The now iconic Civil War epic ,'Gone With the Wind’ blew reviewers away when it first came out.

If that's it's name - The house where the actual murder was committed and wound up as the movie set for Midnight... is also seen near the beginning of Glory as the setting for the party where Robert Shaw meets Frederick Douglass and is told about raising the black regiment and that he has been named to command it. The interiors were actually shot inside the house. In the following scene, Matthew Broderick and Cary Elwes are leaning on the fence outside with the mansion behind them. ( The cinematographers carefully shot the scene so as to omit all the PALM TREES in the yard! ) It was while they were filming that sequence that those of us in the reenactor core group were first introduced to the actors between takes.
I might be mistaken but house in question was owned by the family of Johnny Mercer. I just took Dear One's conviction that is was as fact. Interesting though, that the family scene was shot there.
 
I figure that the relationship was not uncommon. After all, Mammy had probably raised Miss Scarlett from very early childhood.

I recently, for the first time, watched "Ruggles of Red Gap." Highly amusing and similar to Mammy's and Carson's relationship with their mistress and employer.

Ruggles is brilliant. Just saw it for the first time. But Ruggles is just as much a fictional character as Mammy. Margaret Mitchell was born in 1900, 35 years after slavery ended. How much did she really know about the lives of wetnurses and household slaves? Did she interview a number of them? Scholar Catherine Clinton writes that the "mammy" character is a post-war creation romanticizing slavery and didn't really exist during slavery times.
 
You don't have to guess. Get Leon Litwack's Been in the Storm So Long from your library. The book is full of hundreds of quotes and accounts from slaves (and masters) describing exactly how they felt about slavery and their masters. And how they reacted the second they found freedom.
Thanks so much for the recommendation. Looks like a good and important book.
 
...I'm making my own pilgrimage to the Ransom Center at tu during Christmas Break to see the "stuff" from the movie, including THE DRESS. :smile:

This one?

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The film is often criticized for the depiction of the household slaves as having deep bonds of affection for their owners. Is Mammy's insistence on social propriety and tradition so different from the butler Carson on "Downton Abbey", who is frequently more conservative than even his Lordship? Is the relationship between Carson and Lady Mary so different from Mammy and Scarlet? The domestic servants identify with the family as their own.

Yes, the Mammy character wasn't entirely fiction. For example, Harriet Jacobs, who herself was raised in slavery, gave this description of her grandmother in her narrative:

Such was the story my grandmother used to tell me; but I do not remember all the particulars. She was a little girl when she was captured and sold to the keeper of a large hotel. I have often heard her tell how hard she fared during childhood. But as she grew older she evinced so much intelligence, and was so faithful, that her master and mistress could not help seeing it was for their interest to take care of such a valuable piece of property. She became an indispensable personage in the household, officiating in all capacities, from cook and wet nurse to seamstress. She was much praised for her cooking; and her nice crackers became so famous in the neighborhood that many people were desirous of obtaining them. In consequence of numerous requests of this kind, she asked permission of her mistress to bake crackers at night, after all the household work was done; and she obtained leave to do it, provided she would clothe herself and her children from the profits. Upon these terms, after working hard all day for her mistress, she began her midnight bakings, assisted by her two oldest children. The business proved profitable; and each year she laid by a little, which was saved for a fund to purchase her children. Her master died, and the property was divided among his heirs.

Source: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/JACOBS1/hjch1.htm
It's worth noting, however, that this narrative also portrays a much darker side of slavery, that was nowhere visible in Gone With the Wind.
 
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