Gone with the Wind (film) time on the night of December 10, 1938, when the burning of Atlanta was filmed. In a letter to his wife two days later, Selznick admitted that Leigh was "the Scarlett dark horse", and after a series of screen tests, her casting was announced on January 13, 1939. Just before the shooting of the film, Selznick informed newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan: "Scarlett O'Hara's parents were French and Irish. Identically, Miss Leigh's parents are French and Irish." Of original screenplay writer Sidney Howard, film historian Joanne Yeck writes, "reducing the intricacies of "Gone with the Wind"'s epic dimensions was a herculean
Gone with the Wind (film) Despite receiving top-billing in the opening credits, Gable—along with Leigh, Howard, and de Havilland who receive second, third, and fourth billing respectively—has a relatively low placing in the cast list, due to its unusual structure. Rather than ordered by conventional billing, the cast is broken down into three sections: the Tara plantation, Twelve Oaks, and Atlanta. The cast's names are ordered according to the social rank of the characters; therefore Thomas Mitchell, who plays Gerald O'Hara, leads the cast list as the head of the O'Hara family, while Barbara O'Neil as his wife receives the second credit and Vivien Leigh