75 years ago today, Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh took the screen in the Academy Award-winning film Gone With the Wind, based on Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel. The movie is full of iconic, oft-quoted lines, but the most famous line almost didn't make it into the film, according to Today. Rhett Butler's "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" was nearly cut because it didn't meet the industry's standards at the time. "It is my contention that this word as used in the picture is not an oath or a curse. The worst that could be said of it is that it's a vulgarism," the movie's producer, David O. Selznick, argued.
Though they eventually got permission to use the words "damn" and "hell" in the script, Selznick and his story editor, Val Lewton, apparently rounded up some alternative lines to replace Mitchell's "My dear, I don't give a damn" if it came to that. And the alt options, which are on display at the University of Texas' Harry Ransom Center, are great:
Photo: Harry Ransom Center
"The whole thing is a stench in my nostrils," is how I'll officially be describing my Mondays from here on out.
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