Original subtitles

[projector whirring]

[typewriter bell dings]

[typewriter tapping]

[upbeat piano music]

- 1939 was Hollywood's most important year.

- Hollywood in 1939 was when the studios ran rampant.

- They were factories.

They were just humming.

- There was "Gone with the Wind," "Stagecoach," "Wuthering Heights,"

and of course, "The Wizard of Oz."

1939 was the greatest year in Hollywood history.

- In this episode, we go behind the scenes

to reveal an illicit love affair.

- Larry and Vivien had to keep their affair a secret,

because if it had got out, it would have been an absolute scandal

- They were in each other's arms between every take

making love.

Larry was absolutely exhausted by her demands.

She was a very demanding lady.

- And uncover an uncomfortable truth

about golden-age Hollywood's most successful film.

- "Gone with the Wind" is a race problem.

It's bullshit.

- There were toilets for the white actors

and toilets for the Black actors.

So segregation lived on that set.

- In the words of the stars, and those who knew them best.

- John Ford was very difficult. He could be very tough

on you, thinking back on it.

I was scared shitless.

- They would be saying in Navajo,

you know, this movie really sucks.

John Ford is an asshole.

[laughs]

- On the eve of World War II, delving into one of Hollywood's darkest secre

- They were still trying to make movies

that wouldn't offend Hitler.

- [speaking German]

- They were trying to make movies that

wouldn't offend Mussolini.

- If you want to know the truth about Hollywood,

you need to understand 1939.

- 1939 is everything that Hollywood

stood for, both good and bad.

But it did produce gold.

The energy of it all, just breathtaking.

[projector whirring]

[upbeat jazzy music]

- Hollywood, mecca of the motion picture industry.

- In 1939, Hollywood made over 500 films,

generating an astonishing $659 million at the box office.

- 1939 is really the golden year of classical Hollywood.

It was an absolutely extraordinary year

in terms of the number of classic films

that were produced in a 12-month period in Hollywood.

It was the peak of the Hollywood studio system,

the peak of the greatest iconic stars of the silver screen.

And it was the point at which they just suddenly kind of hit

their stride and produced just one

classic film after another.

- 1939 is a culmination of so much of what Hollywood had done.

All of that was providing a staggering amount of work

for an enormous number of people.

I always want to go back and say,

do you know how this is peak Hollywood?

♪ ♪

And the great event of 1939 was ""Gone with the Wind.""

- "Gone with the Wind" was the most ambitious movie

of Hollywood's golden age, and its producer,

David O. Selznick, had everything

riding on the film's success.

- Selznick was everything you imagine a producer should be.

He was a publicist, he was detail maniac.

He was famous for calling people up

at 4:00 in the morning because he'd

had an idea about some tiny detail

of a fireplace or something, you know, ridiculous.

- Selznick was what today we might call a control freak.

He was just constantly firing off memos and sending them

to everybody all over the set and saying,

you know, you need to do this, and you need to do that.

Selznick was not only a compulsive memo writer,

he was a compulsive gambler.

And he basically bet the farm on it,

and he stood to lose everything if "Gone with the Wind"

wasn't a success.

But this was a gamble that he was ready to take.

- "Gone with the Wind" was a tumultuous production

right from the start.

Filming had already been delayed by two years

because Selznick was determined to secure

Clark Gable for the lead role.

- Clark Gable and Carole Lombard

returned from Kingman, Arizona, as Mr. and Mrs. Clark Gable.

This news means a good many broken hearts

all over the world.

- Clark Gable was not just a great star,

he was the great star.

He was known as the King of Hollywood.

- When Clark walked into the forecourt,

the police were nearly overpowered.

- In today's terms, he would be kind of, you know,

George Clooney and Brad Pitt rolled into one.

He was just the A-list star.

Everybody thought that Clark Gable should play Rhett

Butler, except Clark Gable.

There were various elements of the character

that Gable was particularly uncomfortable with.

He didn't much like the idea of being the man

who was chasing a woman.

He was used to being the man who the women were chasing.

- This war has stopped being a joke

when a girl like you doesn't know how

to wear the latest fashion.

- Rhett Butler was a bit of a dandy,

that he liked his clothing, which was not

a guy's thing in the 1930s.

That he would be surrounded by all these ladies in hoop

skirts, and that he would have to dance with them.

- You do waltz divinely, Captain Butler.

- He just didn't think it was for him,

and of course, it would go on to be the film that defined

his career, that absolutely kind of, you know,

locked him into iconic classic status.

- But finding the perfect actress to play Scarlett

O'Hara was proving impossible, and it

was threatening to derail the entire production.

- The big question very quickly became

who was going to play Scarlett O'Hara,

who is this spoiled, vain,

dreadful woman, really,

but there's something lovable about her.

- Selznick screen-tested some of the biggest

actresses in Hollywood.

- [inaudible].

- But none of their performances

quite hit the mark.

- It was very difficult to cast.

Almost every great actress in Hollywood

wanted to play the role.

- I've been wondering where you're keeping yourself.

- Scarlett was a very coveted role.

They screen-tested 80 actresses.

- I love you.

- I'm in love with you, Ashley.

- I love you.

- The search was really well-publicized.

It had become this kind of PR stunt, a bit like, you know,

Cinderella's ball, like the prince was

going to try the slipper on every single girl

in the country.

Selznick got to the point where he was sure

that he was failing, and he sent one of his famous memos

saying, I think this is going to be the biggest

failure of my career.

And everybody is to blame, including me.

- As the search continued, little

did Selznick know that his Scarlett O'Hara

had just arrived in town.

Vivien Leigh was an up-and-coming British theater

actress, unknown in Hollywood except for the rumors

that she was having an adulterous affair

with the new British star, Laurence Olivier.

- My father and Vivien first met--

it was she who engineered it.

She was married to a very nice lawyer called Leigh Holman,

and she dragged him to see Larry as Romeo,

and afterwards they went round to the dressing room.

My papa was in his vest and underwear

taking his cream to his face, and Vivien

leaned over and planted a kiss on his shoulder.

And he saw her and fell for her immediately.

- Both told me separately that when they saw each other,

it was just absolutely explosive.

- Unguarded and intimate shots of Laurence and Vivien's

early life together were captured on film.

- There's some rather grainy homemade

footage of Larry and Vivien when they first fell in love.

The way he ran down to the pool.

Everything they did was so charged with that, whew!

