December 15, 1939: "Gone With the Wind" Premieres

December 15, 1939: The film Gone With the Wind premieres at the Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta, the city where most of the film's action takes place.

Until July 1940, the film played only advance-ticket engagements at a limited number of theaters, with a ticket price of $1.00, more than twice the price of regular features in those days -- $20.06 in 2022 money, so a bit more than most movie prices now.

Counting promotion costs, it took $7 million to make the movie -- about $140 million today. It has made over $390 million. It would remain the highest-grossing movie of all time until 1975, surpassed by Jaws. But, with inflation factored in, it's still the highest-grossing movie ever, at $7.8 billion. In comparison, Avengers: Endgame has generated $2.8 billion; Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope) has made $776 million, so with inflation from 1977, that's $3.6 billion, still not half as much as Gone With the Wind.

It was the most popular movie of its era because the novel on which it was based, published by Margaret Mitchell in 1936, was the most popular book of the era. It was a story of the Southern aristocracy before, during, and after the American Civil War, and it totally idealizes that culture. It aided the myth of the “Lost Cause,” suggesting that the Confederacy was honorable, just, and heroic. It also indulged in the stereotypes of Southern black people of the era, and does nothing to suggest that slavery was bad. It was. And it does nothing to suggest that the South deserved to lose the war. It did.

And let's say it: There is no hero in this movie: Scarlett O'Hara is a spoiled bitch, and Rhett Butler is an ass -- who ultimately decides that she is too much even for him. It's easy to take his side when he leaves Scarlett, and responds to her question about what she'll do without him by saying, in a line the producers fought the Hays Code to keep in the film, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." (The line, minus the word "Frankly," was in the book.)

The screenwriter, Sidney Howard, died before the premiere. On August 23, 1939, he was working on his farm in Tyringham, Massachusetts. He had turned his tractor on in his garage, but had neglected to put the brake on, and after he got out, it lurched back, and pinned him against the wall. He was only 48 years old. Having already received a Pulitzer Prize for his 1924 play They Knew What They Wanted, he received a posthumous Oscar.

Leslie Howard (no relation to Sidney), who played Ashley Wilkes -- both "Leslie" and "Ashley" were considered masculine names in 1860s America, when and where the story was set, and in 1890s Britain, when and where he was born -- was killed in action in 1943, when his plane was shot down by the Nazis.

Mitchell was killed in 1949, hit by a car in Atlanta. Also dying that year was director Victor Fleming, who also directed The Wizard of Oz in 1939. Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy, died in 1952. George Reeves, who played Stuart Tarleton, and would go on to play Superman on television, died of a gunshot wound in 1959, officially a suicide, but this is widely doubted. Clark Gable, who played Butler, died in 1960. Producer David O. Selznick died in 1965. Vivien Leigh, who played Scarlett, battled mental illness and alcoholism, and died in 1967.

Thelma "Butterfly" McQueen, who played Prissy, lived until 1995. Cammie King, who played Scarlett and Rhett's daughter, Bonnie Butler, lived until 2010. Olivia de Havilland, who played Melanie Wilkes Hamilton, lived to be 104 years old, dying in 2020 (not of COVID).

The last surviving castmembers? Mickey Kuhn, who died on November 20, 2022, at 90, was the last credited one. He played Beau Wilkes, son of Melanie and Ashley. Patrick Curtis died 4 days later, at 83. He played Beau Wilkes as a baby, but was not credited. He went on to become a film producer, and was, for 5 years, the 2nd of the 4 husbands of actress Raquel Welch. Caren Marsh Doll, 102, was an uncredited extra. Earlier in the year, she was Judy Garland's dance stand-in for The Wizard of Oz, making her the last surviving castmember of that film.

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December 15, 1939 was a Friday. Singer Cindy Birdsong was born on this day. She sang with Patti LaBelle's Bluebelles from 1961 to 1966, then replaced replaced Florence Ballard in The Supremes, singing with them until 1977.

It was the off-season for baseball. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were no NHL games played that day. And the pro football season had just ended 5 days earlier, with the NFL Championship Game. The Green Bay Packers beat the New York Giants, 27-0, at the Dairy Bowl in the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis, Wisconsin. The stadium has since been converted into an auto racing track called the Milwaukee Mile. So there were no scores on this historic day.

June 16, 1959: The Strange Death of George Reeves

June 16, 1959: George Reeves, star of The Adventures of Superman, dies. How remains a mystery.

