Visitors Lay Siege to Atlanta for ‘GWTW’ Gala : Movies: Much has changed since the film premiered in this city in 1939. For one thing, the last two mayors have been black.

Where “Gone With the Wind,” Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler are concerned, frankly, Atlanta gives a damn.

The Southern U.S. business mecca, which hosted the premiere of Hollywood’s most famous movie just 3 1/2 months after the start of World War II, is celebrating the 50th anniversary of “Gone With the Wind” (“GWTW”) this week in high style.

Visitors from as far away as Japan, Britain, Ecuador and Indonesia have flown to Atlanta for an array of social events, tours, museum exhibits and publicity stunts that seek to re-create a sniff of the heady atmosphere of late 1939 that gave many Americans and others at least a momentary relief from the worries of war and economic depression.

That was when the stars descended on Atlanta for the Dec. 15 premiere of the movie of Old South sentimentality and Civil War survival that cost a then-record $4.2 million to make and was held in a segregated city festooned with Confederate flags in which black cast members were not invited to the main festivities.

Much has changed, not least that segregation has ended and Atlanta’s last two mayors have been black.

Outgoing Mayor Andrew Young, a member of the celebration committee, recently wrote that Atlanta’s economic boom is a tribute to the work of “the spiritual heirs of (“GWTW” characters like) Scarlett and Rhett--and those of Mammy, Prissy and freedmen.”

Most “GWTW” stars are long-dead so fans attending this week’s celebration must look to the silver screen, souvenir stands or museum exhibits to see Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Hollywood producer David O. Selznick and Margaret Mitchell, the Atlanta newspaperwoman who wrote the best-selling novel on which the film was based.

Olivia de Havilland, who now lives in Paris, was invited but unable to come due to “family illness.”

The main survivors attending are supporting cast members Butterfly McQueen, who played “Miss Scarlett’s” simple-minded slave girl “Prissy,” Rand Brooks, who played Scarlett’s first husband, and Evelyn Keyes, who played Scarlett’s sister Suellen.

The principals have attended a “cast reunion party”; a sumptuous $100-per-ticket “Tara Ball” for 3,000 people was serenaded with old Negro spirituals by a local church choir last night; and the week’s high point is tonight’s “repremiere” of “GWTW” at the 4,518-seat Fox Theater several blocks north of downtown Atlanta.

The main center of attention aside from the film itself is expected to be Atlanta billionaire Ted Turner, the media maverick who bought the film library that included “GWTW” in 1986 and last year spent $250,000 to have the movie restored to its original color and sound glory.

Turner, 51, has had a long-term fascination with the film (he even named his sons Rhett and Beau after its characters) and is often compared with “GWTW” leading man Rhett Butler for his swaggering joie de vivre attitude, and an opportunistic approach to business such as in founding Cable News Network.

“He’s an entrepreneur of the first order and so was Rhett Butler,” says Atlanta historian Franklin Garrett, who attended the original “GWTW” premiere and was a friend of Margaret Mitchell.

“Butler’s philosophy in the book and the movie was rebuild and get better. You don’t just sit down and mope over the Lost Cause,” he said in a reference to the burning of Atlanta by Union troops in the Civil War which squashed the slaveholding South’s drive for independence.

“GWTW” has become a phenomenon as much as a classic movie, with lines such as Rhett Butler’s then-controversial, “Frankly my, dear, I don’t give a damn,” and Scarlett O’Hara’s parting shot, “Tomorrow is another day,” passing into America’s lexicon.

Since its release, the movie has earned $77.6 million at the box office, but a Turner spokesman said that if the figure were adjusted for inflation, its grosses would top $800 million.

Turner executives said this week that “GWTW” may soon be released theatrically in the Soviet Union, where it has never been shown.

“We think there’s a hundred million people in the Soviet Union who’d like to see ‘Gone With the Wind,’ ” said Jack Petrik, a Turner executive.

Earlier this year, the Turner organization launched a limited release in the United States, Japan, Britain and several other countries in Asia, Europe and Latin America of a technically “restored” version of “GWTW.”

A new raft of books has also been published for the movie’s 50th anniversary and promoters have brought out everything from “Mammy” dolls to “Scarlett chocolates” and perfume.

“I couldn’t care less about the movie itself. But what fascinates me is the way it glamorized Margaret Mitchell’s book, which wasn’t very glamorous at all, and the whole industry it spawned worldwide,” “GWTW” artifact collector and author Herb Bridges told Reuters.

New York teacher Pauline Bartel, who recently wrote a “GWTW” trivia book, says she’s seen the movie “about 30 times” and viewed it from much different perspectives.

“As a teen-ager, I identified with Scarlett O’Hara’s unrequited love,” Bartel said.

“In my 20s I was interested in the story of the Old South and whole era of the Civil War and now at 37 I’m most interested in the theme of being a survivor.”