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Gone With The Wind, the classic American antebellum romance film, is celebrating its 75th year this week. The movie yielded the first Academy Award given to a Black person after Hattie McDaniel notched the win in the Supporting Actress category.

According to The Associated Press, a college professor has been researching older documents related to the film, revealing racial tensions faced by Black members of its cast. Dr. Matthew Bernstein, a film studies professor at Emory University, shared his findings with AP on the anniversary of the film’s 1939 Atlanta premiere on December 15.

Dr. Bernstein found that Gone With The Wind producer David O. Selznick fought to have McDaniel attend the lavish affair, but she was denied entry due to Jim Crow laws in Atlanta.According to Bernstein, Selznick, was “upset” that McDaniel and the film’s other Black stars would not be invited to the premiere event and worked furiously to have them included at the premiere to no avail.

Selznick, a Jewish man, was sympathetic to the plight of Blacks in the South because of the persecution of his own people. And Selznick wasn’t the only white person upset about McDaniel’s exclusion from the event.

The film’s main star, Clark Gable, was close friends with McDaniel and threatened to boycott the Atlanta premiere. Based on accounts, McDaniel told Gable to not miss the event under any circumstances. The pair remained friends after the film, and Gable attended many of McDaniel’s popular World War II fundraising parties.

For the Los Angeles premiere, however, McDaniel was not only invited but included in the event’s program. She won the Oscar the following year, and the film is among the most successful film in box-office history, when adjusted for inflation.

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