John Lahr, a renowned theater critic who wrote for The New Yorker for more than two decades, took up the task of continuing to record and analyze Tennessee Williams’s life in 2007. In Lahr’s new biography, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh (Norton), he draws upon his subject’s plays,… read more
Articles
Fellows Find: Digital tool allows Spalding Gray scholars to compare various drafts of performance notebooks
James Sitar is an editor at the Poetry Foundation and teaches literature classes at Loyola University Chicago. Sitar’s work in the Spalding Gray archive was supported by the Andrew Mellon Foundation. He discusses his digital project that allows comparisons between Gray’s performance notebooks. The Ransom Center is celebrating the 25th… read more
#Franklymydear, we want your best line
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” The iconic last words of Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind almost weren’t, because use of the word “damn” in films was expressly prohibited in the Production Code. Anticipating objections by the Hays Office (the entity that governed moral code… read more
Database of fan mail documents emotional response from “Gone With The Wind” fans, detractors
As part of the recently launched web exhibition Producing Gone With The Wind, the Ransom Center has launched a new database of fan mail from the David O. Selznick collection. Researchers now have the opportunity to explore a selection of letters sent to Selznick International Pictures in the 1930s through… read more
Web exhibition “Producing Gone With The Wind” launches today
The Harry Ransom Center launches Producing Gone With The Wind, an updated web exhibition, in conjunction with the exhibition The Making of Gone With The Wind. The web exhibition explores the purchase of the rights to Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone With The Wind; the casting of the star actress, Vivien Leigh, as Scarlett O’Hara; and… read more
Opening tomorrow: “The Making of Gone With The Wind”
The Making of Gone With The Wind opens tomorrow, September 9, and offers a behind-the-scenes view of one of the classic films of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Featuring more than 300 rarely seen and some never-before-exhibited materials, the exhibition is drawn entirely from the Ransom Center’s collections and includes on-set photographs,… read more