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We got up early this morning and took the shuttle from our hotel back to the airport and caught the MARTA (the metro) into the city. It was virtually a ghost town, which was really confusing because I’d never seen a big city so dead. The ticket guy at the station said a) it’s Sunday and b) there’s a football game in town. It was strange. MARTA is pretty efficient, and I like that the train cars are fairly big; we weren’t packed in like sweaty sardines in a can like on some lines of the Tube in London, but it also doesn’t come every 6 minutes like the Tube does. Still, it got us to where we needed to go for fairly cheap, so that was awesome.
LONDON?! No? Where is everyone?
This station reminded me of one in London–Charing Cross, I think. Look at all those stairs! It’s like climbing a concrete mountain.
Our first stop was the World of Coca-Cola, which is an actual factory and we took an interesting tour and saw some pretty cool memorabilia, like this:
Clark Gable and Joan Crawford like Coke
At the end of the tour, there was a room with about 5 or 6 different kiosks that served Coca-Cola products from all over the globe. Some of them were pretty good, others were really interesting, and some were really not very good. We tasted a drink from Italy called “Beverly” which happened to be the most disgusting soda I’ve ever had in my life. I can’t even decribe it, it tasted like some sort of medicine. No thanks, “Beverly!”
We then made our way to Midtown MARTA station and took 10th street to the Margaret Mitchell Museum. We had remembered reading somewhere that Margaret Mitchell called this house “the dump” because it was so small. When we saw the outside we said, “Say what? This house is big!” But it turns out MM and John Marsh only lived in the downstairs apartment which was 3 small rooms. She called it “the dump” because she had grown up in a mansion. Anyway, MM wrote most of Gone with the Wind in this house. And isn’t it funny to think that she didn’t think anything of her book when she was writing it? She didn’t think it any good. WRONG, Margaret Mitchell! Yours is the only novel I’ve ever read more than once (I’ve read it 3 times, actually). So I think it was good!
Margaret Mitchell House & Museum
There was a small movie museum next door to the MM House that had the huge painting of Scarlett that was used in the film of GWTW. It looks kind of scary but it was so cool!
It was used in the movie!
Autumn
Afterword, we walked up Peachtree Street and found the Georgian Terrace Hotel, where stars from GWTW stayed during the premier. It was really posh inside, very fitting for Vivien Leigh, methinks, although did she stay in the governor’s mansion with Larry instead? I got a chocolate/raspberry cupcake at Mims Cafe next door. We were then accosted by a possible vagrant who “needed $2.15 to get a MARTA ticket because he just moved to Decatur and his friend left him stranded.” I hope he enjoyed that ‘MARTA ticket.”
For dinner we headed over to the Pittypat’s Porch restaurant downtown. It was pricey but we figured we had to try it. I think I gained 10 lbs in that one sitting, there was so much food! I got the salmon, which was really good. We also decided we had to try mint juleps since none of us had ever had one/ I think we were expecting it to be a mojito but boy were we wrong. It looked like dirty pond water with algae at the bottom. And it tasted about the same. The bourbon and mint were so strong. Kasia forced herself to drink almost the whole thing, but it looked like quite a struggle. I quit after 1/2 a glass. Oh! The ladies’ room at Pittypat’s was so cute! It had a powder room and everything.
Mint juleps = Beverly...or pond water. Are those organisms swimming around in there?
We decided mint juleps are the “Beverly” of cocktails. I tried to picture Scarlett O’Hara (if she were real) or even Vivien Leigh drinking mint juleps on the porch (or the balcony?) and had a hard time. Although Vivien’s favorite drink was apparently a gin and tonic which I also don’t like very much because it’s so dry. Oh, Alcohol.
Then we went into a food coma and decided to go back to the hotel. The night ended with Tool Academy on VH1 and a program about monorails on the Travel Channel.
Tomorrow: Atlanta History Center, Jonesboro, and beyond!
I’m leaving tomorrow morning for Atlanta and I have to say I’m really excited! At first I was a bit indifferent, not because I didn’t want to go, but because the event tickets were pretty pricey and because all of this other stressful stuff kept happening here on the home front. But now that it’s actually here and plans have started to fall in line, I’m really stoked about it! This is something I felt I just had to participate in.
I’ve never been to the South before (unless you count Texas, but isn’t that more of the “midwest”?), so I’m really curious as to what my impression will be. A good one, I hope, for his California girl. I do know this, though: I’ve wanted to take a “Gone with the Wind roadtrip” for YEARS, and now it’s finally happening! I’m traveling with my friend and fellow Larry and Viv lover Kasia, who I met in London back in February, and her sister, Maggie. They’re traveling from Poland just for the event! We’re staying in Atlanta, and then driving to Savannah and Charleston in search of a little Southern hospitality and a fictional guy named Rhett Butler before going back to Marietta for the GWTW re-premier event. Exciting! I’m hoping to see lots of old houses and dripping Spanish moss. I’ve also been told the hush puppies are a must-eat. I don’t know what a hush puppy is but I’ll give it a try!
