18. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Gone with the Wind
Released in 1939, starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, Gone with the Wind remains the top-grossing motion picture of all time, when receipts are adjusted for inflation. It brought to the screen the premises of Margaret Mitchell’s vision of the South at the end of the antebellum period, through the Civil War, and ultimately Reconstruction. At the end of the twentieth century, the film stood as a monument to the Confederacy and the Southern way of life. Told entirely from the Lost Cause perspective, the film features Mammy, depicted as a loyal friend and caregiver to Scarlett O’Hara, glossing over the fact of her slavery during the first part of the film. She remained loyal following emancipation, though Scarlett’s attitude towards her remained unchanged.
Another slave, a houseman, remains loyal as well, in one scene attempting to kill a chicken so as to feed “the white folks”. The film and novel are of course entirely fiction set against a historical backdrop, the product of Margaret Mitchell’s mind. But they reflect the version of the South established in schools and the public mind by the proponents of the Lost Cause, including the works of Mildred Rutherford and the UDC, and the writings of Thomas Dixon Jr. The film’s opening sequence proclaims, “There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South…Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave…Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A civilization has gone with the wind…”