Seventy years have passed since the American public first heard Vivienne Leigh say "I can't think about that right now... I'll think about that tomorrow," during the Atlanta premiere of Gone With the Wind.
The movie, based on Margaret Mitchell's novel of the same name, was first shown at Atlanta's Loew's Grand Theater in 1939. Produced by David O. Selznick, it immediately gained great success due to a magnificent duo of Vivienne Leigh as hard-bitten Scarlett O'Hara and Clark Gable as alluring Rhett Butler.
Large-scale three-day festivities, fancy-dress balls and limousine parades accompanied the show, attended by about 2,000 people. The Georgia authorities declared December 15, when the premiere took place, a state holiday.
The New York Times reported that thousands lined the streets as "the demonstration exceeded anything in Atlanta's history for noise, magnitude and excitement."
"What I was most impressed with was that the little bit of mist in the searchlights looked like diamonds. I've carried that with me all my life," Mrs. Frederick, who was 10 when she attended the premiere, was quoted by the Chattanooga Times Free Press as saying.
Gone With the Wind, representing a wide range of human characters amid a large-scale picture of the American Civil War, received ten Oscars and is considered one of the greatest and most popular films of all time and one of the main symbols of Hollywood's golden age. It also remains the highest grossing film of all time, with figures adjusted for inflation, in North America and the U.K.
In 2005, the American Film Institute declared Rhett Butler's infamous farewell line to Scarlett O'Hara, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn", the most memorable line in cinema history.
WASHINGTON, December 15 (RIA Novosti)