George Keifer Brewer was born on January 5, 1914 in Woolstock, Iowa, and grew up outside Los Angeles in Pasadena, California. He studied acting at the famed Pasadena Playhouse, and appeared in his first film in 1939. He played Stuart Tarleton, one of Scarlett O'Hara's suitors, in Gone with the Wind. Delays, and the making of some "quickies," meant that GWTW was actually the 5th movie with him to be released. In the meantime, Warner Brothers' studio convinced him to change his stage name to George Reeves.

He appeared in a few more forgettable films until 1943, and, frustrated by this, enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was assigned to the Army Air Forces, which enabled him to appear in their stage production, and later the film version, of Winged Victory.

After World War II, his film career did not have much of a restart. But in 1951, he was cast as DC Comics' superhero Superman, replacing Kirk Alyn, who had starred in 2 film serials. Superman and the Mole Men was the title. The word "and" is key: It's not "vs.," because the Mole Men, aliens, were not the bad guys. The bad guys were the townspeople who were frightened of them and attacked them. It was an allegory for the Red Scare.

It was the 1st feature film to feature a DC superhero -- although the Fawcett Comics character Captain Marvel, a.k.a. Shazam, had appeared in one, and the character would later be bought by DC -- and it was so successful, that, on September 19, 1952, The Adventures of Superman premiered in syndication. Superman and the Mole Men was recut and used as a two-part episode of the series. The show became so successful that Reeves is the only actor who appeared in Gone With the Wind who is better remembered for doing something else. Such is the power of Superman.

Jack Narz, later known as a game-show host, narrated the opening, which was adapted from a previous radio show about the character:

Narrator: Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!

Onlooker 1: Look! Up in the sky!

Onlooker 2: It's a bird!

Onlooker 3: It's a plane!

Onlooker 4: It's Superman!

Narrator: Yes, it's Superman: Strange visitor from another planet, who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men! Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way!

Film of downtown Los Angeles was used to stand in for Superman's fictional adopted hometown of Metropolis, and L.A.'s City Hall was focused on as the home of the Daily Planet, where Clark Kent worked. According to the comic books, Clark wanted to become a journalist so that he could hear news reports of disasters as they were happening, so he could then help out as Superman.

In hindsight, Reeves' Clark wasn't especially "mild-mannered." If, like the characters, the viewer didn't know he was also Superman, he would appear to be a believable big-city reporter.

At first, Lois Lane, fellow reporter who loved Superman but thought considerably more of Clark as a reporter than she thought of him as a man, though sometimes suspecting his dual identity, was played by Phyllis Coates, as she was in Superman and the Mole Men. But Coates was so heavily in demand as an actress that she was unavailable for the 2nd season, and Noel Neill, who had played Lois in the 1948 and 1950 film serials with Kirk Alyn, stepped back into the role.

Jack Larson played young photographer Jimmy Olsen. John Hamilton played Perry White, publisher and editor of the Daily Planet, using all of Perry's attributes from the comics: His gruff demeanor, balanced by his willingness to stand by his reporters no matter what, his cigar-smoking, his devotion to Metropolis (in this TV version, he was said to have once been the city's Mayor), and his angry retort, "Don't call me chief!" Robert Shayne played a character created for the series, Police Inspector Bill Henderson, an ally of the Planet, and thus also of Superman.

Because TV budgets were low, especially then, there were no appearances by the traditional supervillain opponents of Superman: No Lex Luthor, no Brainiac, no Mr. Mxyzptlk. Even less-dangerous foes like the Prankster and the Toyman couldn't be shown, because their gadgets would have cost too much to build and have their use staged for the cameras.

So this version of Superman mainly fought gangsters. Eventually, some of the stories, involving threats from space, got a little silly. But most of the stories have Superman himself as the only fantasy-based thing, and, even after 70 years, they hold up -- better than the budget-restricted special effects do.

Like a lot of shows, even up to the 1970s, they relied heavily on stock footage, to the point where, if Superman was flying from left to right on the screen, instead of his usual right to left, the image was simply reversed, so that his S crest looks backwards, like the one worn by the comic book character Bizarro.

One thing I never got over: A gunman would fire all six shots at Superman, knowing that the first shot just bounced off him, and then throw the gun at him -- and Superman would duck! If the bullets didn't hurt him, why would the gun? Because Reeves wasn't invulnerable: Unlike the bullets, which weren't actually hitting him, the thrown gun would have, and would have hurt him more than the breakaway chairs that he was sometimes hit with.

