Lie, Cheat, Steal, or Kill (The Epic Battle Behind the Making of "Gone with the Wind")

A deliciously detailed exploration of the big personalities, gargantuan operation, and enormous success of the most popular movie of its time, Gone with the Wind.

It starts, of course, with a book—and the runaway success of a historical novel that made the casting of Scarlett O’Hara edge-of-the-seat international news. Every generation, new fans fall in love with the movie, and more recently debate the presentation of the Civil War and the characterization of the roles played by its black actors.

David Vincent Kimel, a classics scholar and Yale PhD candidate, bought a rare original shooting script of the movie at auction in 2023; this “rainbow script”, contains every draft and all changes to the movie as it evolved from final draft to what we all saw up on the screen. This is a treasure trove of lost scenes and revisions that exposed the fights over how to portray slavery, with one group insisting on showing its brutality and another, including producer David O. Selznick--and, surprisingly, F. Scott Fitzgerald--digging in their heels for the moonlight-and-magnolias approach we see in the final film.

But there’s so much more here: Selznick’s drug use; Vivien Leigh’s suicide attempt; accusations of rape against Clark Gable; what Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to win an Oscar for her performance as Mammy, really wanted; homophobic and anti-Semitic comments by both marquee directors and the movie’s top star. There’s even a walk-on by Martin Luther King, Jr.

LIE, STEAL, CHEAT OR KILL is an exhilarating narrative history that enriches what we know about an American classic and also exposes a complex creative commercial enterprise where artistry, politics and social upheaval converged. It will not only add to the canon for fans but engage audiences who are eager to reckon with the movie’s beginnings, its history and its unique contributions—for better and for worse—to the discussion of race in America.