- Their early relationship was brought

together through acting as lovers in "Fire Over England."

- Dear and foolish.

- Why foolish?

- Very clever photography, with the beautiful shafts of light.

This is so real that watching it,

you feel a sense of intrusion.

And being in each other's arms for the camera was one thing,

but it went far beyond that.

They were in each other's arms between every take,

in their dressing rooms, making love, to such an extent

that Larry was absolutely exhausted by her demands.

She was a very demanding lady.

My father and Vivien had to cover up

their illicit love affair because

of the prurience of Hollywood.

- Hollywood was very conservative,

and Larry and Vivien had to keep their affair a secret.

Because if it had got out, it would

have been an absolute scandal.

- Vivien had come to Hollywood for love,

but she had an ulterior motive.

- Vivien followed Larry to Hollywood

because she wanted very much to be with him,

and she also wanted to be there because they

were casting Scarlett O'Hara.

Selznick cast Clark Gable as Rhett Butler, of course.

That was at everybody's insistence across America.

They'd all read this book.

And Vivien read it and was determined,

set her heart on it.

- The making of "Gone with the Wind" was in dire straits.

Preproduction costs were soaring,

and David O. Selznick had been forced

to start filming before they'd found an actress

to play the crucial lead role.

- Before Scarlett had been cast,

they shot the burning of Atlanta.

And they did that because the money

people said, if it doesn't begin by this date,

the money is off.

And so they had to do it with understudies.

- Part of the legend of the making of "Gone with the Wind"

is that the burning of Atlanta, which

is one of the major spectacular set pieces of the film,

Selznick managed to get permission

to burn down the backlot of "King Kong,"

which is a movie he had worked on.

Obviously they had lots of cameras to catch every angle,

because they could only do this once.

So they weren't going to do a reshoot.

Olivier went with Vivien Leigh to witness

this astonishing sight.

- Larry said, now look.

I want you to stand on this platform

so you can see everything going on.

And David Selznick was there, shouting at these people,

do it this way, do it that way.

And the fire was huge, three, four stories high

of flames and smoke.

And Vivien was excited, and Larry took David Selznick

and said, I want you to meet Vivien Leigh.

Meet your Scarlett.

And he could see.

And he said, I've got my Scarlett.

That's no question.

- It really was instant.

He took one look at her and said, yeah, this is it.

And did the screen test, and that just confirmed his instinct.

- Coming up, at the heart of golden-age

Hollywood's most famous film lies an uncomfortable truth.

- Could you tell me about "Gone with the Wind's" race problem?

- "Gone with the Wind" is a race problem.

"Gone with the Wind" is trash.

It is racist propaganda.

It's bullshit.

- The actor who would become Sir Laurence Olivier, darling

of the British stage, was relatively unknown when

he came to Hollywood in 1939.

But this wasn't his first attempt

to break into the movies.

He'd tried and failed to make a name for himself

in Hollywood several years earlier.

- My father was a big theater star.

His Romeo was a fantastic success,

and his Hamlet had been absolutely magnificent.

But his first films were dreadful, and I've seen them.

Embarrassing.

For example, "The Yellow Ticket."

He was in a small railway carriage with this very

attractive woman.

- Um, I'm awfully sorry.

- His eyes were always full of emptiness, out of focus.

He was a little bit wooden.

His gestures were slightly exaggerated.

[laughs]

- You're pretty sharp, aren't you?

- In 1939, Laurence Olivier returned to Hollywood to have

another shot at stardom.

He'd been cast in "Wuthering Heights,"

and gave an imposing performance as Heathcliff.

- Go on!

Shoot, you puling chicken of a man

with not enough blood in you to keep your hands dirty.

- But the aggression of the character

was reflected in Olivier's difficult personality

on the set.

- Larry had more charm, when he put it on,

than anybody I've ever seen.

But he was a man on a short fuse.

- Vivien told me that Larry, on the set of "Wuthering Heights,"

was very, very difficult, because ther

was always that-- don't come too near.

It was almost as though he felt godlike,

and he didn't want anybody to cast a shadow

on his godlike personality.

- Did you like Larry?

- No.

I admired him.

I admired him enormously, but I didn't like him.

- He didn't suffer fools at all, and was easily bored.

Diplomacy was not for him.

- You'd be amazed at the scenes between Merle and myself that

took place, beneath that heart-throbbing romance

called "Wuthering Heights."

You'd be amazed at the temperament, and the spit,

and the fury, and the passion.

- Merle Oberon was much better on screen

than he was, to start with.

- Heathcliff, when you went away, what did you do?

Where did you go?

- There is a scene in the film where

they are sitting on a crag, and she

is dying to be close to him.

The problem was that with his enunciation, when it came

to close-ups, little bits of spit

used to hit her in the face.

- Cathy, you're not thinking of that other world now?

- And she complained about that, understandably.

And he lost his temper and shouted

and screamed and yelled, and everybody

left him sitting on a moor.

And after a couple of days, they got it together again.

And it was-- it worked very well.

- Fill my arms with heather.

All they can hold.

Come on.

- Cathy, you're still my queen!

- I was very snobby about films.

I did them to make money, and said so.

The man who changed me was the man I quarreled

with most bitterly of all, really, and that

was William Wyler.

- My father's acting improved significantly

because of the director.

The death scene, when Heathcliff

carries Cathy to her bed, William Wyler

made him do 62 times.

And at the end of each time William Wyler

just said, be better.

- What do they know of heaven or hell,

Cathy, who know nothing of life?

- He speaks with soft, soft, soft passion,

and with a look of such desperate tragedy.

- Do not leave me in this dark alone,

where I cannot find you.

- It's a tear-jerking moment.

It was the first really important

part that he had played.

He saw that this, by God, would make him

star number one, which it did.

- Having won the lead role in "Gone with the Wind," Laurence

Olivier's secret lover, Vivien Leigh,

was on the cusp of stardom herself.

- Vivien told me that she knew that part

would absolutely make her.

She said, there were so many people

that looked at me with such, for want

of a better word, hatred.

And she said, it took me a long time

to realize it was the dream of many, many people.

- Right from the very beginning,

as the camera closes in on her, you

can see that she is Scarlett.

- Fiddle-dee-dee.

- Couldn't be anybody else but her.

- War, war, war.

This war talk's spoiling all the fun at every party

this spring.

I get so bored I could scream.

- She's never far away from giving a genteel,

rather self-pleased giggle about the situation,

about her love of life.

