Behind-the-scenes

 

 

 

 

Behind-the-scenes look at 'Gone with the Wind.' The photographs are included in 'The Making of Gone with the Wind' by Steve Wilson, to celebrate the film's seventy-fifth anniversary. The book will be published in September. The 1939 film's stars, including Vivien Leigh as heroine Scarlett O'Hara, Clark Gable as love interest Rhett Butler, Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes, Olivia de Havilland as her friend Melanie Hamilton, and Hattie McDaniel as servant Mammy, are seen on set and in-between shooting. Extras are also photographed in Civil War costumes in between takes on the film's large sets.The film's director, Victor Fleming, is also captured speaking to actors before famous scenes in the film. Photographs included in the book also show the burning of Atlanta, which reportedly took only took a little over an hour to film. Also included are industry memos regarding casting African-American actors in the film and the rumor mill over which Hollywood stars would be cast as Scarlett and her leading man Rhett Butler - a role which ultimately went to Gable. The photographs, archives of producer David O. Selznick and business partner John Hay Whitney, are part of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. They will be exhibited from September 9, 2014 through January 4, 2015 at the Center. +18 Picture perfect: Vivien Leigh, who played Scarlett O'Hara, is seen here testing out tear stains +18 Hard at work: Hattie McDaniel is seen next to Leigh during the scene in which Scarlett tears down curtains to make a dress +18 Prep work: Monte Westwore applies makeup to Leslie Howard, who plays Ashley Wilkes, before a shoot +18 Ready to ride: Gable and Leigh are seated in a carriage during filming +18 All hands on deck: The film crew is seen filming 'the cotton field scene' +18 Hanging out: Extras are seen gathered on the steps of a set for Gone with the Wind +18 In the spotlight: The crew films a scene where Scarlett, played by Vivien Leigh, helps in a Confederate hospital +18 Action! The crew prepares to film a scene +18 Quick burn: The scene where Atlanta burns was filmed in a little over an hour +18 On set: Director Victor Fleming is seen with Vivien Leigh while shooting the barbecue at Twelve Oaks +18 Contest: A Birmingham club volunteered to host a contest to find African-American actors for Gone with the Wind, but that was turned down by Kay Brown +18 Family affair: Director Victor Fleming (center) directs a scene between Scarlett and her father Gerald +18 We're rolling! Crews film a sequence meant to take place at Twelve Oaks, the Wilkes family plantation +18 All dressed up: Extras sit on the floor during a shooting break +18 Together: Olivia de Havilland is seen with Hattie McDaniel in the film +18 Tender: Vivien Leigh is seen seated next to leading man Clark Gable as Rhett Butler +18 Touch-up: Vivien Leigh checks her makeup before a scene set at Twelve Oaks +18 Vintage: Pictured is a movie poster for the original 1939 release of Gone with the Wind

Screen icon Marilyn Monroe and NY Yankee legend Joe DiMaggio met in 1951 and married in 1954. The marriage lasted 274 days On their first date Marilyn drove Joe around Hollywood for three hours before they ended up at her hotel. The Yankee Clipper had hit a home run. She described herself as ‘the ballplayer’s ball player’ DiMaggio had a violent streak.' He physically abused her at times, slapped her around’.   When Marilyn died, DiMaggio was heartbroken. ‘A sound came out of him, an inhuman sound, almost like the roar of a lion. He then bent over and s‘tarted to weep in deep gulps and gasps He was the greatest living ballplayer since Babe Ruth and led the New York Yankees to nine World Series Championships, but Marilyn Monroe didn’t have a clue who the great Joe DiMaggio was. But she would soon learn all about Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, the Italian Stallion, the Yankee Clipper, New York Times bestselling author C. David Heymann reveals in his blockbuster new book, Joe and Marilyn. After seeing her picture in a San Francisco newspaper posing with baseball players at spring training camp in California in 1951, the recently retired ballplayer had to meet the star who showed up for the photographers wearing high heels, tight white shorts, a revealing blouse while posing with a baseball bat. +10 Swinger: Yankee clipper Joe DiMaggio went batty when he saw the picture of movie star Marilyn Monroe ready to swing. He made a call and they made a date +10 Skin game: It didn't take long for Joe and Marilyn spend the night. After their first day, Monroe drove Joe around Hollywood for three hours before they ended up at her hotel. The Yankee Clipper had hit a home run DiMaggio called a friend and a date was set up in Los Angeles. Arriving an hour and a half late to the Villa Capri restaurant, Monroe thought, ‘He’s different. If I hadn’t been told he was some sort of ballplayer, I would have guessed he was either a steel magnate or a congressman,' quotes Heymann. DiMaggio barely touched his dinner, spoke little, but smiled and stared at the star now at the peak of her beauty. When actor Mickey Rooney came over to the table, it was to see DiMaggio and not Monroe. Listening to Rooney’s conversation about Joe’s illustrious career, Monroe learned he was a god and the most exciting man