Library Journal Review
The year 1939 has been routinely ranked as Hollywood's biggest and best, and no film has been more beloved than the Civil War epic Gone with the Wind. On the 75th anniversary of the film's release, this lavishly illustrated book, a companion to an exhibit at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, chronicles the talent searches, casting contests (within and outside Hollywood), the frenzied pace of production, often employing three or four directors at a time, and the spectacular Atlanta premiere and triumphant national rollout to theaters. The perfectionist producer and prolific memo writer David O. Selznick supervised all the details while coping with unsolicited advice from the NAACP, the Sons of Union Veterans, even California's Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, who offered to serve as the film's technical adviser. Although critics have complained that the movie glosses over the horrors of slavery, presenting a sanitized, sentimental view of the prewar South, its music, photography, costumes, art direction, and set designers were all working at the top of their game, a dedication to craft that now also seems gone with the wind. VERDICT This volume examines every detail and legend relating to the film's production and, if it sometimes gets bogged down with too many memos and trivial matters, this only serves to make the work more attractive to Gone with the Wind addicts.-Stephen Rees, formerly with Levittown Lib., PA (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
