Frankly, my dear, I give a damn! Gone With The Wind’s 80th Anniversary

by Michael P Coleman

This weekend is the 80th anniversary of the release of the cinematic “classic” Gone With The Wind. I think I am one of the few African American people who admit to loving the film. I have owned it on every format on which it’s been released since its initial VHS release in 1985. But I just caught the last 30 minutes or so of the almost four hour epic on Turner Classic Movies, as I was channel surfing last night — and I had to watch the rest of it.

My mother always swore by both the 1936 best-selling novel, which I first read (at her recommendation) when I was a teenager, and the movie, which even today is the US box office’s biggest hit after adjusting for inflation. The book was that generation’s Harry Potter, and the movie boasted the biggest production budget of any film ever produced by Hollywood up to that point.

Some say Gone With The Wind is a racist film, but to my mind it is no more racist than any other movie Hollywood released in 1939. Do you see any African American workers on that Kansas farm depicted in The Wizard Of Oz? Hell, there aren’t even any brown Munchkins in The Lollipop Guild.

A lot of film buffs revere Rhett Butler’s final line in GWTW, brilliantly delivered by Clark Cable: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” It’s a great line that’s culled directly from the novel, and it’s one that Hollywood censors tried to omit from the film. There’s nothing else that Rhett would have said at that point.

Again, it’s a GREAT line…but others are even better.

Read MPC’s full feature on GWTW, including his tribute to the first black actor to win an Academy Award, Hattie McDaniel.