- There isn't going to be any war.

- Not going to be any war?

- Why, honey, of course there's going to be a war.

- If either of you boys says war just once again,

I'll go in the house and slam the door.

- But Scarlett, honey!

- Don't you want us to have a war?

- Wait a minute, Scarlett.

Honey, please.

- There is an awful lot of Vivien

in that role, no question.

She got her way whenever she really wanted to get her way.

A well-known actress, Judy Campbell,

said about Vivien, what Vivien wanted, she got.

And she did, too.

- With his Scarlett O'Hara finally in place,

David O. Selznick turned his attention to casting

the iconic role of Mammy.

- I'm Kevin John Goff, and Hattie McDaniel

was my great-grand aunt.

For the role of Mammy, every Black actress

showed up for that audition.

Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady of the United States,

wanted her maid to get the part and wrote

a letter of recommendation.

Hattie showed up in actual full costume.

Selznick and the rest of the people,

just they couldn't believe it.

There are a couple of scenes that

they're-- they're performing in the screen test.

- Suck in.

- One is where she's pulling on a corset,

and the other is helping Vivien Leigh adjust her dress.

- Keep your shawl on your shoulders.

- She's doing these slight movements and gestures

with her body that stand out.

She's moving her head from side to side, showing

that acerbic wit, that bite.

- Ashley Wilkes told me he liked to see a girl

with a healthy appetite.

- What gentlemen says and what they thinks

is two different things.

And I ain't noticed Mr. Ashley asking for to marry you.

- When Selznick saw Hattie's performance in the rushes,

he was astonished.

She turned out to be, in his opinion, one of the strongest

characters in the film.

And this led him to believe that she

would be one of the great Black performers in Hollywood.

- With an extraordinary cast, Selznick's Civil War epic

was reaching new heights in terms of scale and spectacle.

- Maybe the most iconic scene in "Gone with the Wind"

is when Scarlett is searching for the doctor

among the Confederate wounded at the train depot.

The camera is following her at first,

and then it registers her horror without showing

you what she's seeing.

And then the camera starts to pan back,

and it's on a crane, which means that it can keep pulling

back, but also pulling up.

You realize that she is surrounded

by thousands and thousands of wounded

and dying and dead soldiers.

In order to get the scale that they were looking for,

they couldn't even afford to hire enough actors.

And so they interspersed actors with dummies

so that they could just get the sheer number of bodies.

Her figure gets smaller and smaller

until she's actually wiped out by the scale of

the devastation to humanity.

And all that you see, then, waving in the foreground,

is the Confederate battle flag.

- Surprisingly to modern audiences,

"Gone with the Wind" tells the story of the American Civil

War from the perspective of the Confederates, who went

to war to defend slave-owning.

- History is meant to be written by the victors.

And so it is a very, very weird thing that "Gone with the Wind"

is made, and it's so sympathetic.

It seems so sympathetic to the Confederacy.

The way in which it treats the plantation South as being

a perfect, gentle, elegant society

is so different from the reality.

"Gone with the Wind" becomes a preferred way of thinking

about the American past.

- Many people think of classic Hollywood films

as nostalgic, harmless, innocent fun.

And unfortunately, these films can

be quite difficult for some communities to watch.

- Excuse me, Mr. Rhett.

- It's important to understand that what is referred

to as the golden age of Hollywood

is an era in which racism was rampant.

- Could you tell me about "Gone with the Wind's" race problem?

- [chuckles]

"Gone with the Wind" is a race problem.

"Gone with the Wind" is trash.

It is racist propaganda.

It's bullshit.

- Even by classic Hollywood standards, "Gone with the Wind"

has some shocking racial representations.

As a person of color, you almost

have to distance yourself from the film

in order to get through it.

It's an ordeal.

[dramatic music]

The use of Technicolor is particularly powerful

when it comes to depicting the slaves working in the fields.

Shots of enslaved African-Americans

are bathed in glorious Technicolor light.

These aren't gritty images of people

working and getting dirty.

These are incredibly romantic, almost glamorized images.

[bell ringing]

- Quitting time!

- Who says it's quitting time?

- I said it's quitting time.

- I's the foreman.

I's the one says when it's quitting time at Tara.

Quitting time!

- The tension between the film's famous,

beautiful images and the harsh, brutal realities of slavery

are especially clear in the shocking scene when we see

young, white Southern belles enjoying

their peaceful afternoon nap, whilst little Black girls are

fanning them with giant peacock feathers.

Like so many scenes in "Gone with the Wind,"

the grim realities of Black slave labor

are glossed over, glamorized, romanticized by the lighting

and beauty of the setting.

- "Gone with the Wind," it's a representation of the desire

to see Black people subordinate to white people,

relative to this lost cause narrative about the Civil War

and its aftermath.

It's considered an American classic, but how can you

embrace this film without embracing

the racism inherent to it?

That's impossible.

- Although the film was depicting an event that took

place 70 years earlier, the racism

on screen was still a daily reality

for African-Americans in 1939.

- 1939, you're talking in between the Great

Depression and World War II.

Black people were still being hung.

There were certain parts of towns

that you couldn't go into.

So of course segregation lived on that set.

There were toilets for the white actors,

and toilets for the Black actors.

There was a point in the film, during the shooting, where

the Black actors were protesting because

of the segregated toilets.

And Clark Gable eventually stepped in and said, look,

everyone's going to use the same bathroom facilities.

- The making of "Gone with the Wind"

caused enormous controversy in the Black community,

and there was strong criticism of the Black actors

appearing in the film.

- Hattie's participation in "Gone with the Wind"

was met with a lot of negativity

from the Black press.

They felt that the film was definitely

stereotypical and wasn't showing the Black person

in the best light.

There were some things in that book

that were troubling for her, and she wanted to make sure

that her character, in the way she portrayed it,

had some dignity, and it wasn't one-dimensional.

One of her famous quotes was, I'd rather make $700

playing a maid than $7 being one.

The Mammy character was supposed

to be a little more subservient, low-key,

yes ma'am, no ma'am type of character.

Hattie flipped the script on that.

From the very first moment that Hattie appears in the film,

she makes her presence known.

- Miss Scarlett!

Where are you going without your shawl, and the night

air fixing to set in?

- She has that voice, boisterous,

perfect voice, the pitch, the power behind it.

- Miss Scarlett, come on in the house.