In 1955, the show began to be filmed in color, because the producers figured it would be easier to sell once color TV sets became common. They weren’t wrong, they were just premature: Eventually, being in color is what saved the show in reruns.

 

What turned out to be the last first-run episode aired on April 28, 1958. Shortly thereafter, Hamilton died. There was talk of doing another season in 1959, with the White role recast. But would Reeves do it? Those who knew him did not agree: Some said he loved playing the role, others recalled him saying that he was "wasting his life."

Reeves had been married to Ellanora Needles from 1940 to 1950. While filming The Adventures of Superman, he had a relationship with Toni Mannix, a former Ziegfeld Follies dancer, and the wife of Eddie Mannix, an executive at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Ironically, Eddie was serving as MGM's "fixer," covering up the private misdeeds of the studios' stars, so their careers wouldn't be ruined. But he had no place to talk: He was already cheating on Toni, and had cheated on his 1st wife as well. Supposedly, he approved of the affair with George, so long as it didn't reach the public.

By 1959, George had broken up with Toni, and become engaged to a socialite named Leonore Lemmon. On the night of June 15, George and Leonore hosted a party at George's house, at 1579 Benedict Canyon Drive in Los Angeles. The party was still going on between 1:30 and 2:00 AM on June 16, when a gunshot was heard from upstairs. George was dead, from a bullet to the head, at the age of 45.

The Los Angeles Police Department investigated, and ruled it a suicide, based on Leonore's statement that George was depressed, because he couldn't get the parts he wanted. But the gun was found at George's feet; there were no fingerprints on the gun, including his; no gunpowder residue was found on his hands; the bullet was recovered from the bedroom ceiling, and the spent shell casing was found under his body.

There are those who believe that George was murdered. Eddie Mannix had connections to organized crime. However, since he had approved of the affair with Toni, and of the fact that it didn't reach the public, he wouldn't seem to have much motive. In contrast, Toni had been very upset over the end of the affair, and it's been suggested that she used her husband's Mob connections to have George killed.

Whatever the truth is, if they knew it, they took it to their graves: Eddie Mannix had a bad heart, and, still married to Toni, died in 1963; while Toni lived until 1983; and Leonore Lemmon lived until 1989. George Reeves was buried at Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum, in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena, California.

Reeves' death put a stop to any hope of continuing The Adventures of Superman: Unlike any of the other actors, he was irreplaceable. Robert Shayne died in 1992, Jack Larson in 2015, and Noel Neill in 2016. As of June 16, 2022, Phyllis Coates is the last surviving castmember.

Superman is bulletproof; George Reeves was not. An urban legend got around that Reeves thought he really was Superman, and tried to fly, and jumped off a room, and that's how he died. In 1978, Christopher Reeve was cast in Superman: The Movie. Another urban legend got around the Chris was George's son. Not only is George not known to have had any children, but, unlike Chris, he had an extra S on the end of his name, and it wasn't his real name, anyway.

UPDATE: Phyllis Coates died in 2023.

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June 16, 1959 was a Tuesday. These baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Chicago White Sox, 5-1 at Yankee Stadium. Art Ditmar outpitched Billy Pierce. Mickey Mantle went 1-for-4. But this game would be an anomaly: The Yankees had one of their few bad seasons from 1918 to 1964, finishing just 79-75; while the White Sox would win their 1st American League Pennant in 40 years.

* The Cleveland Indians beat the Boston Red Sox, 4-1 at Fenway Park in Boston. Ted Williams singled as a pinch-hitter.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-2 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Roberto Clemente did not play. Ernie Banks hit a home run.

* The St. Louis Cardinals swept a doubleheader from the Philadelphia Phillies, 8-1 and 5-2 at Busch Stadium (formerly Sportsman's Park) in St. Louis. Stan Musial did not play in the opener, but went 2-for-3 with an RBI.

* The Milwaukee Braves beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 5-4 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Hank Aaron went 1-for-5 with an RBI.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the San Francisco Giants, 2-1 at Seals Stadium in San Francisco. Frank Robinson went 3-for-4. Willie Mays went 2-for-4.

* The Baltimore Orioles and the Detroit Tigers were rained out at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on July 18. The O's won the 1st game, 5-2. The Tigers won the 2nd game, 2-0. Frank Lary pitched a 6-hit shutout. Al Kaline was injured, and did not play in either game. Over the 2 games, Brooks Robinson went 2-for-8 with 2 RBIs.

