Bette Davis led to speculation in the press that she would be chosen to play Scarlett O'Hara, a similar character, in "Gone with the Wind". Davis expressed her desire to play Scarlett, and while David O. Selznick was conducting a search for the actress to play the role, a radio poll named her as the audience favorite. Warner offered her services to Selznick as part of a deal that also included Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, but Selznick did not consider Davis as suitable, and rejected the offer, while Davis did not want Flynn cast as Rhett Butler. Newcomer Vivien Leigh
Gone with the Wind (film) the Klan in the film by referring to it only as a "political meeting". Thomas Cripps reasons that the film in some respects undercuts racial stereotypes; in particular, the film created greater engagement between Hollywood and black audiences, with dozens of movies making small gestures in recognition of the emerging trend. Only a few weeks after its initial run, a story editor at Warner wrote a memorandum to Walter Wanger about "Mississippi Belle", a script that contained the worst excesses of plantation films, suggesting that "Gone with the Wind" had made the film "unproducible". More than any film since "The