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 (novel) the two ethnic groups are not equivalent in the ethnic hierarchy of the novel. The novel has been criticized for promoting plantation values. Mitchell biographer Marianne Walker, author of "Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh: The Love Story Behind Gone with the Wind", believes that those who attack the book on these grounds have not read it. She said that the popular 1939 film "promotes a false notion of the Old South". Mitchell was not involved in the screenplay or film production. James Loewen, author of "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong", says this novel