All of us know that the heart of the Turner channels is the movie Gone With the Wind, which Ted Turner acquired the rights to when he bought MGM’s film library in 1986. The movie shows up regularly on TCM, and its next scheduled viewing is for July 30. Like most classic movie lovers, I have not only watched GWTW several times but also the documentary The Making of a Legend: Gone With the Wind. I thought I knew most of the behind-the-scenes intrigue that made this movie such a difficult experience for the cast and the crew as well as its strengths as a work of popular art, but I was wrong.
Recently I signed on to fact-check an info-tainment book titled Armchair Reader: Hollywood, which is a fact-filled tome of Tinseltown trivia. The book includes quizzes, quotes, fun facts, lists, and articles about Hollywood and the movies. One of the articles chronicled the production of Gone With the Wind, and as I researched the topic to check the facts , I discovered a lot that I did not know. Much of it offered insight into film industry practices of the Golden Age. Also interesting to me was the type of errors in the GTWT article; rather than mistaken dates or misspellings, the inaccuracies were in the form of age-old rumors and tall tales about the movie that are still circulating. As all of us who write about the movies know, accuracy is a problem when researching Hollywood. The fabric of film history is interwoven with publicity and promotion material, self-serving recollections, and tall tales that are too good to be true. The film historian in me fights to uncover the real story while the film fan deep inside revels in the legend.
The majority of inaccuracies centered around the film’s problems with the Production Code, Hollywood’s notorious censorship system from the Golden Age. One of the points of contention was with Rhett Butler’s final line, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” The article I was fact-checking reiterated the oft-told legend that the Production Code Administration had forbidden David O. Selznick, the producer of Gone With the Wind, to use the line because it contained profanity. The Code had strict restrictions on the use of profanity. After fussing with Code administrator Joseph Breen, who suggested the alternative “My dear, I don’t care,” Selznick supposedly went over his head to censorship czar Will Hays. Hays granted him a special dispensation to use the word “damn,” but fined him $5000 because he had broken the Code. Because this was the most famous line in the book, Selznick knew it had to be in the film, so the $5000 was worth it to him, at least according to the story.
And, a very good story it is: It not only reveals something about one of Hollywood’s most famous films, but it also supports contemporary ideological views about the integrity of the artist vs. the close-mindedness of censorship institutions. The story paints David O. Selznick as the determined, passionate artist willing to literally pay the price for the integrity of his film, while Code administrators are depicted as narrow-minded, illiterate prudes who prefer to water down the material than to allow one word of profanity to get past them.
Great story, with relevancy for today’s battles with unfair and uninformed censors of all types, but unfortunately, it is not true.
When Selznick submitted the first version of the script to the Production Code office, Joseph Breen objected to many parts of the screenplay that were derived from the book. Breen delivered a seven-page list of objections beginning with “we suggest,” “we ask,” and “we urge.” Chief among them were the childbirth scenes with Melanie. Breen did not disapprove of them because they were graphic; instead, he objected on the grounds that they focused on the pain of a difficult birth rather than on the joy of having babies. Many people don’t realize today that the Code had a mandate regarding the depiction of marriage and the family in Hollywood movies in which they were not to be shown in a negative light. Leading ladies had to be presented as marriage-minded even if it was not part of the immediate plotline, and having children was always discussed as life’s most exquisite joy, even if it killed the mother. In addition to this problem, Breen warned Selznick to turn the “husbandly rape” scene at the end of the movie to a shot of Rhett Butler gently kissing Scarlet and then leading her by the hand offscreen. Plus, Belle Watling’s establishment could not be a brothel.
For those of you who have not seen the film, this brief paragraph probably has you tsk-tsking the Code and Joseph Breen. If you have seen the film, then you know that none of these suggestions were followed to their fullest extent, if at all. Selznick did not change these scenes significantly, speculating that Breen and his staff would waffle on their objections because of the reputation of Margaret Mitchell’s best-selling, widely read novel. From the first draft through the many revisions and into the shooting phase, Selznick continued to make his film the way he wanted as though Breen’s comments/objections were not final. And, for the most part they were not, which indicates that — despite the lore and legend surrounding the Code — the process was one of give-and-take between the filmmakers and the Code office. And, Breen worked with the producer and the studio to come up with ways to retain any objectionable scene, character, line, or costume without violating the Code.
Theoretically, what if Breen let something go that was not in strict accordance with the Code? What would be the ultimate harm? Few today know that following the Code to the letter of the law ensured that state and local censorship boards would leave the film alone. During the Golden Age of Hollywood, state boards, as well as censors in other countries, had the authority to cut out objectionable shots or scenes — without consulting the studios or producers. Or, they could reject the film outright for viewing in that state. Part of Breen’s job was to inform Selznick of the potential points of contention to avoid a situation in which people with no film background are hacking away on his expensive movie. For example, Breen rightly noted that the characters making the sign of the cross would be a sore point for the British Board of Censors. And, he was probably thinking of the Pennsylvania censorship board, who was notoriously panicky about depictions of women and sex, when he objected to the scene of a content Scarlet the morning after her conjugal night with Rhett. Again, Selznick was banking on the book’s popularity and its reputation as “an important novel” to carry the movie past these pesky local censors. And, for the most part, he was correct.
