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On December 15, 1939, at the Loew's Grand Theater in Atlanta, the world premiere of Victor Fleming's film adaptation of Gone with the Wind created a spectacle that was recalled by former President Jimmy Carter as the "biggest event to happen in the South" in his lifetime. The event featured a roaring crowd, streets littered with confetti, the theatre draped in Confederate flags, and a collection of centenarian Civil War veterans waving and saluting the parade of period-costumed main cast — minus the absent Black cast members — as they walked the red carpet. Attended by Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, and no less than 300,000 adoring fans, the premiere was the first of its kind to garner such attention, and the film itself went on to win a record-breaking eight of its 13 Academy Award nominations. Not only did it win Best Picture and many other categories, Best Supporting Actress-winner Hattie McDaniel was the first African American to win an Oscar, though she had ironically been barred from attending the premiere due to Jim Crow Laws.
Following the Atlanta Premiere, the film debuted to similar fanfare in a host of other cities, with tickets exceeding the then hefty sum of one dollar, an astronomical price considering that most films could be seen for 25 cents or less, in addition to the fact that America was still in the grips of the Great Depression. As for Loew's Grand Theater, the palatial movie house that was originally built in 1893 as DeGive's Grand Opera House during the Golden Age of Vaudeville, it was converted into a movie theatre in 1929 and remained one until its destruction by fire in 1978.
Following the 1978 fire — a suspected arson due to the fact that developers had been barred from demolishing the theatre by a historic designation put in place by the City — the theatre's prime downtown site at the corner of Peachtree and Forsyth became the home of the Georgia-Pacific Tower, completed in 1982. Bricks from the demolished theatre were recycled during the construction of a popular restaurant in North Atlanta named Houston's, which to this day includes a commemorative plaque honouring the film and the theatre placed within its entrance.
Since 2012, the modest public art installation and park at Margaret Mitchell Square has sat just in front of the former theatre site. Named for the Gone With the Wind author, the square is complete with a fountain and brick columns evocative of Tara, the childhood home and main setting for the melodramatic misadventures of Scarlett O'Hara, Ashley Wilkes, Melanie Hamilton, and Rhett Butler. Adding a nice bit of historical context to the otherwise anonymous downtown intersection, Margaret Mitchell Square works well to preserve a significant piece of Atlanta's literary legacy.
For bonus points, the archival news reel below contains footage from the premiere:
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