sideburns and 300 yards of crepe hair were used. Scarlett used thirty-eight different hairdresses. The completed picture runs three hours and forty-five minutes.

On February 15, 1939, Director Cukor resigned in favor of Victor Fleming. Vivien Leigh worked a total of 125 days of actual shooting, Gable seventy-one, de Havilland fifty-nine, and Howard thirty-two.

Scarlett wore forty-four separate costumes. Gable thirty-six, Olivia twenty-one, Leslie eleven. The cleaning bill alone amounted to $10,000.

In use were 1,000 horses, 9,000 bit and extra people, 375 assorted animals and 450 vehicles.

One million man hours of labor went into the making. Exactly 475,000 feet of film were exposed and 675,000 lineal feet of Technicolor film printed.

And, finally, the money spent on the picture was $3,957,000.