Custer High School
Class Of 1962
Melody Jones Parker
September 4, 1944 - September 27, 2024
Melody assured me several years ago that if/when she should pass, she'd make sure her son, David, informed us. David was kind enough to give us the information about Mel's passing. Her obituary has not yet been published and since her friends and family were all over the country there has been no formal services. As soon as we have the obituary, we'll post it on the "Recent Passings" page. In the meantime, if you want to reaquaint yourself with Melody, her values and sense of humor, go back through the "Message Forum" 3 or 4 years ago. She was a frequent contributor.
- - - - - - -
80th Birthday Party Group!
Machine Shed - September 21st
Who is the chicken? And what does she/he have to do with our 80th?
All will be revealed when as soon as the final photos are in!
- - - - - - - -
“Bet You Didn’t Know …”
this time about ...
Battle for the female lead role - Over 1,400 actresses were considered for the female lead role of Scarlett O’Hara. Some known actresses at the time who were in the running were Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Jean Arthur, Lana Turner, Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert, Helen Hayes, Susan Hayward, Katherine Hepburn and Lucille Ball. Ironically, Vivien Leigh wasn’t selected until after filming had begun!
Costly Expletive - The iconic line "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" from Gone with the Wind actually caused producer David O. Selznick to be fined $5,000 for excessive language. (Wouldn’t he be shocked by what passes as acceptable language in films these days. It’s not a movie if there aren’t a few f-bombs in the first lines of dialog in 90% of today’s films.)
Crying Gable - Clark Gable was very distressed by having to cry on film. In fact, he was so upset that he almost quit the movie, but Olivia de Havilland convinced him to stay. He would always claim that he hated the role of Rhett. He thought GWTW was just another “woman’s movie” and wouldn’t amount to much.
Yukky kisser - Actress Vivien Leigh didn’t enjoy kissing Clark Gable because, she claimed, his dentures smelled bad.
Equal pay? Gable was paid over $120,000 for 71 days of work and Vivien Leigh received about $25,000 for 125 days of work.
A three-year-old mother! Barbara O'Neil was 28 at the time she appeared as Scarlett's mother, Ellen O'Hara. Vivien Leigh was only three years younger than her while playing the role of her daughter.
Suffering Dummies! - Producer Selznick insisted on no less than 2500 extras lying in the dirt, portraying the dead and wounded Confederate soldiers toward the end of the war. But at the time, the Screen Actors Guild only had 1500 to offer. Selznick saved money by ordering 1000 dummies to round out the epic suffering he wanted to portray. He also burned down everything he could from the back lot of the studio to make the burning of Atlanta more authentic.
Battle of Atlanta Injuries
Minority honors - Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to be nominated for and win an Academy Award.
Would Scarlett and Rhett ever get back together? Add Margaret Mitchell to the list of people who didn’t know what ultimately happened with Scarlett and Rhett. She left the ending ambiguous with no “real” ending even in her own head. “For all I know, Rhett may have found someone else who was less—difficult”, she told Yank magazine in 1945. In another interview Mitchell said that she believed Rhett was forever done with Scarlett but didn’t doubt she would continue to scheme ways of getting him back in bed. And even if Scarlett were successful, Mitchell believed Rhett wouldn’t stick around. (Mitchell might know because it was said that she was a collector of erotica!)
Revenue - If box office receipts were adjusted for inflation, Gone with the Wind would be the top grossing movie of all time. According to the Guinness World Records, the total gross in 2012 figures for Gone with the Wind would be $4,401,358,554.94. (Let’s see, inflation since 2012 has been 37%, meaning today’s equivalent to be roughly $6,029,370,000! I wonder if Tom Cruise or George Clooney could beat that.)
Why didn’t Margaret Mitchell ever write another novel? She was a journalist who started writing GWTW only because she had an ankle injury from which she was recovering. It took her 10 years to research and write GWTW, published in 1936 and a movie in 1939. During World War II she did a lot of volunteer work. Then in August of 1949, she and her husband were walking to the movies when she was hit by a drunk driver and died 5 days later. She was only 48 years old and may well have had another major novel or two still in her if she had lived. But, by most estimates, it wouldn’t have been a sequel to Gone With the Wind.
GWTW manuscript destroyed - Mitchell requested that her husband destroy the Gone with the Wind manuscript upon her death. And her husband granted her request and destroyed the manuscripts. He only saved a few pages of the manuscript to keep as proof that Margaret Mitchell was truly the author of the sensational novel.
Gone With The Wind - 10 Best Quotes
- - - - - -