Come on in before you catch your death of dampness.

- No, I'm going to wait for Pa to come

home from the Wilkes's.

- You could just feel that almost

mother-daughter, scolding kind of a relationship

between them.

- Come on!

Mm, mm, mm.

- Hattie's offscreen friendship with Clark Gable

actually went back years before "Gone with the Wind."

Hattie would throw parties.

Clark Gable would be there.

I don't think he ever missed any of her parties.

- Have a drink of sherry, Mammy.

- There's a very endearing scene

in "Gone with the Wind" between Rhett and Mammy,

and he offers her a drink.

But Clark Gable decided that on one of the takes

he would replace the tea, or the colored water,

with whiskey.

- Have another glass.

- So when they did that take, and she

took a swig of that whiskey, it burned her throat.

I'm sure her eyes got big, and she was just thrown off-guard.

And I'm sure Clark Gable had the biggest laugh on the set.

- Mr. Rhett, you is bad.

- There are several scenes throughout the film where

Hattie's showing different ranges,

but there's one particular scene where she's showing

some true raw emotion, when she's going

up the stairs with Melanie.

- It's Mr. Rhett I was worried about.

He done lost his mind these last couple of days.

- Rhett Butler's character is distraught over the loss

of his daughter Bonnie, and you can see how the camera

is following Hattie.

She's the main focus.

- But he wouldn't even open the door

when Miss Scarlett beat on it and hollered to him,

and that's the way it's been for two whole days.

- Oh, Mammy!

- Those tears are real.

This wasn't something she was just

merely reading off a script.

The emotion, it's raw.

It's genuine.

- Lord.

- She was drawing from energy from her life, from her past,

from her upbringing.

That moment is very powerful, and it's one of the strongest

moments in the film.

- Coming up, for one of its stars,

the pressures of filming were taking their toll.

- During the making of "Gone with the Wind,"

Vivien Leigh actually had a breakdown.

It was all too much.

- And even when Hattie became the first Black woman ever

nominated for an Oscar, she still faced appalling racism

from Hollywood.

- Selznick had to call in a favor

to get her into the Ambassador Hotel at the Cocoanut Grove,

and she had to sit in the back of the room.

- Towards the end of 1939, after 11 grueling months,

production on "Gone with the Wind" was coming to an end.

- Over the course of the making of "Gone with the Wind,"

everybody's tempers frayed very badly.

It was a difficult production, and they went through around

15 screenwriters.

They also went through four directors.

- Producer David O. Selznick's control

freakery was pushing the entire cast and crew over the edge.

- Everybody was losing their temper

left, right, and center, including Selznick.

He was manically attentive to detail.

He absolutely cared about every aspect of the film.

And he was controlling the director, and the script,

and the actors, and the production,

and the look, and the costumes, and everything.

It was driving everybody nuts.

Selznick and Gable didn't get off

to a good start, because Selznick, in his very

characteristic way, sent Gable this enormously

long memo telling him how he needed to play Rhett Butler.

Gable was the biggest star in the world.

He wasn't going to be told by the producer

how to play a part.

And he'd already had to be persuaded to do it,

and it offended him mightily.

And from that point things just went from bad to worse.

By the time the film premiered, Selznick and Gable weren't

really speaking to each other.

- Selznick was particularly concerned

that news of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh's

illicit love affair would make it into the gossip columns,

and he encouraged Laurence to leave town.

- David Selznick was terribly worried that they might

be found out as being lovers.

They were both married to other people.

If the affair had become public,

it would have reduced the appeal of the film no end.

And so they had to be kept secret, secret, secret.

- She really adored him, and to be separated from him

in Hollywood must have been absolute agony, because she

was very, very young.

- For Vivien, the pressure of filming

and living apart from Laurence was

beginning to take its toll.

- Playing Scarlett O'Hara took every ounce

of creative energy.

It took every ounce out of her.

She felt completely drained.

- Vivien was very hard-working.

It was a huge part.

She's never off screen.

It took three months.

Normal shooting would be less than half that time.

And it was exhausting to such an extent

that when it was finished, David Selznick wanted

to have a few of the earlier shots done again,

Scarlett when she was 18,

she put on those clothes again, and David just took one look

at her and said, silly idea.

Forget it.

Because those months of extremely hard work

had shown on her face.

It was no longer as pretty and innocent,

and would never be again.

- During the making of "Gone with the Wind,"

Vivien Leigh actually had a breakdown.

It was all too much.

- David Selznick telephoned Larry saying, for God's sake,

get your ass over here.

Vivien needs your company.

Please come, it's desperate.

And so Larry went there for three or four days,

and she was behaving extraordinarily

badly to people on set.

Vivien developed what was then called manic depression.

It's now called bipolar, nervous breakdowns,

which Larry could predict.

There was a rhythm with this manic, manic energy,

and then she'd have a nervous breakdown.

Shocking.

People didn't talk about it.

They used the word sick.

And at that time, there was no cure.

- Even though Vivien was emotionally

exhausted when "Gone with the Wind" w released--

- For the event all Dixie, indeed all America,

has been waiting for, the world premiere of the film

of "Gone with the Wind."

- --she was propelled into global stardom overnight.

- At the premiere of "Gone with the Wind,"

Vivien did tell me that she felt absolute terror,

triumph and terror.

TNT.

- Margaret Mitchell's famous novel comes to the screen,

with Vivien Leigh as Atlanta's Scarlett O'Hara.

- She said, I had emotions that I think very, very

few people have in a lifetime.

She said, I was given an experience that

is rare in my field of work.

I was suddenly world-famous.

- Now that I'm here, it feels just as if I were coming home.

And the warmth and kindness of your wonderful welcome

have made it the happiest homecoming

I could possibly imagine.

I greet you, and I want to thank you with all my heart.

- She was the center of attention.

She knew it was the role of her life,

and I think she must have felt absolutely thrilled.

- But there was a glaring absence at the premiere.

- Hattie was not invited, along with

the other Black performers, to the premiere

of "Gone with the Wind."

The reason was because of the Jim Crow laws.

Segregation was a living, breathing thing in the South,

and Hattie's image was removed from the program.

Considering that she was one of the main characters

in the film, that's quite a humiliating and

demeaning thing.

Hattie's performance went down really well at the premiere,

and the mayor of Atlanta singled her out for praise,

and the crowd erupted.

And afterwards, Margaret Mitchell

sent a telegram saying to Hattie,

you should have been there, the applause was incredible.

