Gone With the Wind has been mythologised as a record breaker ever since its debut 65 years ago, in December 1939. Three months later, Wind - as it became known in Hollywood - collected 10 Oscars, an unprecedented number for a feature film. Then, as it periodically played over the next 25 years, it yielded the highest box-office take of any film ever (if you ignore inflation). Rarely is it mentioned that prescription drugs - principally benzedrine - propelled the film's driving force, independent producer David O Selznick, to fame and fortune. Behind the scenes, however, as he binged on speed during Wind's making, he wreaked havoc.
Evelyn Keyes, who played Suellen, the sister of the film's pivotal character, Scarlett O'Hara, recalls that Selznick swallowed uppers "like popcorn". It seemed to be Selznick's way of coping with the pressure of producing the civil war-era romance, which, with a budget of $4m (£2.1m), was then the most expensive motion picture ever made and, at four hours, was also the longest. At the same time, he supervised the Hollywood debuts of Alfred Hitchcock and Ingrid Bergman.
Selznick's prescription drug haze made Wind one of cinema's most beautiful and entertaining screen love stories, with its perky colour scheme, rapid-fire dialogue and crisp editing. The effect of Selznick's drug use, however, increased his manic mind-set and intensified the hands-on method with which he made movies. He meddled in all aspects relating to the films he produced and more so than most with Wind. He called the project "a thing apart", and viewed it as his vehicle to Oscar glory, stopping at nothing to get its details right. Consequently, making the film was a total nightmare for its cast and crew, especially for the woman who played Scarlett, Vivien Leigh.
When Selznick met Leigh in December 1938, on the first night of Wind's production, he was certain that, after considering 1,400 women, she was his dream girl - the right actor for the role. So was Selznick's brother, talent agent Myron, who urged Leigh to test for the part in Los Angeles where her lover, Laurence Olivier (who Myron represented), was shooting Wuthering Heights. Rada-trained Leigh's film career was minor, but in London she was a member of the Old Vic theatre troupe and could hold her own on stage with Olivier. A Vogue regular (Cecil Beaton often photographed her for the magazine's British edition), she also resembled Scarlett. Bright green eyes lit up her face like the character novelist Margaret Mitchell invented. And Leigh's looks instantly got to Selznick. "I took one look and knew she was right," he recalled. "Her tests showed that she could act the part right down to the ground, but I'll never recover from that first look."
Weeks later, Selznick was not quite so sure, agonising that maybe Leigh wasn't the best Scarlett because, once she was laced into period costume, her flat chest made the tops of all of Scarlett's gowns cave in. Especially the long, crimson velvet dress her husband, Rhett Butler, in a jealous rage, forces her to wear to the birthday party of her beloved, Ashley Wilkes. "Wear that," Rhett orders Scarlett, removing it from her wardrobe and tossing it at her. "For Christ's sake, let's get a good look at the girl's boobs!" bellowed director Victor Fleming from behind the camera when Leigh appeared in it.
Two weeks into the film's production, Selznick appointed Fleming to replace the film's original director, George Cukor, with whom he ceaselessly argued. Cukor protected Leigh from the barrage of memos in which Selznick pondered matters relating to the size of her chest, its shape and position in costume. Fleming, claimed Selznick's biographer David Thomson, wanted Scarlett to be "tougher [and] dangerous". The key to displaying Scarlett as such, he agreed with Selznick, was a heaving cleavage, and to achieve this he insisted that Wind's costume designer, Walter Plunkett, bind Leigh's breasts together with adhesive tape to thrust them forward and up. Plunkett complied. On the set, Leigh cursed and complained that she could not breathe because of the tape.
Leigh hated Fleming, but she became a lifelong friend of Cukor, with whom she shared a love of art and theatre. A veteran Broadway stage director, Cukor said Leigh "smelled of the theatre". Fleming's breath, on the other hand, as she discovered on set, stank of whisky, which he consumed with his pal, Gable. "Ham it up!" Fleming told Leigh when she approached him for guidance. Outraged by Selznick's dismissal of Cukor, Leigh threatened to resign but relented after a meeting with Myron, who was by then her agent, too. "You will never work again on stage or screen," Myron told Leigh. "David will see to that. And so too, Miss Leigh, will I."