Selznick must have been pretty cocky by the final stages of editing, because Breen had dropped most of the objections on the seven-page list, often with no prolonged argument because he saw the producer’s side. The exception was Rhett’s final line, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.” (In the book, it is “My dear, I don’t give a damn.”) Breen ordered it deleted, but Selznick argued for its inclusion, basing his point of view on the increasing use of the word “damn” in popular magazines. After going back and forth with Breen, who was feeling pressure from recent criticism by an article in the New York World Telegram, Selznick threatened to take the situation to the board of directors of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA), which was the mother organization for the Production Code Administration. Interestingly, Breen encouraged Selznick to appeal because if the board backed the producer, it would force them to formalize a more liberal approach to the Code and take some of the flack off Breen for sticking to a strict interpretation of the guidelines (as he had always been directed).
In September 1939, Selznick previewed a version of GWTW without the “damn,” and audience members noted that the final scene lacked punch because it did not follow the language in the book. Two days later, Selznick appealed to Will Hays, head of the MPPDA, to restore the original line. He was hoping Hays would quickly grant him a special dispensation for “damn,” without involving the board. Breen could not publicly side with Selznick, but privately, he believed Selznick was right and encouraged Hays to approve the line. Hays, however, saw the larger picture, rightly noting that any special dispensations for GWTW opened the door to grant exceptions for every film. Multiple challenges to the Code office’s authority could result in unwanted attention from the press, the public, and even the Justice Department who was always looking for a reason to investigate the business practices of Hollywood. Hays decided to put the matter in the hands of the board of directors. From the end of October to early November, Selznick argued his case to the board until finally the decision was made to actually amend the Code. The Code was changed to allow for exceptions to the ban on profanity if it was “required for historical context” or “based on historical fact or folklore,” or “a quotation from a literary work.” Selznick got his “damn,” while the Code office could still maintain strict administration of the rules and guidelines.
The one objection that Selznick did not succeed in overturning was Breen’s adamant stance against using a racial slur in reference to the African-American characters. The original script featured the n-word, which Selznick (a political liberal) felt was justified because it was in the book. But Breen (a political conservative) argued that the spoken word, partiularly in popular film, is much more immediate and powerful than the written word. He knew African American audiences would be greatly offended. At one point, Breen almost wavered because of Selznick’s argument, but one of the rules of the Code prohibits the use of racial and ethnic slurs on the grounds that they are harmful, so Breen stuck to his guns. I was surprised that Selznick was so eager to use the word, while Breen so strongly opposed it. In his biography of Breen titled Hollywood Censor, film historian Thomas Doherty claims that the arch-conservative was an anti-Semite. As proof, Doherty reprints a few damning letters penned by Breen, who must have been a walking contradiction.
So, Selznick did not violate the Code with “Frankly, my dear I don’t give a damn,” and he was never fined $5000. Instead of a mythic battle for artistic integrity between the put-upon creative genius and a prudish censor, the real story reveals a complicated relationship between the Production Code office and a Hollywood producer in which the bottom line was the good of the film industry. The sources I used to fact-check the article are The Dame in the Kimono by Leonard J. Leff and Jerold Simmons, Censored Hollywood by Frank Miller, and notes I took from a class at Facets Multi-media about the Production Code. The authors of the books and the instructor for the class all did their primary research using the papers and correspondence left behind by the Production Code Administration, rather than relying solely on the memories and experiences of the people involved.
The experience of fact-checking the story of Gone With the Wind provoked me to think about the Code, censorship, and how complicated all of it is. I think we perpetuate the stories that ridicule the Production Code and paint its supporters as unbending anti-intellectuals, religious fanatics, or just plain prudes not only because they are entertaining but also because many of us bristle at censorship of any kind. To paint the Code as ridiculous by over-simplifying the facts and demonizing the participants makes us feel better about taking a stand against that type of censorship, even though many of us are not satisfied with today’s letter-ratings system, nor would we want the free-for-all of no censorship at all. I am certainly not suggesting that the Production Code should make a comeback, or that Breen, Hays, and their staff never enforced ridiculous decisions regarding the content of the movies (anyone remember the tutus on the dancing hippos in Fantasia?) But, I prefer a more accurate discussion of the weaknesses and merits of the Code in order to better understand the limits and virtues of contemporary efforts at controlling screen content. Movie censorship is a gray area for which black and white solutions never completely work.
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