No Time for Comedy 1939, and ran for 179 performances. The cast included Laurence Olivier as Gaylord Esterbrook and Katharine Cornell as Linda Paige, and was directed by Cornell's husband Guthrie McClintic. Olivier starred in this play in New York while his lover, Vivien Leigh, was filming "Gone With the Wind" in Hollywood, causing Leigh stress due to their separation, and according to GWTW lore, influenced her portrayal as Scarlett O'Hara and according to her personal assistant at the time, hurry production so she could be reunited with him. No Time for Comedy No Time for Comedy is a 1940 American comedy-drama film based
Gone with the Wind (film) of the "limit" put on black aspiration by old prejudices. Malcolm X later recalled that "when Butterfly McQueen went into her act, I felt like crawling under the rug". Upon its release, "Gone with the Wind" broke attendance records everywhere. At the Capitol Theatre in New York alone, it was averaging eleven thousand admissions per day in late December, and within four years of its release had sold an estimated sixty million tickets across the United States—sales equivalent to just under half the population at the time. It repeated its success overseas, and was a sensational hit during the Blitz