And for Hattie, receiving that telegram

had to be a very bitter pill to swallow.

- "Gone with the Wind" was an enormous critical

and financial success.

- The gala premiere of "Gone with the Wind,"

now in the exciting new medium of

70-millimeter widescreen and full stereophonic sound.

- The film was nominated for 13 Oscars,

with nods for David O. Selznick and Vivien Leigh.

And Hattie McDaniel, after petitioning Selznick to put

her forward, received the first nomination for

a Black performer in history.

- By the time "Gone with the Wind" was released,

Selznick's control freakery was completely vindicated.

It was an enormous success.

- It made money like no other film had up until that point.

Many, many people go to see it.

But also, they charge extra for the tickets.

It costs $1 to go and see it, rather than a quarter.

The first year "Gone with the Wind" wa release,

it made something like $18 million.

And at this time, a big hit was $5 million.

So it was a success that was really off the scale.

- When adjusted for inflation, it is still the most

successful movie of all time.

It broke all box office records,

and David O. Selznick carried home

his Oscar for Best Picture.

- 1939.

The Academy Dinner.

- Enthusiastic reports from the time

show just how delighted David O. Selznick

and Vivien Leigh were.

- Scarlett O'Hara, her glorious self.

Vivien Leigh, escorted by producer David Selznick.

- The moment Vivien won the Oscar, the feeling

was overwhelming.

- Miss Vivien Leigh.

- Vivien gave a gracious and moving acceptance speech.

- Please forgive me if my words are inadequate in thanking you

for your very great kindness.

If I were to mention all those who've shown me

such wonderful generosity through "Gone with the Wind,"

I should have to entertain you with an oration

as long as "Gone with the Wind" itself

- And when she thanked the man who gave her the part,

it was clear how much she credited him for her success.

- So if I may, I should like to devote my thanks

on this occasion to that composite figure of energy,

courage, and very great kindness

in whom all points of "Gone with the Wind" meet,

Mr. David Selznick.

- Vivien got the Oscar for Scarlett O'Hara,

and Larry did not get the Oscar for Heathcliff.

- The one feeling that Laurence Olivier had when Vivien won

the Oscar was deep resentment.

Because Larry was manic to be number one.

He wasn't a sharer.

- And when they were driving away, he said--

to me, it's not been written about-- he

said he was so jealous, he simply couldn't bear it.

And he held her Oscar, and it was all he could

do to restrain himself from--

anyway.

He was very jealous, indeed, as a character.

He didn't like to be competed with on stage or on screen.

He always had to be number one, which was one

reason he became number one.

- That was part of what destroyed him.

It made him, but it also destroyed him.

It made Vivien, but it also destroyed her.

- Hattie McDaniel's Oscar night was an entirely

different experience.

- When she went to the Academy Award presentation,

she was seated separate from the white actors

in the film, which, you know, speaks to the fact

that she's not considered an equal.

- Selznick had to call it a favor

to get her into the Ambassador Hotel, at the Cocoanut Grove,

and she had to sit in the back of the room

with her escort and her agent.

- For a contemporary audience, I mean, that

seems particularly egregious.

But that was common.

That was not the exception in 1939, 1940.

That was the norm.

- So she's sitting in the back of the room,

she's nervous about the moment, and they called her name.

- To Hattie McDaniel.

[applause]

- And she strolled up there majestically,

and from the first word in her acceptance speech

you can hear the quiver in her voice.

She's already choked up.

She's already in tears.

- Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science,

fellow members of the motion picture industry,

and honored guests.

This is one of the happiest moments of my life.

And I want to thank each one of you who

had a part in selecting me for one of the awards.

For your kindness, it has made me feel very, very humble.

- It brings a combination of pain and--

and-- and joy, for what she went through.

Even though she had to sit at the back of the room,

she gets through that speech.

My heart pulls from many different directions

because of that.

- I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race

and to the motion picture industry.

My heart is too full to tell you just how I feel.

And may I say thank you, and God bless you.

[applause]

- She's the first Black person to win an Academy Award.

It would be many years before a second Black person

would win an Academy Award.

To have a Black person recognized in this way

is significant, but at the same time,

it's a situation where you're kind of weighing

the personal advancement and success

of Hattie McDaniel against the problematic nature of the

role itself.

- I'm grateful that she still has a place in history.

She's still being talked about.

She's still relevant.

There's still lessons to be learned from--

from her story, from her life.

She was trying to make nuanced moves, as far as advancing

the Black performer.

And I think this film, because it was the biggest

film at the time, was a perfect place

to start, as far as laying a foundation-- even

a small little victories-- as far

as the Black person, how they should be treated,

and how they should be viewed.

- Coming up, Hollywood's most belligerent director

reinvents the Western.

- Where do you think that short fuse came from?

- Family trait.

If you think he's bad, you don't know me.

[laughs] Many of the men in my family are cantankerous.

Many of the men in my family have short fuses.

Many of the men in my family are assholes.

- In 1939, Hollywood's most celebrated director,

John Ford, was about to make a film that would

change cinematic history.

- What's notable about 1939 is not just

they were great films, but they were great films

by great directors.

Some of the greatest directors in Hollywood history

were making movies at that time, including, of course,

John Ford, one of the greatest film artists who ever lived.

- Two cameras?

Jesus Christ.

Am I looking at you or am I looking at the camera?

- You're looking at me.

- OK. - [inaudible]

- Who was John Ford?

In our family, you know, he was God.

He was the king.

But to the larger community, he was respected,

if not always liked.

- To this day, he's probably the most honored

director in American pictures.

He won, I think, six Oscars.

I was asking Orson Welles who was the best

director he had worked with.

Best directors are John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.

With Ford at his best, you get a sense

of what the Earth is made of.

- In 1939, his breakout year, he made four very successful

movies all in succession.

I can't name a director who has had such a good year.

- John Ford's biggest film of 1939 was "Stagecoach,"

but for an A-list director like him, making a Western

was a strange choice.

- Westerns had been so done in the silent era

that a lot of people were just kind of tired of them.

They were very popular with kids,

and they were very popular with-- with a rural, less

sophisticated audience, and they were

looked down on by Hollywood.

With the development of sound, Westerns

were relegated to B-movies.

My father Pat had found this short story called "A Stage

to Lordsburg," and he said to my grandfather

at the dinner table, I think this would

make a pretty good movie.

