Original Post Date 8-19-09
“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”. is arguably one of the most memorable quotes
from the movie Gone With The Wind spoken by Rhett Butler played by Clark Gable. What has made it so memorable? Is it that line alone?
Is it the cold response from the impassioned plea from Scarlett O’Hara played by Vivien Leigh when she says “Rhett! If you go, where
shall I go what shall I do?”? Is it the exchange of the two of them? Or can the conscious awareness of a speech reversal reveal a
complex combination?
{Scarlett
catches Rhett as he walks out the door to leave her for good.}
[Rhett! If you go], where shall I go what shall I do?
Our heart beating,
terror. (Reversals are known to occur in the third person.)
“Our heart beating, terror.” is a pretty intense reversal. Could
this reversal be what people unconsciously hear, that is so heart wrenching, to only be received by a callous response that makes
“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” so wounding? Could Vivien Leigh be so deeply immersed in her character that she feels a loss
deep in her soul, or is there more to this reversal than meets the ear?
A reversal can be found in the final lines of the movie
when Scarlett says:
…[I'll think of some way to get him back]. After all tomorrow is another day.
Had me naked. Now must bring it out.
“Had
me naked. Now must bring it out.” did Leigh and Gable have a liaison while filming Gone With The Wind? If so, why would she want to
have it known? A search on the internet may provide the clue to this reversal. The following is an excerpt from an article from Mail
Online written by Peter Evans titled A very Scarlett lady: Sexual adventuress Vivien Leigh and one shocking secret about leading man
Clark Gable, where he says he met Vivien Leigh at a dinner party given by Sir John Mills and his wife;
…He turned out to
be just another movie actor who won't take "no" for an answer,' she said. 'The trouble was, Clark Gable was Rhett Butler, and Rhett
Butler was Clark Gable.'
I asked what she meant about him not taking 'no' for an answer? Was she talking about the scene - considered
to be outrageously daring at the time - when Rhett forces himself on Scarlett?
'No, I'm talking about the time Mr Gable tried to rape
me. He was a method actor long before they invented the method,' she told me, matter-of-factly.
…Of course, not everything people say
at dinner parties is truthful, but there was something in the way Leigh told me that story, as if she had caught herself off-guard
- and her stubborn refusal to discuss the subject again when I later invited her to lunch - that convinced me she had been speaking
the truth that evening at the Mills's dinner party...
She told the reporter Gable tried to rape her. Notice in the forward speech
the reversal “Had me naked. Now must bring it out.” occurs when she is talking about Rhett Butler as she says forward “I'll think
of some way to get him back (For the attempted rape?)”, and remember she thinks of the character Rhett Butler and Clark Gable and
the actor as having the same personalities.
Peter Evans also says in the article “…But in spite of a series of increasingly serious
breakdowns, bouts of schizophrenia for which she had undergone electric-shock therapy, and a reputation for sometimes drinking too
much, she was still a mesmeric and extraordinarily attractive woman...”
"…the feverishness of as-yet undiagnosed mental and physical illnesses, the manic-depression and tuberculosis that would begin to engulf her life almost as soon as the film was over..."
Could
her mental and physical problems which began “almost as soon as the film was over” be attributed to the attempted rape she could have
been referencing in her reversal and wanted to be known, but for some reason she was unable to tell anyone?
Perhaps there are more reverse speech examples to be found from Vivien Leigh that may shed more light on the attempted rape, but for now if we were to put the two currently known reversals together they can begin to tell "one shocking secret about leading man Clark Gable";
Our
heart beating, terror. Had me naked. Now must bring it out.
Read more of Peter Evans article: MailOnline
