Original ‘Gone With The Wind’ script reveals secret ‘war’ over slavery, cut scenes

https://nypost.com/2023/03/01/original-gone-with-the-wind-script-shows-war-over-slavery-cut-scenes/

The big-budget blockbuster — set against the backdrop of the Civil War and Reconstruction — has long been criticized for sanitizing slavery, with HBO Max noting in a new disclaimer it “denies the horrors of slavery, as well as its legacies of racial inequality.”

However, historian David Vincent Kimel is now revealing that several writers pushed for a more realistic depiction of race relations — only for their dark, disturbing and violent scenes to be cut from the finished product.

“I discovered that Schuessler’s Rainbow Script was a mosaic that actually represented the perspectives of numerous screenwriters,” Kimel wrote in an essay published by The Ankler on Tuesday.

“Much of the excised material was a harsh portrayal of the mistreatment of the enslaved workers on [character] Scarlett’s plantation, including references to beatings, threats to throw [the black maid] ‘Mammy’ out of the plantation for not working hard enough, and other depictions of physical and emotional violence.”

After analyzing the original shooting script, and perusing other “Gone With The Wind” artifacts held in archives, Kimel discovered that “rival groups of screenwriters on the script emerged: ‘Romantics’ and ‘Realists’ who amped up scenes of mistreatment to highlight the brutality of Scarlett’s character and even condemn the institution of slavery itself.”

Fitzgerald — who was eventually fired from the production — belonged to the “Romantic” camp. In a letter to Selznick, Fitzgerald wrote that he wanted to push the “romance of the old South.”

Meanwhile, screenwriters Sidney Howard and Oliver H.P. Garrett belonged to the “Realists” camp, and “their material depicting race relations was so often so gritty and uncompromising that some of it was cut in drafts even before the creation of the script in my possession,” Kimel claimed.