So my grandfather read it, and he said, I think you're right.

- In 1939, John Ford introduced the world to a little-known

actor called John Wayne.

- John Wayne was born with the name of Marion Morrison.

Now you know, if your name is Marion Morrison,

you're going to change your name.

[horses whinnying]

- Hold it!

- The introduction to John Wayne in "Stagecoach"

is a very unusual shot for Ford, actually.

The camera moves in from a medium

long shot to a close-up.

- And it's out of focus, too.

And his cameraman told him, he said,

you know, I think I lost focus on that, Jack.

I think we ought to do it again.

He said, no, leave it.

You know, it-- it--

people will notice it more.

Most directors would have reshot it.

- Hello, Curley.

- It's announcing, this is going to be a big star,

and this is his introduction, and all

the rest of the shit he's done so far doesn't count.

This is it.

- Hiya, Buck.

How's your folks?

- Wayne worked on a lot of Ford films at Fox as a prop man,

as a crew member, as a stunt man.

He was pretty well-known in the B-movie world.

And he was good-looking.

He was a ladies' man.

He was a man's man.

But nobody thought he was a serious actor.

- Wayne was stuck doing cheap, low-budget

Westerns for almost a decade.

And I think Ford saw that he had potential as a star.

[dramatic music]

And when Ford came to make "Stagecoach,"

he decided he wanted to use John Wayne.

And the studio, the producer, didn't

want him to use Wayne at all.

But Ford insisted.

- That's what "Stagecoach" did.

It showed him he could take the next step.

- Take it easy, Gatewood.

- Wayne became the biggest Western star in the world,

actually, but it took a while.

- "Stagecoach" might have catapulted John Wayne

into stardom, but working with a director

like John Ford wasn't always easy.

- John Ford's approach to filmmaking

was simplicity, KISS, keep it simple, stupid.

Know what you want, be on time, shoot it, move on.

- I was just a kid.

I'd never been on the set before.

He was very difficult. He could be very tough on you.

He was intimidating, to say the least, thinking back on it.

I was scared shitless.

- Where do you think that short fuse came from?

- Family trait.

If you think he's bad, you don't know me.

[laughs] Many of the men in my family are cantankerous.

Many of the men in my family have short fuses.

Many of the men in my family...

are assholes.

Ford could be rough, particularly

with a young action guy like John

Wayne, who was not well-trained in, you know,

the theatrical arts.

Ford would taunt Wayne.

He says, oh, can't you walk like a cowboy?

You're skipping like a fairy.

What are you doing?

You know, when you grab the woman, you know, grab her.

Don't grab her like you're afraid of her,

grab her like you love her.

- John Ford's difficult personality was also

putting him at odds with the studio

who were paying for the film.

To keep his production away from studio interference,

Ford decided to shoot at a location 500 miles

away from Hollywood, in a desert

1,500 meters above sea level.

- "Stagecoach" was the first film shot in Monument Valley.

[dramatic music]

And "Stagecoach" has some wonderful scenes there.

It's visually stunning.

It's very majestic.

It's very open.

It's very unique.

- It's an extraordinary location.

He did about seven films in Monument Valley.

- Ford liked it because he could go there

and nobody would bother him.

He's in control.

Nobody had ever used it because it's so hard to get to.

It's one of the most remote places in the United States.

- "Stagecoach" features one of the most impressive

chase scenes in film history, which set the bar

for all future Westerns.

- The climax of "Stagecoach" is an extraordinary Indian attack

on the stagecoach as it races across the plain.

It's done at great speed and at great risk,

and it has wonderful stunts, and it has wonderful falls,

wonderful shooting, people falling off horses,

and people running out of ammunition.

[gunshots]

- Because all those shots are real.

It's very well-shot and very well-edited.

- There's one sequence where John Wayne fires one shot

and about seven guys go down.

- That great stunt that, uh, Yakima Canutt does,

he wouldn't let John Wayne do that shot.

That'd be too dangerous.

[dramatic music]

- The stuntman playing the Indian jumps

onto the lead horse, and Wayne shoots him.

And he's hanging on, and Wayne shoots him again.

And he falls, and he has to lie absolutely still,

and he keeps his elbows in real tight

because there's only about three feet of clearance.

And he said the horses have to be going fast, and absolutely straigh

and they were.

[dramatic music]

But it was a very daring stunt.

They probably paid him an extra $50 for it, you know?

- But the chase scene has a brutal backstory.

- They used a technique that's outlawed today.

You can't do it.

It's called a running W. And a running W is,

you shackle a horse's two front legs together,

and you tie a rope to those two front legs.

The end of the rope goes into a stake in the ground,

and you get the horse to run all out.

And when the horse runs out the line of wire, boom,

he goes down.

And it usually kills the horse.

- While "Stagecoach" was a huge success, to modern eyes

it's also a difficult film to watch,

because it perpetuates a stereotype

of savage Native Americans.

- One of the most problematic aspects of "Stagecoach"

is its racial representation.

Gorgeous images of Monument Valley

are suddenly disrupted by ominous music

and threatening images of the Native Americans.

We're left in no doubt that these

are the villains of the film.

- But on "Stagecoach," the Navajo actors got their own back.

- Ford would be the first one to admit

that we treated the Native Americans, the Indians, badly.

They had a lot of Indian dialogue scenes

that were cut out.

The Navajos knew that nobody but them spoke Navajo,

so they would be saying in Navajo,

you know, this movie really sucks.

You know, John Ford is an asshole,

and all these outrageous things, all this profanity,

and nobody knew.

- Coming up, Hollywood censors clamp

down on sex and violence.

- One of the things people may have noticed

is that sometimes very early talkies are a lot

more, I don't know, saucy.

A lot more dangerous.

- So a prime example would be "Tarzan and His Mate,"

where you get to see a nude swimming sequence,

a post-coital sequence as well, that even to our eyes

today is quite exciting.

- Tarzan, you're a bad boy.

- In 1939, Hollywood was ruled by censors determined

to cut depictions of sex, violence,

and crime from the movies.

But this wasn't always the case.

Just a few years earlier, films reflected

much more liberal attitudes.

- Sometimes very early talkies are a lot more, I don't know,

saucy, a lot more dangerous, a lot more ambiguous,

a lot more challenging than later golden-age Hollywood

movies in terms of sexual license and things like that,

in silent movies even more so.

- So a prime example of a film that even to our eyes today

is quite exciting--

- Tarzan!

