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) where it placed second in the sales charts, and has since been released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats. Upon its release, consumer magazines and newspapers generally gave "Gone with the Wind" excellent reviews; however, while its production values, technical achievements, and scale of ambition were universally recognized, some reviewers of the time found the film to be too long and dramatically unconvincing. Frank S. Nugent for "The New York Times" best summed up the general sentiment by acknowledging that while it was the most ambitious film production made up to that point, it probably was not the greatest film