Let’s see, do I have everything ready?
- fancy dresses: check
- fancy shoes: check
- laptop: check
- phone: check
- charged ipod: check
- Siamese cat: check–wait! Coco’s not coming with me!
- camera: check
- tickets: check
- something to share with fellow Vivien Leigh fans: check
- everything else: check, check
expect lots of photos for vivandlarry.com
I will try and update here every day about my experience so please check back often! Have a wonderful week, and if you’re attending the event, I look forward to hopefully meeting you!
If you’re a big fan of films from 1939, you know that this year is the 70th anniversary of such classics as The Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights, and of course, Gone with the Wind. Every year the American Cinematheque screens classic films at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, CA, and Grauman’s Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Blvd.
This year, in honor of 70 years of 1939, The Egyptian will be screening Gone with the Wind on Saturday, November 28 at 7:30pm. What makes the Egyptian special is that it was THE original “picture palace” and is now a Los Angeles historic-cultural landmark. It may look rather small on the outside, but don’t let that fool you. The inside looks like an opera house with gilt ceilings and a real organ!
Interior: Grauman's Egyptian Theater circa 1922
The Egyptian is steeped in Hollywood history–having been built by the famous Sid Grauman (who also built the Chinese Theater and the El Capitan Theater a few blocks down)–and was the location for the first ever Hollywood premier: Robin Hood starring Douglas Fairbanks in 1922. In later years the theater fell into disrepair and was sold to the American Cinematheque in 1996, whereupon the funds were raised to restore it to its former glory. Though the Chinese Theater has surpassed it in fame due to its location and all of those celebrity hand prints out front, The Egyptian is still a wonder to behold and a pleasure in which to see films of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Street Entrance on Hollywood Blvd.
This will be the second time I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Gone with the Wind at the Egyptian and I can say first hand that is it such a wonderful experience. The print that they’ve shown previously is pretty old and very saturated with Technicolor, so it’s always interesting to see this film as it was shown over the decades to different audiences, and how technology has come so far in digitally restoring films. Moreover, it’s always fun to see it with a whole crowd of people who love it as much as you do.
Gone with the Wind
If you’re in the LA area, you can purchase tickets to the screening on Fandango. Don’t miss out on this fabulous opportunity!
Yesterday I went to Long Beach on a date. We were going to go to the aquarium, but it looked like it was closed, so we ended up going to visit the RMS Queen Mary instead. I hadn’t been on that boat since I was 8 years old, and at the time, I didn’t really recognize or care about its history. This time, however, I revelled in it!
The RMS Queen Mary is a Cunard White Star Line (the same as Titanic, I believe) cruise ship/luxury passenger liner that sailed the Atlantic from 1936-1967. During WWII, the Queen mary served as a transport ship, taking soldiers across the Atlantic to the battles in Europe. At the time, she was the fastest liner on the ocean, cruising at about 35 miles per hour, much faster than actual battle ships.
After her final voyage in 1967, the Queen Mary was permanently docked in Long Beach, where she remains to this day, serving as a maritime museum and hotel. Howard Hughes’ famous plane The Spruce Goose used to be on display in the dome next door the the Queen Mary, and I remember visiting both sites when I was a kid, but the Spruce Goose has since been moved to another location.
So why am I writing about this as part of my website blog, you ask? Well, before the days of trans-atlantic air travel, most people went from Europe to America and vice versa by sea, including many famous people from Hollywood’s Golden Age. In December, 1938, our very own Vivien Leigh sailed from England to New York aboard the Queen Mary. It was her first trip to America. She had gone to be with Laurence Olivier who was in Hollywood filming William Wyler’s Wuthering Heights, and she then landed the role that was to make her famous: Scarlett in Gone with the Wind.
Though there are sadly no photos of Vivien in the museum on board the ship, it does boast many photos of other celebrities including a giant photo mural of celebrities on board the ship that includes some of the Oliviers’ famous friends such as David Niven, Clark Gable and Noel Coward. And anyway, it’s a really neat tourist attraction, especially if you’re a history buff like me, or a Hollywood fan in general (they filmed a famous episode of The X-Files on the ship–the one where Moulder and Scully get stuck in a time warp in the Bermuda Triangle. The Queen Mary stood in for a WWII vessel) 
The RMS Queen Mary is open to visitors from 10am to 6 pm daily. General admission is $25. There is also a Ghosts and Legends tour (the ship is one fo the top haunted atractions in the country) for $3 more.
The Queen Mary 2 passes by its predecessor on its maiden voyage to Mexico from Los Angeles, February 2006.
Me in front of the Queen Mary, Long Beach
Clark Gable on board the ship in the 1950s
You can see more locations around southern CA pertaining to Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh HERE
Review (with spoilers!): Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939), and one girl’s (me) journey into the past.
