Yet Mitchell created a heroine who never glorified the “Lost Cause” the way other characters in the movie did. In fact, Mitchell urged producer David O. Selznick to hire her friend, Susan Myrick, a newspaper columnist from Macon, Georgia, as a technical consultant precisely because of her “common sense and utter lack of sentimentality about ‘The Old South’” (Flamini 1975). Yet, in spite of Scarlett’s own practical attitude, the film does glorify the Old South and conform to Lost Cause mythology.
Movies profiled in this book: