Awards presented February 29, 1940
The nominees were ...
... when they should have been ...
And the Oscar went to ...
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| Vivien Leigh with her Gone With the Wind Oscar |
Leigh's win was pretty much a foregone conclusion, especially after the celebrated nationwide hunt David O. Selznick mounted for an actress to play Scarlett O'Hara. It was mostly a publicity stunt, since Selznick had no intention of casting an untried actress in such a key role. Paulette Goddard, Jean Arthur, and Joan Bennett came closest to getting the role out of the roster of famous also-rans: Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Susan Hayward, Margaret Sullavan, Tallulah Bankhead, Miriam Hopkins, Ann Sheridan, Anita Louise, Lana Turner, Frances Dee, and Catherine Campbell (the future mother of Patty Hearst). Leigh wanted the part from the moment she read the novel and heard it was to be filmed. She was not a complete unknown; her films
Fire Over England and
A Yank at Oxford had been widely seen. While filming the former, she fell in love with her co-star, Laurence Olivier, and came to the States to be with him during the filming of
Wuthering Heights. They married in 1940 after both were divorced. The legend (too good to be entirely true, so it probably isn't) has it that she was first brought to Selznick's attention by his brother, the agent Myron Selznick, during the filming of the burning of Atlanta, which Selznick decided to go ahead with even though the casting wasn't yet complete. That scene was shot on December 10, 1938, but Leigh wasn't finally set for the role until somewhere around Christmas Day. Her performance easily eclipsed even her formidable competition for the Oscar, yet between Scarlett O'Hara and her other great Oscar-winning role as Blanche Dubois in
A Streetcar Named Desire more than a decade later, Leigh made only a handful of films. The war, which she and Olivier spent in England, is partly to blame, as is her delicate physical and mental health, but Selznick, to whom she was under contract, also has to be blamed for not providing her with suitable roles.
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| Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara |
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