Bette Davis led to speculation in the press that she would be chosen to play Scarlett O'Hara, a similar character, in "Gone with the Wind". Davis expressed her desire to play Scarlett, and while David O. Selznick was conducting a search for the actress to play the role, a radio poll named her as the audience favorite. Warner offered her services to Selznick as part of a deal that also included Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, but Selznick did not consider Davis as suitable, and rejected the offer, while Davis did not want Flynn cast as Rhett Butler. Newcomer Vivien Leigh
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