“Gone With the Wind” Turns 75

Famed author Margaret Mitchell's classic novel,  "Gone With the Wind,"  is celebrating its 75th birthday.

The novel had humble beginnings as it was written in Mitchell's tiny ground-floor apartment on Peachtree Street in midtown Atlanta -  a place known as "the dump."

The one-bedroom rental is so small the kitchen table is in the bedroom. But on a little oak table by the window in the corner of the living room she wrote one of America's great novels, Gone With the Wind, poking at the keys of her used portable Remington typewriter for 10 years.

The sweeping Civil War classic aboutScarlett O'Hara, Rhett Butler, and the destruction of the Old South turns 75 this month.

The Atlanta History Center, which operates the Margaret Mitchell House, is celebrating with an exhibit, Atlanta's Book: The Lost 'Gone With the Wind' Manuscript (running Saturday through Sept. 5).

The exhibit includes four of the novel's original chapters, among them the last, which Mitchell actually wrote first. Pages will be enlarged and displayed on the wall, including Scarlett's famous parting words: "After all, tomorrow is another day."

"Mitchell submitted only one version of the typescript document to Macmillan after her first rough draft, and that typescript had been rushed directly into production without any formal editing," explains Ellen Brown, co-author of Margaret Mitchell's 'Gone With the Wind': A Bestseller's Odyssey From Atlanta to Hollywood.

"To have in hand any portion of that document is remarkable, and to have the final, iconic chapter — thrilling. It surely ranks among the most valuable literary artifacts in America."

Mitchell, a young newspaper reporter in Atlanta, wrote her novel twice. The first effort included incomplete rough-draft chapters, stuffed into dozens of manila folders. She then rewrote and edited the draft, adding new chapters, omitting original scenes, rearranging.

The original title: Manuscript of the Old South. Scarlett's original name: Pansy. And when filming of the equally famous 1939 movie began, Vivien Leigh had not yet been cast.

Mitchell's apartment is swarming with visitors this spring, including members of a chapter of the Red Hat Society from Roswell, Ga. Every last member put up her hand when asked who had read the novel. "Who hasn't?" someone yelled out.

GWTW has been translated into 35 languages, selling hundreds of millions of copies worldwide over 75 years. It won the Pulitzer Prize,  and by the time the movie version (which won eight Academy Awards) was released, the novel had already sold more than 2 million copies in 16 languages. Today about 75,000 copies are sold in North America annually.

Few are surprised the book became as popular as it did, even though Mitchell did little to promote it. She never went on a book tour, refused to give speeches and gave only a few interviews. (Mitchell died in 1949, at age 48, after being struck by a cab in Atlanta, without having written another book.)

The tale still captures imaginations. There are Facebook pages, Twitter postings, even a group of people who call themselves "Windies," rabid devotees of Scarlett, Rhett, Ashley and Melanie Wilkes and Scarlett's ancestral home, Tara. Some will no doubt show up the evening of June 12 for a planned Champagne toast at Mitchell's grave at Atlanta's Oaklawn Cemetery.

Thousands of visitors a year stop by the movie room at the Margaret Mitchell House to watch a two-hour documentary on the making of the nearly four-hour Hollywood classic, which has been seen by more than 300 million people.

They also get to see the door to Tara, which is on display.

In one correspondence Mitchell wrote what is now a classic Mitchell line — "In a weak moment I have written a book."