Fiddle-dee-dee y'all it's Jason from MNPP here with today's sweeping Southern epic edition of "Beauty vs Beast." Yes indeedy today is the 75th anniversary of the biggest movie that ever was and probably ever will be - David O. Selznick's Gone With the Wind (if any movie's ownership belongs to its producer, it's this one) premiered in Atlanta on this day in 1939. Three hundred thousand people lined the streets surrounding the Loews Grand Theater, the cap of three days worth of festivities which brought over a million people to the city. Most of the stars attended, save Leslie Howard who'd returned to England because of WWII, as well as Hattie McDaniel and the other black actors in the film who would've been segegrated from the rest of the cast thanks to Jim Crow. (A situation echoed several months later when McDaniel had to make her way from the back of the room to accept her Oscar.)
The film immediately smashed every record in sight - it sold just about half as many tickets as there were people in the United States, and adjusted for inflation its box office in today's dollars sits at something like three and a half billion dollars. It was a hit!
There were several character iterations I could've gone with for today's competition, but it seemed to me to face Viven Leigh's towering performance as Scarlett O'Hara off against anybody (Melanie, imagine!) would've flounced and trounced any ol' nobody in her way, so instead let's make like we're Scarlett herself and stricken with a crisis of suitors! A beau-tastrophe! Whomever shall we choose?
You've got seven days to vote, which should just give you about enough time to re-watch the first half of the movie up to the Intermission, so get to it.
PREVIOUSLY We took on 2014's blood-soaked war of the sexes with David Fincher's Gone Girl last week, pitting Ben Affleck's full-frontal assault as Nick in one corner opposite Rosamund Pike's icy cool girl Amazing Amy in the other - sure enough Amy kept her nickname tight in her calclating grasp, making off with over 70% of the vote. Said Mareko:
"Cool Girl is fun. Cool Girl is game. Cool Girl is hot. Cool Girl never gets angry at her man."