at the table. ‘Sitting next to Mr. DiMaggio was like sitting next to a peacock with its tail spread,' she crooned. When their love affair bloomed, she described herself as ‘the ballplayer’s ball player’. Joe was ready to be excommunicated from the church when the archbishop wouldn’t recognize his divorce from his first wife and proceed with his plans to marry the screen goddess. ‘I’d rather head for hell than give up my Garden of Eden. Let them excommunicate me’. ‘What Joe is to me is a man whose looks and character I love with all my heart. We knew it wouldn’t be an easy marriage’. That was an understatement. +10 They do: The charismatic couple kiss following their marriage ceremony in a judge's chambers in San Francisco in 1954 Monroe drove Joe around Hollywood for three hours before they ended up at her hotel, the Beverly Carlton that first night. He took a cab to his hotel in the morning. The Yankee Clipper had hit a home run. They would continue to see each other secretly in his suite at the Knickerbocker Hotel where they ordered room service and had a bellhop buy wine at a nearby liquor store. They were happy but Joe realized they were opposites, Heymann writes. DiMaggio was uneducated, insecure, painfully shy and practically inarticulate but he was a rock star baseball god. He was considered handsome, rich and fabulously famous. Like rock stars, he had groupies in every port. But he was very private and kept his name out of the newspaper and avoided photographers.believed she was continually exploited by the studios, paying her too little and only offering her scripts where she played the wiggling, giggling buxom blonde. Monroe had her own insecurities, was also uneducated but she had a consumptive appetite for publicity and so promiscuous, she couldn’t even remember all the men she had slept with. The budding relationship hit a barrier when Joe learned that Monroe was the nude girl in the recently published ‘Golden Dreams’ calendar. The studios didn’t like it and neither did Joe. It amped up her star power and within weeks, she was on the cover of Life – just what she had hoped for. He believed she was continually exploited by the studios, paying her too little and only offering her scripts where she played the wiggling, giggling buxom blonde. Studios made millions of her sexiness, she made thousands. Joe advised her to ‘Hold out until they pay you what you’re worth’. ‘Can’t you see that those Hollywood swine are using you? You’re nothing to them but a piece of meat.’ But she never wiggled out of their grasp. Monroe called Joe, ‘Daddy’, ‘Pa’, ‘Slugger’, and said ‘Joe’s biggest bat isn’t the one he used at the plate’. +10 Paridise found: Joe was ready to be excommunicated from the church when the archbishop wouldn¿t recognize his divorce from his first wife. 'I'd rather head for hell than give up my Garden of Eden. Let them excommunicate me,' Joe said Joe had married Dorothy Arnold in November 1939 but kept up with his groupies throughout the marriage. After a game in the Bronx, he’d head to Toots Shor’s, a legendary restaurant and lounge on West 51st Street in Manhattan, for drinks and a steak dinner with his pals. He expected Dorothy to be the obedient hausfrau, ready to cook meals, be his sex partner, run any errands while he partied with New York’s café society. Dorothy went along with it for a while and then filed divorce papers on grounds of ‘cruel indifference’ in October 1943. Even having a child didn’t change his expectations in the relationship. The marriage lasted four years. 'There were in love, very much so, but they didn’t understand each other. They came from different universes.' Joe’s son, Joe Jr., viewed his father as having a superficial view of life, concerned with image. Joe was a chain-smoker, smoking four packs a day but he was never photographed with a cigarette. He wanted to appear wholesome. Joe and Marilyn were good friends with Jane Russell and her husband, Bob Waterfield, an all-pro quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams. While Jane and Bob had their own film company, DiMaggio wanted nothing to do with the Hollywood jungle and held out hope that Marilyn would quit making films and start having babies. ‘I never for a minute believed that she and Joe DiMaggio would last’, Russell said. ‘There were in love, very much so, but they didn’t understand each other. They came from different universes. That was the tragedy of their relationship. They couldn’t stay together. It was ill fated, written in the stars’. Screaming matches followed by great moments of tenderness became the norm. +10 Chill: Joe clowns around with Marilyn in Florida. But Joe had a violent streak, writes the author Marilyn would never be the hausfrau Joe had hoped. She not only couldn’t cook but she was a lousy housekeeper and never cleaned up. Furniture was littered with discarded clothing, kitchen counters covered with food remains and stains, dirty dishes piled in the sink, empty bottles and cans on the bedroom floor along with clumps of used tissue paper and silverware. DiMaggio was fastidious and when he couldn’t take it any longer, he escaped to a hotel room at the Knickerbocker Hotel, Heymann writes. Retiring from the ball field in 1951, Joe became West Coast vice president of public relations for Buitoni, an Italian food company producing pasta and sauces. When he was away from Monroe, he called her ten times a day. He wanted to know what she was doing and who she was seeing. On that long list of lovers was jazz singer and musician Mel Torme, Eddie Robinson, Jr., Nico Minardos, a Greek American actor; director/writer Elia Kazan, Wall Street tycoon Paul Shields – among others. It seemed as though everyone was after Monroe including Hugh Hefner who put her on the cover of Playboy’s first issue in December 1953 as well as the first nude centerfold as ‘Sweetheart of the Month.’ +10 Skin game: Joe hated it when Marilyn flaunted her body, never more so than in The Seven Year Itch But Joe was her man, even though he wanted to keep her to leave Hollywood and keep her to himself. He hated it when she flaunted her body in public On one occasion, according to Heymann, he went ballistic over a low-cut black chiffon gown that displayed ample cleavage she was going to wear when she served as grand marshal for the Miss America beauty pageant in Atlantic City, late July 1952. Marilyn insisted it was 'an entirely decent dress. You could ride in a streetcar in it without disturbing the passengers'. But there was one photographer who shot her shooting down from a balcony. Predictably the shot infuriated Joe. 'You look like a f****** w**** in that outfit,' he ranted. Joe wanted a Roman Catholic priest to do the honors but was informed that the church did not recognize his divorce from Dorothy. So the happy couple were married at San Francisco’s city hall on January 14, 1954. Joe gave Marilyn a platinum eternity band set with thirty-five baguette cut diamonds. She wore a chocolate brown broadcloth suit with small rhinestone buttons and a white ermine collar that she had purchased off the rack at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. He gave his new bride a full-length black sable coat and she handed him the twenty nude transparencies taken of her in 1949 for the ‘Godden Dreams’ calendar but considered too graphic to use because they showed her dark pubic hair before she started bleaching it. 'She was hyper and manic, he was introverted. She was disorganized and a slob, he was obsessively neat.' They spent the first night of their honeymoon in Paso Robles, located in California wine country halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, before heading to a hideaway mountain lodge outside of Idyllwild in California’s San Jacinto mountains. Two weeks later, they headed back to San Francisco and then to Tokyo where Joe was had agreed to launch the Japanese baseball season. Monroe spent most of her time in her hotel room at the Imperial Hotel taking antibiotics for a mild case of bronchial pneumonia and arguing with Joe. It was here he realized that she was never going to give up her career and stop craving publicity. She was hyper and manic, he was introverted. She was disorganized and a slob, he was obsessively neat. Before leaving for Japan, Monroe had obtained a post office box so that she could correspond with playwright Arthur Miller, who she had met through director Elia Kazan, in secret. She believed she had more in common with the playwright than with the ballplayer – and the marriage had not even begun. She was stressed and increased her consumption of drugs for her insomnia adding Nembutal to the list with Demerol to relieve pain, wtites the author. +10 Foul play: Monroe outside her home with lawyer Jerry Giesler in October, 1954, who later that day would announce that Monroe's marriage to Joe While she told the press that the couple wanted little DiMaggios, Joe realized he was only an appendage to his wife’s fame. She had bewitched him but she was zapping his spirit. The tension between them pushed her further into drugs and drinking not just champagne but straight, hard shots of vodka and gin. Marilyn started sleeping with her voice coach, Hal Schaefer, Heymann writes. ‘She claimed she loved me’, said Schaefer, ‘but I’m not sure she knew what that meant. I think our relationship represented an escape from a marriage that had gone bad. He wanted a homemaker, and she hoped to become a serious actress’. DiMaggio found out about Schaefer and asked him to meet.  Marilyn pleaded with Schaefer not to, saying that Joe would kill him. ‘I absolutely believed her, because she’d mentioned how crude and controlling he was. She’d said he was very severe and had a short fuse. He had a violent streak. He physically abused her at times, slapped her around’.   Schaefer said they discussed marriage and Monroe was willing to convert to Judaism. DiMaggio wasn’tletting it go. He hired a private eye to follow the pair around, bugged Schaefer’s car, Marilyn’s car. When it got out that Schaefer had been seeing Marilyn, he tried to kill himself by swallowing sleeping pills washed down with rum and typewriter-cleaning fluid. He survived somehow and they continued their affair but the death knell had struck for Monroe’s marriage. +10 The other man: Marilyn had already begun an affair with playwright Arthur Miller when she was still married to DiMaggio DiMaggio’s outbursts of anger and rage increased. Joe ripped up dresses she put on suspecting she was going out to meet a guy. She was late to the set the next day blaming Joe for having kept her up all night with a rant. The finale to their marriage drama came on September 15 when two thousand men and dozens of photographers stood on the corner of Lexington Avenue and Fifty-Second Street to watch the filming of the famous skirt-blowing scene for the Seven Year Itch. Standing over a subway grate, Marilyn’s skirt blew up to her neck and revealed a transparent pair of panties. Director Billy Wilder stopped the shoot and ordered her to change them. When she returned from her trailer, DiMaggio had retreated to Toots Shor’s bar to drown himself in drink and flew back to San Francisco by himself. 