gone with the wind
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Hattie McDaniel, celebrated as the first black actress to win an Academy Award, continued to work in motion pictures and in radio. She performed in a number of Warner Brothers films during the 1940s and 1950s, including In This Our Life with Bette Davis and Thank Your Lucky Stars with Humphrey Bogart. She was also active in radio and television, and she became the first African American to star in her own show, the comedy series Beulah. She died in 1952 of breast cancer. When criticized for playing so many roles as a maid, McDaniel once replied, “Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I didn’t, I’d be making $7 a week being one.”
Leslie Howard, who had reluctantly taken on the role of Ashley Wilkes, is best remembered for his fine performance in the role. After the film’s release, Howard returned to his native England. He starred in a number of British war films, including 49th Parallel, Pimpernel Smith, and The First of the Few. Howard died in 1943 on a flight from England to Portugal when a Junker fighter shot his plane down in the mistaken belief that Winston Churchill was on board. Howard perished along with seventeen passengers and a crew of four. His body was never recovered.
In 1937, Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel. She spent the next decade in quiet celebrity, living in her home and community in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1949, just ten years after the publication of Gone with the Wind, she was killed by a drunken driver as she stepped off the curb on Peachtree Street, the site of the elaborate parade that had heralded the opening of her film. Over time, her novel was translated into more than fifty languages and sold more than fifty million copies. She never published another book.
David O. Selznick continued producing motion pictures for the next twenty years. His successful films included Spellbound, The Paradine Case, Since You Went Away, The Third Man, Duel in the Sun,