- --would be "Tarzan and His Mate."

The characters' costumes are pretty revealing.

You get to see a nude swimming sequence,

a post-coital sequence as well, where Tarzan and Jane are sort of

relaxing together, clearly having

just had fun, shall we say.

- Tarzan, you're a bad boy

- And also a really interesting scene whereby Jane

decides to change her clothes and nips into a tent,

which is backlit so you can see her removing

her clothes in silhouette.

- Need any help?

- Do you always help ladies to dress?

- When they're lovely enough.

- But by 1939, Hollywood censors

had imposed the Production Code, a strict set of rules

that all but eliminated sex, violence,

and crime from the movies.

- His Production Code, voluntarily adopted

by all major producers, has been law

to Hollywood's movie makers.

- The Production Code was finally implemented

in order to placate the religious right,

particularly Catholics.

Hollywood was faced with two choices.

It could either capitulate to these external groups,

and possibly to government censorship,

or it could self-censor.

And it decided to self-censor so that it could maintain

its commercial viability.

- The Code prevented the mention of, for example,

mixed-race marriages.

There was absolutely to be no mention of homosexuality.

- Famously, married couples didn't sleep in double beds.

They had two single beds.

- Religion mustn't be mocked.

Crime must be seen to not pay.

People must be punished.

- The first time a lavatory was ever shown to be used

was in "Psycho."

[toilet flushing]

- You couldn't portray excessive or lustful kissing.

That would work the audience into too much of a frenzy.

- You would think that that would mean all films became

much more staid and moralistic, but actually what happens

is, filmmakers find ways to use suggestion to create

situations that sophisticated audiences, at least,

will understand.

- This is one night you're not turning me out.

- A prominent example would be "Gone with the Wind,"

when Rhett Butler carries Scarlett O'Hara up the stairs,

and there's a fade-out.

And the next morning, we fade in on Scarlett in bed,

seemingly very happy.

And I think adult audiences know what happened in

between those two scenes, but nothing

is said directly about it, and nothing is shown.

- But "Gone with the Wind" was not immune to the censors,

and producer David O. Selznick came

up against them over one of the film's most famous lines.

- Where shall I go?

What shall I do?

- Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

- The word damn was in the book of forbidden words,

as far as the censor's eye was concerned.

Now, David O. Selznick was absolutely

determined to have the line, and he fought tooth and nail.

But I've got a list here of some of the suggestions

that the office and various other people offered as--

as an alternative.

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a hoot."

That doesn't sound very Civil War, does it?

"Frankly, my dear, it is of no consequence."

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a continental."

What does that mean?

They did actually record "Frankly, my dear,

I don't care," but Selznick himself had come up

with the line, don't give a damn,

and he absolutely fought for it.

And he got it, so it stayed in.

But it did-- didn't exactly cause

people to faint in the cinema rows,

but it was shocking enough.

- The Production Code didn't just apply to bad language,

sex, and violence.

The censors also went for films that were

critical of American politics.

- The Production Code, you know,

wasn't just about telling you what

you could and couldn't do.

You had to submit your scripts.

In the case of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,"

the Frank Capra, James Stewart film, there was a lot of,

oh, maybe you can't make this.

Maybe it's representing America as a place

with corrupt politics.

- Director Capra has drawn on the almost

untouched wealth of story material

on the national political scene.

- The whole point of the Production Code

was, films mustn't engage with anything offensive.

When they read the script for "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,"

their concern is, this is politically controversial.

- It might inflame revolutionaries

and people who want to bring the system down, you know.

So there was this kind of almost Stalinist way

of vetting a script.

- But Frank Capra was a powerful director.

He was not so easily reined in.

- Mr. James Taylor came down here and offered me

a seat in this Senate for the next 20 years,

if I voted for a dam that he knew, and I knew, was a fraud.

But if I dared to open my mouth against that dam,

he promised to break me in two.

- Jimmy Stewart is an idealistic young senator

and is distraught to be confronted with corruption

in American politics.

- More disturbing in the film is

when Jimmy Stewart's character, Jefferson Smith,

tries to get his own story out.

He uses a kind of Boy Scout organization

to distribute leaflets, and then

they're attacked by mobs organized

by the industrialists.

- Well, what are you standing there for?

Get the boys out. Kill it!

- Yes, sir.

- There's this idea that there is actually

a kind of fascist force in America

that's doing away with free speech,

and it's determined to maintain its hold on the U.S. government.

It did cause a lot of offense.

You can imagine in Washington, D.C.,

they didn't like it at all.

It was a really daring film for 1939.

It's a pretty outspoken, revelatory film,

even by today's standards.

- The Production Code also insisted that Hollywood

didn't offend other countries.

- And the reason they didn't want

to offend any international governments

was not because that was "wrong," but because it was

commercially stupid, because then you couldn't

sell your movies in the country of

that international government.

- To make sure that they didn't cause offense,

they would send the script to the embassy

of the country involved.

- But Hollywood was happy to make exceptions to the rule

when it suited them.

Russia didn't buy American movies,

and so films like Greta Garbo's "Ninotchka"

were free to directly criticize the Soviet regime.

- Greta Garbo plays a Russian official who is sent to Paris

on a government mission, and she

is the most drab and humorless official you can imagine.

- But you must admit that this doomed old

civilization sparkles.

Look at it.

It glitters.

- I do not deny its beauty, but it's a waste of electricity.

- What a city!

- Paris represents the West as a place of bounty.

It's a place where people are wealthy.

They live fairly frivolous lives.

- You mean Leon's bringing the Bolshevik you told us about?

- Isn't it divine?

- I wouldn't have missed this for anything in the world.

- By contrast, Russia is a strikingly poor country.

It's politically oppressive.

- Comrades of the world, never has there been

such a May Day parade as this!

- The studios felt absolutely confident

in portraying Russia and communism this way,

because Russia didn't import American movies.

And so there was nothing for them to lose.

- Very consciously, the movie is

about a fight between communism and capitalism,

and because of sex, and a hat that she loves,

which is absolutely ridiculous today.

- What's that?

- It's a hat, comrade, a woman's hat.

- How can such a civilization survive

which permits their women to put things

like that on their heads?

- The hat kind of stands in for all of the glamour,

and all of the luxury, and all of the sensuousness of Paris.

She's seduced by a man, and then

she's seduced by capitalism.

So basically, sex brings down the Soviet Union in "Ninotchka."