* And the Kansas City Athletics and the Washington Senators were rained out at Griffith Stadium in Washington. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on September 15. The Senators won the 1st game, 1-0. Camilo Pascual pitched a 3-hit shutout. The A's won the 2nd game, 6-2. Over the 2 games, Harmon Killebrew went 1-for-7 with a walk for the Senators, and Roger Maris went 2-for-7 with an RBI for the A's.

June 1, 1943: The Murder of Leslie Howard

June 1, 1943: British actor Leslie Howard is killed when the Nazis shoot down his plane off the coast of Spain. He was just 50 years old.

He was born on April 3, 1893, in Forest Hill, Southeast London, with the name Leslie Howard Steiner. ("Leslie" is one of many names that are considered masculine in Britain but feminine in America.) Having a German surname did not protect him at the end. He was also Jewish, also it's not clear whether the Nazis knew that. 

One of the earliest literary characters who could be called a "superhero" was the Scarlet Pimpernel. Sir Percy Blakeney was an English aristocrat living in Paris when the French Revolution broke out in 1789, and he disguised himself and used his swordfighting skills to save his friends among the French aristocracy that were targeted for death by the revolutionaries. The character was created by Baroness Emma Orczy, a Hungarian-born British noblewoman, for a 1903 play. Howard starred in the 1934 film The Scarlet Pimpernel.

But he was already a star, having starred in Berkeley Square, and the film version of W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage. He later starred in the American crime film The Petrified Forest, where he met the film's (and previously the play's) star, Humphrey Bogart; and played Professor Henry Higgins in the 1938 film version of George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, 18 years before Rex Harrison debuted in the role in the musical version, titled My Fair Lady. Most Americans, though, remember him for playing Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind in 1939.

That film was released 3 months after Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany, to start World War II. Howard made pro-British, anti-Nazi propaganda films, which which later led the British Film Yearbook to call his work "one of the most valuable facets of British propaganda."

He was rumored to have been working for British intelligence, which may have explained why he was killed. In May 1943, he traveled to Portugal -- which, like neighboring Spain, then had a Fascist government, but was neutral in the war, refusing to help fellow Fascists Germany and Italy -- to promote the British cause.

On June 1, 1943, he intended to head home, on a Douglas DC-3, co-operated by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation, which became British Airways in 1974), labeled Flight 777. It took off from the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, intending to fly to Bristol, in England's West Country.

The plane was intercepted by 8 Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 88 fighters, and was shot down over the Atlantic Ocean, off Cedeira, in northwestern Spain. There were 17 people on board, all killed, including Howard and 4 KLM flight crew members.

The Nazis knew Howard had made his propaganda films, but it's not clear whether they knew he was on the plane. One theory that has persisted is that they thought that Prime Minister Winston Churchill was on it. They had certainly targeted Churchill, but they never got him.

Howard left behind a wife, Ruth Evelyn Martin; and 2 children, Ronald and Leslie Ruth. Ronald became an actor, and in the 1954-55 television season, he became TV's 1st Sherlock Holmes. He lived on until 1996.

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June 1, 1943 was a Tuesday. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Giants lost to the Cincinnati Reds, 3-1 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Giants player-manager Mel Ott went 2-for-3 with a walk.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 11-9 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Stan Musial went 4-for-6 with a home run and 2 RBIs. Harry Walker won the game with a home run in the bottom of the 12th inning.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 5-3 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia.

* The Washington Senators beat the Cleveland Indians, 3-2 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Ellis Clary singled home the winning run in the bottom of the 10th inning.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Boston Braves, 5-4 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Eugene "Huck" Geary stole home plate in the bottom of the 14th inning.

* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Chicago Cubs, 7-2 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

* The Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Browns were rained out at Fenway Park in Boston. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader the next day. The Browns won the opener, 7-4 in 12 innings. The BoSox won the nightcap, 3-2 in 10 innings.

* And the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox were rained out at Yankee Stadium. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on July 24. The Yankees won the opener, 5-1. The ChiSox won the nightcap, 5-3.

February 29, 1940: The 1st Black Oscar Winner

At the time, the winners of Best Supporting Actor

and Best Supporting Actress -- regardless of race --

got a smaller trophy, on a plaque.

Note: I would have written an entry for this event, regardless of the date on it. But I wanted to have an entry that happened on a February 29, and this was the best of the rather small bunch.

February 29, 1940: The 12th Academy Awards are held, at the Coconut Grove ballroom of The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. For the 1st time, the host is actor Bob Hope. He will go on to host "the Oscars" 19 times. Through 2022, this remains a record.

