Gone with the Wind premiered in a segregated Atlanta
On this day · 15 December 1939
Tens of thousands jammed Peachtree Street for the film's glittering debut, while its Black stars were barred from the theater.
On December 15, 1939, Gone with the Wind premiered at Atlanta’s Loew’s Grand Theatre, the climax of three days of parades, receptions, and a costume ball. A crowd of some 18,000 packed the street outside, hoping to glimpse stars Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable.
The glamour had a hard edge. Under Georgia’s Jim Crow laws, the film’s Black cast members were kept away from the whites-only premiere.
Among the missing was Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy. Months later she would become the first African American to win an Academy Award, taking Best Supporting Actress. Black Atlantans, meanwhile, waited until April to see the film in a separate theater.
The movie went on to colossal box-office success and, adjusted for inflation, remains among the highest-grossing films ever made. Its premiere is now remembered as much for who was shut out as for the spectacle on screen.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
