Rhonda's Gone With The Wind Memory 50th Anniversary GWTW Re-Premiere Photos Fox Theatre, Atlanta Georgia - December 1989 Home: greenlightwrite.com featuring
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Gone With The Wind - main page GoodbyeLie, the gift shoppe - wander our world where Love and Lace reign I first met Rhonda Cowan when she and her mother attended the Gone With The Wind re-premiere in Atlanta. They quickly became friends. Always, |
I was about 10 years old when my mom, Carolyn Golden, took me to see Gone With The Wind. We ended up staying for the second showing as well. I was hooked from that day forward. I started crying when Ellen died, stopped until Pa died, and from there on I was just blubbering through the whole thing. I was impressed with Scarlett [Vivien Leigh], who did every thing she had to do to keep her family from starving to death. I admired her courage and her strong will. And I thought Rhett Butler [Clark Gable] was the most handsome man I had ever seen. The following winter Mom and I read GWTW aloud. I was amazed at all the information that was left out of the movie. Of course you can only put so much into a small space of time; I just can't imagine how long of a movie it would have been to film everything in Margaret Mitchell's book. We read it all the way through that year, and I have read it myself many times since. When VCRs came out, the first movie I had to get was GWTW. But it didn't stop there. People knew I loved the story and a collection was born.
In 1989, Life Magazine published an article about the events they were going to have in Atlanta for the 50th anniversary of the film. I quickly called Mom and said, "Let's go on a road trip." I wrote letters to Ted Turner and even found an address for Olivia DeHavilland [Melanie Wilkes], so I wrote to her too. She replied to me as well as to my daughter. That letter is framed and displayed on a special place on our wall. Finally, there we were in Atlanta, Georgia. The first night we went on a tour of the Stately Oaks Plantation. It was decorated for Christmas just the way they would have at the time of the Civil War. It was beautiful. The next day we met learned GWTW fans are called "Windies” and there are a bunch of us. We took a tour of the Lovejoy Plantation, owned by Betty Talmadge, who shared her thoughts on GWTW with us. There was a home on her property that belonged to Margaret Mitchell's grandparents, the Fitzgeralds. And even though we could not go near it as it was very run down, it was great to see it and get an idea of where Margaret Mitchell came from. We went to the Atlantic Historical Society, to Rich's Department Store where they had a reunion of the cast, and to Macy's where Margaret Mitchell signed her first book. We also visited the library, where we found a lot of information about Margaret Mitchell. We stopped at Margaret Mitchell Square on Peach Tree Street. We shopped in the Turner Store for GWTW stuff as well as souvenirs of The Wizard of OZ and other movies. We even went on a tour of CNN. The cast of GWTW was staying at the Omni Hotel as we were. One night as we were leaving for an event, I saw Butterfly McQueen who played Prissy. I asked if I might take her photograph, and she told me to take it as she walked by. Then she stopped and posed. Many years later, I sent her a copy of the picture and asked her to sign one for me and return it. She did. Today, it hangs next to Ms. DeHavilland's letter. The night of the premiere, Mom and I both felt the tears sting our eyes as we stood at the theatre and watched the stars come in while the orchestra played Tara’s Theme and Dixie. We were lucky enough to be able to attend a cocktail party with the stars before the film began. I had a nice chat with Cammie King Conlon [Bonnie Blue Butler] and Fred Crane [Stuart Tarleton], a sweet southern gentleman. The movie was great. We even had a champagne breakfast afterwards. We went back to the hotel floating on cloud nine. Mom and I had one more Gone With The Wind experience together when we went to a Gone With The Wind Expo in Richmond, Virginia. We got to see some of the new friends, like Jane Marie, we had met in Atlanta as well as some of the stars. Mom passed away in 1996, but even though she was not with me on my trip to Los Angeles that year, I felt her presence when I was standing at Grumman's Chinese Theater looking at Clark Gable's foot and hand prints, and again while my husband, Mike, and were eating dinner at Planet Hollywood. There, I looked up and found we were sitting right under Clark Gable's hat. In 2000, my husband and I renewed our wedding vows. As a second honeymoon we spent two nights at a bed and breakfast in Barnesville, Georgia, owned and operated by Fred Crane and his wife, Terri. It was a wonderful experience, and we truly hope we will get back there again. Who knows how many more GWTW experiences I will have, but I sure do look forward to finding out.
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Atlanta's 1989 Fox Re-Premiere by Rhonda Cowan Outside the Egyptian Ballroom where the post movie screening party was held - Christmas tree with Rhett, daughter Bonnie and Scarlett
Evelyn Keyes and the Tara cake
Larry King of CNN, master of ceremonies
other cast members of Gone With The Wind, left to right,
Original Premiere Photos Olivia DeHavilland, Vivien Leigh
Clark Gable with wife, Carole Lombard
Olivia DeHavilland and David O Selznick, Producer
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