Surprising no one, Gone with the Wind, having been nominated for 13 Oscars, wins 8 of them, including Best Picture for producer David O. Selznick, Best Director for Victor Fleming, Best Actress for Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara, and Best Screenplay, divided between Margaret Mitchell for the original 1936 novel, and Sidney Howard for his film adaptation. It was the 1st posthumous Oscar: Howard had been killed in an accident on his farm the previous August, so he never even saw the finished film.

The biggest shock of the evening was that Clark Gable, who played Rhett Butler, did not win Best Actor. That award went to Robert Donat for Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Donat had also beaten out Laurence Olivier for Wuthering Heights, James Stewart for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Mickey Rooney for Babes in Arms. At 19, Rooney was the 1st teenager ever to be nominated for an Oscar.

(Rooney had received a special award the year before, for his "juvenile" roles, and would receive an Honorary Award for lifetime achievement in 1983. But despite Olivier, himself often called the best actor of all time, calling him "the best there has ever been," he never won a regular award, going 0-for-4 as a nominee. Olivier would win 4, but only 1 for acting, in Hamlet in 1948. Gable had already gotten the 1 he would ever win, for It Happened One Night in 1934. Stewart won the next year, for The Philadelphia Story.)

Also among GWTW's awards is Best Supporting Actress, to Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy, Scarlett's black maid. McDaniel thus became the 1st African-American actor, of either gender, to win an Academy Award.

She didn't think she would even get the role, as she had become famous as a comedic actress, but Gable -- like his character in the film, he could alternate between generous and rotten in real life -- personally requested her for the role.

As with the book, the film, made just 64 years after the Civil War ended, was pro-South, took the advancing Union Army of "the Yankees" as the villains, and did not criticize slavery.

McDaniel, 46, a native of Colorado and the daughter of slaves, brushed aside the arguments of her own people that her character was a demeaning stereotype, telling the white press, "I loved Mammy. I think I understood her, because my own grandmother worked on a plantation not unlike Tara." 

When the film premiered at the Loew's Grand Theater in Atlanta on December 15, 1939, due to segregation laws, she was not permitted to attend. Gable threatened to boycott the premiere, but McDaniel herself told him not to, as it would hurt his career, and not help hers at all.

She was permitted to attend the film's Hollywood debut, 13 days later. But for the Oscar ceremony, the Ambassador Hotel had a strict whites-only policy, allowing McDaniel in as a favor. For what would later be called the "afterparty," her white co-stars went to a whites-only club, and she was denied entry.

McDaniel became the 1st black actor to star in her own radio show, Beulah, on CBS, in 1947. Jazz singer Ethel Waters became the 1st to do so on television, also in Beulah, on ABC, in 1950. She quit after a year, because the production was being moved from New York to Hollywood, and she didn't want to leave the New York clubs that were paying her better.

McDaniel was given the role, and one of her co-stars was Thelma "Butterfly" McQueen, who had played Prissy in Gone with the Wind. But McDaniel developed cancer, and only lasted a year as Beulah herself, and died in 1952. Louise Beavers took over the role, and held it until the show was canceled in 1953.

No other black person would be nominated for an Oscar until 1954, when Dorothy Dandridge was nominated for Best Actress for Carmen Jones. The betting favorites were Dandridge and Judy Garland, for A Star Is Born. Supporters of both were outraged when the award went to Grace Kelly for The Country Girl. It was hardly her best role, much less a better performance than either Dandridge's or Garland's. Rumors that she slept her way to that award persist to this day. Dandridge died in 1965.

In 1964, Sidney Poitier became the 1st male actor to win an Oscar, taking Best Actor, for Lilies of the Field. In 1975, Sammy Davis Jr., who never won an Oscar, became the 1st black person to host the ceremony. In 1991, Whoopi Goldberg became the next black woman to win an Oscar, for Best Supporting Actress, for Ghost. In 1994, she became the 1st black woman to host the ceremony.

In 2002, both lead Oscars went to black actors: Denzel Washington for Training Day, and Halle Berry -- who had previously starred as her fellow Cleveland native in the made-for-cable-TV movie Introducing Dorothy Dandridge -- for Monster's Ball.

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February 29, 1940 was a Thursday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. But there were 3 games played in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Chicago Black Hawks, 2-1 at the old Madison Square Garden.

* The Boston Bruins beat the Montreal Canadiens, 4-2 at the Montreal Forum.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Detroit Red Wings, 3-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

* At the time, there were 7 teams in the NHL. The New York Americans were not scheduled.