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) house in the Hollywood region. "Gone with the Wind" was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress in 1989 for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". "Gone with the Wind" has been criticized as having perpetuated Civil War myths and black stereotypes. David Reynolds writes that "The white women are elegant, their menfolk noble or at least dashing. And, in the background, the black slaves are mostly dutiful and content, clearly incapable of an independent existence." Reynolds likened "Gone with the Wind" to "The Birth of a Nation" and other re-imaginings of