Vivien Leigh the burning of the Atlanta Depot scene was being filmed and stage-managed an encounter, where he introduced Leigh, derisively addressing his younger brother, "Hey, genius, meet your Scarlett O'Hara." The following day, Leigh read a scene for Selznick, who organized a screen test with director George Cukor and wrote to his wife, "She's the Scarlett dark horse and looks damn good. Not for anyone's ear but your own: it's narrowed down to Paulette Goddard, Jean Arthur, Joan Bennett and Vivien Leigh". The director, George Cukor, concurred and praised Leigh's "incredible wildness". She secured the role of Scarlett soon after. Filming
Gone with the Wind (novel) "Gone With the Wind", Margaret Mitchell hesitated to blame black 'insolence' during Reconstruction solely on 'mean niggers', of which, she said, there were few even in slavery days." Critics say that Mitchell downplayed the violent role of the Ku Klux Klan and their abuse of freedmen. Author Pat Conroy, in his preface to a later edition of the novel, describes Mitchell's portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan as having "the same romanticized role it had in "The Birth of a Nation" and appears to be a benign combination of the Elks Club and a men's equestrian society". Regarding the historical