Oh boy, where to start, where to start? I guess I’ll start by saying that this is my favorite film of all time; it is also my favorite novel of all time as well. Usually I end up disappointed with films that are adapted from my favorite books but not this time. Can you believe that there was a time when I detested this movie? I didn’t even want to try watching it. It was “too old, boring, annoying, long, and did I mention too old?” I’m sad to say that for a girl who had been in love with the movies her whole life, I wasn’t a very open-minded film nerd.
That all changed when I was 18. You see my friend, Tara, who was named after GWTW, had a poster of Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in that famous shot where Rhett has asked her to marry him and then he plants a dominating kiss on her. I said, “Tara, what? You actually like that movie?” To which she replied, “Yeah, it’s like my favorite movie ever, it’s so good.” I was confused. How could my friend who was so awesome, like this film? But what if she was right? What if it WAS the best film ever and I was missing out for being so stubborn?
I decided to read the book first; I got a used paperback for like $4 and proceeded to read it. Within a couple chapters, I was hooked. I’d always loved to read, and adored books with intricate and detailed imagery. I like to be able to picture the scene in my mind and feel like I’m there, in another time and another place. I like to believe the characters, even if I don’t like them. Isn’t that what good books are all about? Needless to say, I finished the novel after two months feeling accomplished and sad at the same time. Accomplished because I’d read long books before, but not as long as GWTW (to this day it remians the most lengthy book I’ve ever read aside from “The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas). Sad because it was over. The saga of Scarlett O’Hara and her love for the wrong man was over and then I was thrust back into reality and I wanted more. I wanted to go back to the Civil War South and stay there. Well, the next best thing to do was see the film. So my mom bought it for me for Christmas, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Gone with the Wind is the story of selfish, beautiful and manipulative Scarlett O’Hara, whose life is shaped by the American Civil War and Reconstruction. Scarlett thinks she loves the dreamy Ashley Wilkes but is sought after by the roguish Rhett Butler who seeks to make her love him. As Scarlett’s world is turned upside down by circumstance and her own actions, so are her feelings toward those who love her and those she can’t quite understand her feelings for. Once she realizes that her love for Ashley Wilkes was nothing more than a fantasy, an illusion, it may be too late to have a life with the man she really loves so much because he is so like her.
One of the first things that struck me after watching the film for the first time was how similar the two leads were to Margaret Mitchell’s descriptions of Rhett and Scarlett in the book. When you read about the search for the leading lady by David Selznick, the producer, you have to wonder how he must have known not to sign anyone until Vivien Leigh showed up and surprised everyone with her striking facial similarity to Mitchell’s heroine. It must have been fate. Vivien was perfect for that part, in my opinion. It didn’t matter if she wasn’t Southern, if she had a British accent, she pulled it off like a dream and it’s no wonder she took home the Oscar that year for her performance. Clark Gable did equally as well. He fit Rhett Butler like a glove, and you have to acknowledge the chemistry between those two on screen. It’s like if you lit a match, the whole place would explode, so thick was the sexual tension between those two characters. I think it’s an example of perfect timing as far as when it was made, who was cast, and audience’s sensibility to screen stories at that time. That’s why it works so well.
I think the film has lasted so long in the mind of the public was not because it was so lavish and big budget for its time; it’s because of audience’s ability to relate to the characters, especially Scarlett, and the themes presented in the story. Compared to so many womens’ roles during the 1930’s, Scarlett O’Hara was the ultimate bitch. She wasn’t demure, she wasn’t kind, and she wasn’t submissive. Maybe that is why so many actresses vied for the part, because it was so different from the norm. Everyone wanted to play the bad girl. Yet despite Scarlett’s flaws (and she’s got more than I can count) as a person, she was strong, full of vitality in the face of destruction, and, in Margaret Mitchell’s words, she had “gumption.” She adapted as her surroundings changed while everyone else (except Rhett) fell behind. She didn’t give up despite war ravishing her family, her friends and her home. She vowed to hold on to what was important to her, and even though she may have lost more than she gained in doing so, she refused to quit.
Scarlett was like a phoenix being reborn from the ashes and rising up as a new woman. And Rhett; tall, dark, handsome, sarcastic Rhett, what kind of girl doesn’t like a character like that. I’d rank him up there with your Heathcliffs and your Darcys and your Rochesters. He is my favorite character in the novel and my favorite literary crush of all time, haha. I mean honestly, who doesn’t love his blackguard ways?
Gone with the Wind is an epic film in every sense of the word, and Robert Osbourne (whose job I want) made a good point last night when he introduced it on TCM. He said it was “the movie to which all other films are held up to.” That certainly was true at the time. It stands as the pinnacle of Hollywood’s Golden Age of cinema, and I personally think that even if someone tried to remake it today, the original would not be lost from memory, nor would its leading actors.
With its stellar performances, sweeping music, beautiful cinematography, and heart-wrenching melodrama, Gone with the Wind still remains number one in so many people’s hearts and I think it will continue to be so for generations to come.
It is a film for all time. They just don;t make ‘em like that anymore. And if you haven’t read the book but you like to read, I encourage you to do so, it’s so wonderful. It might just change your life. No, I’m serious, that’s how rad it is.
Rating: 4 stars
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