dec 15, 1939 - Gone With the Wind

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The biggest film released in the biggest year in the history of Hollywood cinema, Gone with the Wind is as well-known as it is disdained. By far the film with the biggest budget Hollywood had ever seen, Gone with the Wind was steeped in controversy from its inception, with thousands upon thousands of letters threatening boycotts and uproar. The resulting picture was one which unabashedly glorified the Antebellum South and is most notorious now for its incredibly poor and regressive portrayal of its Black characters. At the time, however, it was all the rage, with the film ultimately released to great critical and commercial success, seizing the title of highest-grossing film for over 30 years and winning eight Academy Awards. Among its Academy Awards was Best Supporting Actress, awarded to African American actress Hattie McDaniel for her role as Mammy. This was a win that made history, as Hattie McDaniel was the first African American to win an Academy Award. Despite the accolades that came with her performance, McDaniel was forced to sit separately from the rest of the attendants at the awards ceremony in LA, only entering the main space of the ceremony to accept her award before being sent away again. She was also excluded from the film’s premiere in Atlanta, where it is estimated that 300,000 people were in attendance. To have the most successful film in Hollywood’s most successful year be one which romanticized slavery and perpetuated damaging racial caricatures speaks volumes to the gilded nature of the period. Gone with the Wind is a stark reminder that, behind the glitz and glamor of Hollywood, fester the ramifications of racism and racial slavery as perpetuated by the settler colonial structure.

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