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) at "popular" prices. Along with its distribution and advertising costs, total expenditure on the film was as high as $7 million. In 1942, Selznick liquidated his company for tax reasons, and sold his share in "Gone with the Wind" to his business partner, John Whitney, for $500,000. In turn, Whitney sold it on to MGM for $2.8 million, so that the studio owned the film outright. MGM immediately re-released the film in spring 1942, and again in 1947 and 1954; the 1954 reissue was the first time the film was shown in widescreen, compromising the original Academy ratio and cropping