“Scarlett O’Hara is southern, old southern, with traditions and inborn instincts of the South,” one reader wrote to the Los Angeles Times. Southerners in particular were less than thrilled. Selznick found his leading lady after a search that the New York Times called “a national emergency over the selection of a Scarlett O’Hara.” Fourteen hundred women auditioned to play the Georgia belle from Margaret Mitchell’s bestselling 1936 book – but when it went to Vivien Leigh, a British actress with only a few screen credits to her name, readers gasped. Various names were attached to the role by the media, including stars Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis, and Paulette Goddard. Selznick’s production of Gone with the Wind. For two and a half years, the press speculated about who would play the iconic role of Scarlett O’Hara in David O.
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