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) the South during the era of segregation, in which white Southerners are portrayed as defending traditional values and the issue of slavery is largely ignored. The film has been described as a "regression" that promotes the myth of the black rapist and the honourable and defensive role of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction, and as a "social propaganda" film offering a "white supremacist" view of the past. From 1972 to 1996, the Atlanta Historical Society held a number of "Gone with the Wind" exhibits, among them a 1994 exhibit titled, "Disputed Territories: "Gone with the Wind" and Southern Myths".