It’s amongst Tinseltown’s curious ironies that in February 1940, as war raged across Europe, a turbulent love story, played out against America’s national tragedy of the Civil War, carried all before at the 12th Academy Awards ceremony, winning nine statuettes for Gone With the Wind.

This week, Paul Gambaccini tells the story of ‘GWTW’, one of cinema’s most famous creations and in which British acting talent was surprisingly prominent. For this quintessentially American story of the Old South, English heartthrob Leslie Howard turned in a rather stiff performance as Ashley Wilkes, husband to Olivia de Havilland’s somewhat milk-and-water Melanie Hamilton. But it was, of course, the dashing Vivien Leigh, as the coquettish, headstrong Scarlett O’Hara, who took the Best Actress Oscar – a part she landed after almost all Hollywood’s leading actresses had screentested for the coveted part. “Sshh, she’s the Scarlett dark horse” David O Selznick, GWTW’s producer wrote to his wife.

With film historians David Thomson and Toby Miller, Clark Gable’s biographer Chrystopher Spicer and critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, as well as archival contributions from Olivia de Havilland, co-star Evelyn Keyes and the film’s Academy Award winner for Best Editing, Hal Kern.

Producer: Simon Elmes Show less