One-Man Show
Seventy-five years ago today, the film version of Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta. It remains one of the most beloved classics in American cinema and holds the number six spot on the American Film Institute (AFI) list of 100 Greatest American Films. Cast, crew and history concur that the daunting task of transforming book-to-film would have been impossible without the passion and drive of one man, producer David O. Selznick. Flying in the face of naysayers insisting costume epics were passé and that civil war movies always lost money, Selznick Studios paid $50,000 for the screen rights to Margaret Mitchell’s phenomenally successful bestseller only a month after publication. The book, not incidentally, was first entitled Tomorrow Is Another Day and had a...
Read MoreRebel with a Cause
William Bruce Mumford was an unlikely candidate for martyrdom. A native of North Carolina, he fought with honor in the Seminole and Mexican-American wars and, like many men from small Dixie towns, sought his fortune in the big city. When he discovered a knack for card games, he became a regular in the New Orleans gambling houses and found further success on the Mississippi River steamboats. Like the vast majority of Southerners, seventy five percent in fact, Mumford did not own slaves, nor did he champion the region’s “peculiar institution.” He wasn’t even particularly political, but when his beloved South and her Queen City were threatened by civil war, Mumford rushed to embrace the Confederate cause. His fierce loyalty would have terrible consequences. In...
Read MoreHistory Unplugged
Most Americans know very little about the Civil War and haven’t even paid much attention to the ongoing sesquicentennial of the bloody conflict that tore our nation apart. They’ve probably heard of Gettysburg and remember the burning of Atlanta from Gone with the Wind, or at least know when the war began and ended. If you’re feeling smug now because you’re thinking about Fort Sumter and Appomattox, think again. History books say that the first shots of the Civil War were fired in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861. They get the location right, but, strictly speaking, not the date. South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860. A few weeks later, January 9 to be exact, a Union supply ship from New York, Star of the West, was heading for Fort...
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