Selznick turned his obsessive attention from Leigh's chest to the film's script. Written and rewritten, originally by Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Sydney Howard, it changed daily, due to Selznick's meddling. F Scott Fitzgerald, one of 10 writers hired by Selznick to tweak it, recalled "wild all-night" working sessions during which Selznick played both "boss and collaborator". Selznick had lots of energy - he was taking methedrine and barbiturates. "Whatever was handy," wrote Patrick McGilligan, the biographer of Cukor who, though not embittered by his dismissal, was repulsed by Selznick "crushing up benzedrine and licking the pieces from the palm of his hand, a grain at a time". Daily script changes created an "almost party-like" on-set atmosphere, recalled Keyes. "Our dialogue was constantly being handed to us at the last minute, as if our host, Selznick, was thinking up some charade for us to play."
On set, Leigh strove maniacally to perfect her performance and made audible her disapproval of diverging from Howard's script by "muttering deprecations [and] making small moans", Selznick claimed. Hers was the toughest acting job because she appeared in nearly every one of the film's 700 scenes. She vented her rage about the trials of film acting in letters she wrote to her mother, Gertrude; tearful, long-distance telephone calls to Olivier who, after Wuthering Heights, moved to New York to appear on Broadway; and to her co-stars. Keyes recalled filming the scene during which Scarlett slaps Suellen's face. "My cheek wore the imprint of Vivien's fingers for the rest of the afternoon," claimed Keyes. "She didn't pull her punches."
Leigh hated Hollywood, comparing the rules that governed her life there to those she endured at boarding school. She felt like a prisoner in the Beverly Hills home Selznick rented for her because he arranged for it to be watched by a 24-hour guard so that her relationship with Olivier would be top secret. In London, Leigh and Olivier lived together openly, though they were not yet divorced from their respective partners, with whom each had a child. In puritanical Hollywood, Selznick feared a similar domestic set-up might cause a scandal, jeopardising Wind's success.
In Alexander Walker's biography, Vivien: The Life of Vivien Leigh, the late film critic claimed Olivier's Broadway stage assignment was orchestrated by Selznick to keep the lovers apart. Lovesick Leigh suffered from exhaustion and hysteria. Soon Selznick detected "dangerous symptoms". Rumour had it that Leigh invented a parlour game called "Ways to Kill a Baby" during which she asked participants to invent a method of murdering an infant and, on set, she suffered from what was later classified as a minor nervous breakdown. So did Fleming. His was discovered when one morning on his way to work, Fleming nearly drove his dove-grey Cadillac off a cliff near Malibu. He took a two-week break and Sam Wood took over as the film's director.
Wind spun out of control. For a week, Selznick forced the cast and crew to wake at 2.30am to re-shoot the daybreak scene during which Leigh uttered: "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again ..." Her delivery was perfect. Selznick, however, was displeased by the look of the sunrise in the background of the shot. On Wind's final shooting day, Olivia de Havilland (Melanie Hamilton) walked past Leigh, failing to recognise her. "She looked so diminished by over work," claimed de Havilland. "Her whole atmosphere had changed. She gave something to that film that I don't think she ever got back."
At the 12th Academy awards hosted on February 29, 1940, at the Hollywood night-club Coconut Grove, Leigh received the ultimate prize, the best actress Oscar and, in doing so, became the first British woman to claim it. She swept up to the podium in couture, a cloud of Joy perfume and a veil of stardust, shortly after her co-star, Hattie McDaniel was named best supporting actress. "Hallelujah!" declared McDaniel, the first black actress to win an Oscar. She was one of few members among Wind's party celebrating at the ceremony. De Havilland fled the Grove in tears after losing the best supporting actress prize to McDaniel. Clark Gable was livid that he lost the best actor award to Robert Donat, the star of Goodbye, Mr Chips. So was Olivier, who was nominated for Wuthering Heights. After the ceremony, Olivier and Leigh travelled home together by limousine but it was no pleasure cruise. In the back seat, Olivier grabbed Leigh's Oscar and later admitted: "I was insane with jealousy. It was all I could do to restrain myself from hitting her with it."
· Gone With the Wind is re-released next Friday at the National Film Theatre, London SE1. Box office: 020-7928 3232. A collectors' edition DVD is released in February