Film
Hattie McDaniel’s landmark Academy Awards win
The 12th Academy Awards ceremony was held on February 29, 1940, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, with Bob Hope hosting. Gone With The Wind was nominated for 13 awards and won for [Read more…] about Hattie McDaniel’s landmark Academy Awards win
“Nothing can match the serene, silent images of Ingrid Bergman’s first Hollywood screen test”
Mantaray Film’s recently released documentary Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words reveals the legendary actress through her own movies, letters and diaries, including footage that Bergman shot herself. The film premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and is now being screened at select locations in the United States.
Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Notes on some GREAT WRITERS”
Within Kazuo Ishiguro’s archive are some of his notes on great writers as well as thoughts about films. Some are handwritten while others are typed. Ishiguro has been, in his own words, “putting random, impromptu thoughts of books read (sometimes films seen with particular emphasis on useful lessons, etc, for my own writing.” [Read more…] about Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Notes on some GREAT WRITERS”
Michael Ondaatje, author of “The English Patient,” discusses work with fellow writer
Acclaimed novelist and poet Michael Ondaatje converses with writer Geoff Dyer in a Harry Ransom Lecture on Tuesday, March 31, at 7 p.m. The event takes place in the Jessen Auditorium, in Homer Rainey Hall, across the plaza from the Ransom Center.
Although he is best known as a novelist, Ondaatje’s work also encompasses poetry, memoir, and film. His Booker Prize–winning novel The English Patient was adapted into an Academy Award–winning film. His other works include his memoir Running in the Family, four collections of poetry, the non-fiction book The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, and his novels In the Skin of a Lion, Anil’s Ghost, Divisadero, and The Cat’s Table.
Ondaatje discusses his novels and poetry and his book on film editing, as well as research, editing, adapting books to film, and film as an art itself.
Audience members will be able to ask questions, and a reception and book signing follow at the Ransom Center.
The event is free and open to the public. Priority entry is available to Ransom Center members (one seat per membership card) who arrive by 6:20 p.m. Members arriving after 6:30 p.m. will join the general queue. Complimentary parking for Ransom Center members is available at the University Co-op garage at 23rd and San Antonio streets.
This program is presented by the University Co-op.
In the Galleries: “Gone With The Wind” producer David O. Selznick demanded proper Southern accents from actors
Letters poured into producer David O. Selznick’s office on the proper use of Southern accents in Gone With The Wind. One woman wrote, “Come South and study our dialect. I don’t know your people as you do, but it cuts deep when we see our lovely old Southern life ‘hashed up.’”
Clark Gable employed a dialog coach, but two days before filming, Selznick learned that Gable was refusing to use an accent. Selznick then had Will Price, from the casting department, and Susan Myrick, a technical advisor, work on coaching the actors in the use of an appropriate accent.
Price and Myrick, in a memo to Selznick and director George Cukor, wrote, “we find that the script includes innumerable attempts at written southern accent for the white characters. Both Miss Myrick and I strongly agree that this is extremely dangerous as it prompts the actors immediately to attempt a phony southern accent comprised merely of dropping final ‘ings’ and consonants. A phony southern accent is harder to eradicate than a British or western accent.” They then advise that the script should be retyped, without the written southern accents.
Filming went on hiatus as Selznick replaced director George Cukor with Victor Fleming. Selznick wrote to studio manager Henry Ginsberg about his concerns over the accent during this period: “We know that Leslie Howard has made little or no attempts in the direction of accent and since he is on our payroll there is little excuse for this…. I am particularly worried about Vivien Leigh since she has been associating with English people and more likely than not has completely got away from what was gained up to the time we stopped.” Leigh was already under fire from the media and many Southerners for being British, so it would have been doubly ruinous for the film if she were unable to employ an accent.
Memos related to the actors’ accents are on view through January 4 in the Ransom Center’s current exhibition The Making of Gone With The Wind. A fully illustrated exhibition catalog of the same title is available. Co-published by the Harry Ransom Center and University of Texas Press, the catalog includes a foreword written by Turner Classic Movies (TCM) host and film historian Robert Osborne.
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