And Hollywood was happy to do that,

because they weren't selling films to the Soviet Union.

- Coming up, shockingly, there was

one country that Hollywood was happy to cozy up to in 1939.

- They were still trying to make movies

that wouldn't offend Hitler.

- [speaking German]

- They stopped making movies with overtly

Jewish characters.

They stopped using the word Jew in their scripts.

- As 1939 came to an end, the world was becoming

a very different place.

- [speaking German]

- While Europe was suffering some of the darkest months

in its history, Hollywood was enjoying incredible success

and looking the other way.

- The Hollywood studios were faced with a problem,

which was that America was officially neutral

and was trying to stay out of the war.

The classical Hollywood system was always

trying to please everybody.

That was kind of its commercial model.

That meant that they steered very clear of anything that

could be controversial, anything that could

be seen as too political.

- But remarkably, Hollywood studios did more than just

ignore the rise of fascism and the specter of war.

- One of the most shocking things that recent historians

have uncovered, in fact, is the degree to which the Hollywood

studio moguls were putting commercial interests

above political or even moral interests.

As late as 1939, they were inviting

Nazi "ambassadors," representatives, for goodwill

tours of the major studios.

They were still trying to make movies

that wouldn't offend Hitler.

They were trying to make movies that

wouldn't offend Mussolini.

They stopped making movies with overtly Jewish characters.

They stopped using the word Jew in their scripts.

So there was this attempt to curry commercial favor

with the fascists.

- Hollywood's unwillingness to explicitly deal with

anti-Semitism feels even more ironic when we remember that

many of the studio heads were themselves

Jewish and came from Eastern European backgrounds.

- It's an unpalatable truth, but there was

an awful lot of right-wing feeling within America as well.

You know, a lot of Americans supported Hitler.

A lot of Americans had a real sort of right-wing bent.

- Hitler has said America could be conquered from within.

- Astonishingly, in 1939, 20,000 Nazis

gathered for a rally at Madison Square Garden.

- They had soldiers in the aisles

that they called stormtroopers,

and they had speakers echoing the language

of Hitler and Goebbels.

The film footage from that night is absolutely chilling.

You cannot believe that you're not looking at a Nuremberg

rally, and that you are looking at Madison Square Garden

in New York in 1939.

- But with the Nazi threat at home and abroad,

one studio decided to put morality

before money and make a film that

was explicitly anti-fascist.

- By 1939, Hitler had been in power for six years.

And for years before that, Nazi stormtroopers, Brownshirts,

had been marching up and down the streets

and had been in the newsreels.

So, you know, for 10 years, people

had been aware of Nazism.

But-- but Hollywood had never covered it, really.

It was only the Warner Brothers who instantly

saw the threat of Nazism.

They were Jewish, the brothers Warner,

but so were the other heads of studio.

- Warner Brothers ignored the Production Code and its

competitors to make the first explicit anti-Nazi film,

"Confessions of a Nazi Spy."

- But even then, it was a closed set, as it's called.

It was secret.

No one knew what the film was called,

and the Nazi insignia was sort of

hidden from anybody looking.

- The national feelings clause of the Code

said that countries must be treated fairly.

You couldn't write fictions that seemed

to be exposés of countries.

So what they did was use the transcripts of a trial.

- Charged with the crime of espionage

against the armed forces of the United States.

- In which real Nazi spies were found operating in New York,

and therefore they could say, this is factual.

Yes, we're dramatizing it, but this really did happen.

- Schneider offers his services as a Nazi spy,

addressing his letter to Hitler's personal newspaper.

- Hollywood tales of espionage traditionally centered

on the romantic figure of the spy.

What"Confessions of a Nazi Spy" does

is situate its story in a far grittier environment.

Street corners, back rooms, dingy apartment buildings.

- For hours, Renard caters to Schneider's inflated vanity,

skillfully leading him on to give

an account of his meetings with Nazi spy contacts.

- "Confessions of a Nazi Spy" emphasiz

its factual basis by having a "March of Time"-style narrator.

- Nazi propaganda printed in huge quantities.

- The newsreel style of narration.

- Carefully devised to fit the official German concept

of mass stupidity.

- Conveying that this is news, this is what really happened.

It portrays the militarism of Nazism very vividly.

- I say that we must unite all those of German blood

to believe in the German destiny of America!

- We see a Nazi rally where there are swastikas on flags

all around the room.

There are German-Americans wearing Nazi uniforms.

- Our America!

[together] Sieg Heil!

- It was the first movie to show Nazi insignia.

- Groucho Marx was impressed.

Said that, you know, Warner's was the only studio

with any guts, because they were the only ones

who had done that.

- Nazi sympathizers picketed cinemas, slashed seats,

and threatened exhibitors.

One cinema in Milwaukee was even burned down for screening

"Confessions of a Nazi Spy."

- "Confessions of a Nazi Spy" is the first Hollywood anti-Nazi

film, and in that respect, it opens

the door for so many films that follow in its footsteps.

But I think it sets up a lot of the stereotypes around Nazism

that will be used in later films,

the militarism, the doggedness, the snarling vehemence

of the Nazi characters.

Those tropes survive well into the war

- Despite the Nazi threat, for the studios in 1939,

it seemed like the good times would never end.

But just two years later, America entered the war.

- 1939 was really a perfect moment in Hollywood,

because it was this peak point where everything's fallen

into place, everyone knows what they're doing,

and the war hasn't come yet.

Because I think the war really spoils the mood in Hollywood.

- The movies would never again recapture the energy,

excitement, and magic of 1939.

- 1939 was a great year for the Hollywood studios.

They were factories.

They were just humming.

- Hollywood's golden year had produced

a staggering number of films.

- It's the year, really, where you get to see the Hollywood

studio system at its height, the real big hitters,

some absolutely amazing films that go on to be

superb classics.

- From stars to scandals, from yellow brick roads

to Southern belles, this was a year

that no one would ever forget.

- 1939 was the greatest year in Hollywood history.

It was the point at which they just suddenly hit their stride

and produced just one classic film after another.

- A year that left an extraordinary lasting legacy

on movie history.

- 1939 is everything that Hollywood

stood for, both good and bad.

But it did produce gold.

I'm not saying that, you know, you should only watch

classic movies of that period.

That would be absurd.

But the ones that are worth watching, my goodness,

they're worth watching.

[applause]

[upbeat music]

♪ ♪