Gone With The Wind

The movie Gone With the Wind opened in Atlanta on this date in 1939. Excitement was at a fever pitch; at a top-secret preview screening in California three months earlier, the audience had gone wild when they realized what they were seeing. They screamed, they cried, and they stood on their seats. The official opening of the film in Atlanta was the culmination of three days of parades, receptions, and a costume ball. Confederate flags and false antebellum façades covered the city. The governor declared December 15 a state holiday, and asked Georgians to dress in period clothing. Former president Jimmy Carter remembered it as the biggest event to happen in the South in his lifetime. The cast attended the premiere, with the notable exception of the African-American performers, who were prevented by Georgia's Jim Crow laws from sitting next to their white co-stars.