Vivien Leigh friendship developed after he congratulated her on her performance. Olivier and Leigh began an affair while acting as lovers in "Fire Over England" (1937), but Olivier was still married to actress Jill Esmond. During this period, Leigh read the Margaret Mitchell novel "Gone with the Wind" and instructed her American agent to recommend her to David O. Selznick, who was planning a film version. She remarked to a journalist, "I've cast myself as Scarlett O'Hara", and "The Observer" film critic C. A. Lejeune recalled a conversation of the same period in which Leigh "stunned us all" with the assertion that
Gone with the Wind (film) house in the Hollywood region. "Gone with the Wind" was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress in 1989 for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". "Gone with the Wind" has been criticized as having perpetuated Civil War myths and black stereotypes. David Reynolds writes that "The white women are elegant, their menfolk noble or at least dashing. And, in the background, the black slaves are mostly dutiful and content, clearly incapable of an independent existence." Reynolds likened "Gone with the Wind" to "The Birth of a Nation" and other re-imaginings of