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) posthumous Oscar winner and Selznick personally received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for his career achievements. Black commentators criticised the film for its depiction of black people and as a glorification of slavery. Carlton Moss, a black dramatist, complained in an open letter that whereas "The Birth of a Nation" was a "frontal attack on American history and the Negro people", "Gone with the Wind" was a "rear attack on the same". He went on to dismiss it as a "nostalgic plea for sympathy for a still living cause of Southern reaction". Moss further criticized the stereotypical black characterizations,