'The finale to their marriage drama came when two thousand men and dozens of photographers stood on the corner of Lexington Avenue and Fifty-Second Street to watch the filming of the famous skirt-blowing scene for the Seven Year Itch.' Marilyn filed for divorce citing ‘mental cruelty’. October 27, 1957, the divorce was uncontested but that didn’t end Joe’s obsessive behavior. In California at that time, a one-year waiting period was required before a divorce became final. Suspecting Marilyn was still sleeping with Schaefer, DiMaggio, Sinatra and two of the singers cronies decided to bust into an apartment building in West Hollywood where Shaefer was spotted going in with Marilyn. The band of seven broke down the front door and entered the apartment only to find a fifty-year old woman cowering in her bed and shrieking. They were on the wrong floor giving Marilyn and Hal time to escape out a back stairway, according to Heymann. Marilyn took on more lovers as well as psychoanalysis five times a week where she was diagnosed as suffering from borderline personality disorder. She was now living in New York. She jumped into an affair with Marlon Brando and their intimate friendship would last until her death. But she was also seeing Arthur Miller who was still living with his wife and children in Brooklyn Heights. +10 End of an era: DiMaggio wipes a tear from his eye after bursting into tears at the funeral of the screen icon. They remained friends to the end, and were even planning to marry again He followed her everywhere and they began meeting in obscure Manhattan restaurants. They quickly decided they wanted to get married and she would convert to Judaism and have his babies. Miller moved to Reno to get a quickie divorce while writing Marilyn long letters every day confessing his love. 'For the first time I have the feeling I’m going to be with somebody who’ll shelter me. It’s as if I’ve come in out of the cold’, Marilyn said. The happy couple wed at the Westchester County Court House in White Plains, New York on June 29, 1956. Arthur’s mother taught her new daughter-in-law how to cook chicken soup, prepare borscht, matzoh balls and Marilyn attempted to speak Yiddish. But this wasn’t a marriage made in heaven either. While in England filming The Sleeping Prince with Sir Laurence Olivier, Monroe found her husband’s journal on a table and read that he found her difficult to deal with, out of control and with endless emotional demands. She had had two miscarriages with the playwright, was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, seeing a psychiatrist five times a week and still on vast quantities of pills. Miller was facing the same issues that drove Joe away – her sleep deprivation, overwhelming insecurities, anxieties, fears, paranoid, drug and alcohol abuse. It was too much for the self-centered, reclusive writer. ‘I began to dream that with Marilyn I could do what seemed to me would be the most wonderful thing of all – have my work and all that this implied, and someone I just simply adored. I thought I could solve it all with this marriage. She was simply overwhelming, as I guess I was to her, for a while. It was wonderful to be around her. Until she got ill’. +10 Sizzle: New York Times bestselling author Heymann explores the tumultuous relationship between Joltin' Joe and screen siren Marilyn in his new book They divorced in 1961 and Marilyn had a strong over other lovers - including French actor Yves Montand, President John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby Through it all, DiMaggio never stopped loving Marilyn and never turned his back on her. He had visited her, asked herto marry him AGAIN and made plans to marry at city hall on August 8, 1962. She was found dead on August 5. The five-hour autopsy performed by Thomas Noguchi, did not establish the cause of death and no trace of barbiturates were found in Marilyn’s stomach lining or digestive tract. Noguchi called it ‘a probably suicide’. Her tissue slides disappeared during the autopsy complicating a definitive cause of death. DiMaggio was heartbroken. ‘A sound came out of him, an inhuman sound, almost like the roar of a lion’, according to his son Joey. ‘He then bent over and started to weep in deep gulps and gasps’. He broke down crying during the funeral service. With Marilyn’s death, DiMaggio died as well. He made plans with a nearby florist to deliver fresh roses to her crypt twice a week for years to come and ordered a bench to be made and installed in front of the crypt. He held the Kennedys responsible for Marilyn’s death. ‘They might as well have put a loaded gun to her head and pulled the trigger’, DiMaggio said. DiMaggio believed no one could love her as much as he did. She was the one person in his life that he had truly loved and he never got over his grief. He developed tuberculosis and pneumonia and succumbed on March 8, 1999.