Aurora (Disney) welcomed Costa by asking her to perform a bird call, which she did successfully. However, being from Knoxville, Tennessee, Costa's strong southern accent nearly prevented her from being cast until she proved that she could sustain a fake British accent for the entire film. The filmmakers likened the situation to English actress Vivien Leigh successfully feigning a southern accent for her role as Scarlet O'Hara in the film "Gone With the Wind" (1939). Within hours of her audition, Walt Disney himself contacted Costa via telephone to offer her the job, which she immediately accepted. Aurora became Costa's first major film
Gone with the Wind (novel) "Gone With the Wind", Margaret Mitchell hesitated to blame black 'insolence' during Reconstruction solely on 'mean niggers', of which, she said, there were few even in slavery days." Critics say that Mitchell downplayed the violent role of the Ku Klux Klan and their abuse of freedmen. Author Pat Conroy, in his preface to a later edition of the novel, describes Mitchell's portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan as having "the same romanticized role it had in "The Birth of a Nation" and appears to be a benign combination of the Elks Club and a men's equestrian society". Regarding the historical