Hollywood and Historical Fact

Gone With The Wind remains one of the most watched and celebrated films of all time, and its popularity today is encapsulated by a 70th anniversary edition DVD release. The film endures for the same reasons it was an instant success at the box office in 1939 (the romantic love triangle in the face of adversity, nostalgia for a bygone, apparently simpler, era, etc.), and the very fact that it continues to enjoy such popularity is perhaps telling of the United States true inability to fully recover from the civil war. Furthermore, for a film which premiered in Atlanta, GA, and thus barred Hattie McDaniel and the other black actors and actresses from attending its first screening, Gone With The Wind embodies the perpetuating covert racism which will seemingly forever endure in the United States.


As Edward Campbell has noted, the 1960’s and the on-set of the Civil Rights Movement allowed Hollywood to reconsider the plantation film in a more honest light. Yet the fact that a more historically accurate (and honest) portrayal of plantation life for African Americans has not even reached half the heights of Gone With The Wind underscores that, when faced with a choice between the comforting myth and the harsh reality, Americans will almost always sacrifice historical fact.