Movie Musings

Gone with the Wind was on TCM yesterday. We had it on in the background as I dried my hair, cooked and ate dinner, and did the dishes. 

For this viewing I was thinking about Clark Gable's performance. He had been nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, but lost to Robert Donat in Goodbye Mr. Chips. I've never seen that film and don't remember ever seeing Robert Donat. Other nominees for 1939 films were Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights, Mickey Rooney for Babes in Arms, James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. I tend to dismiss Mickey Rooney but have to admit I haven't seen Babes in Arms. Gable was good as Rhett Butler, but was he better than Olivier and Stewart (let alone Donat and Rooney?) I don't know. 

I read somewhere that Margaret Mitchell pictured Basil Rathbone as Rhett Butler. It takes imagination to see him as Rhett.  

As for Scarlett, I believe Paulette Goddard would have been brilliant in the role. You see Scarlett O'Hara is not beautiful--it's the first line in the book. Vivien Leigh is. I saw a documentary about GWTW with several scenes of Goddard. She could have been a great Scarlett.

Onto Ashley Wilkes. Well, I always had issues with Leslie Howard in the part. He was a very good actor, but he wasn't the young, dashing, handsome Ashley in the book. I didn't get why movie Scarlett was so obsessed with him. My sister said it was because Twelve Oaks was the best, wealthiest plantation in the area. I didn't buy that explanation. I read that Leslie Howard thought (rightly) that he was too old for the part; I wonder if he had protested his casting as a teen-aged Romeo a few years earlier. 

Olivia de Haviland was great as Melanie, but I thought she looked too healthy and robust for the skinny, childlike Melanie. 

The other day I was watching a short between two films on TCM: They're Always Caught. First I noticed an actor who played Bette Davis's husband in Dangerous--John Eldredge. Then I recognized another actor--Louis Jean Heydt--but had to look up his name on IMDB. Heydt might not have been a household name, but he was in several movies, often uncredited. His IMDB page lists his role as "Hungry Soldier Holding Beau Wilkes" in Gone with the Wind under "Known for." In 1939, he appeared in 13 other films, including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Each Dawn I Die, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and They Made Me A Criminal. Not bad for an "average Joe."