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Gone with the Wind, American epic film, released in 1939, that was one of the best known and most successful films of all time. It enjoyed a more-than-30-year reign as the all-time Hollywood box office champion, and it won eight Academy Awards (in addition to two honorary awards). Based on the runaway best-selling 1936 novel Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, the movie is almost four hours long and includes an intermission. The film, set in the American South during the time of the Civil War, tells the story of Scarlett O’Hara (played by Vivien Leigh), the headstrong and willful daughter of the owner of the plantation Tara. The story begins in 1861. Scarlett is in love with Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), but she learns that he intends to marry his cousin Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland). At a party at Ashley’s home, Scarlett’s overtures to Ashley are seen by another guest, Rhett Butler (Clark Gable). Ashley rebuffs Scarlett, and she therefore agrees to marry Melanie’s brother Charles (Rand Brooks). War is declared, and the men go off to enlist. Charles dies of measles during the war, and the widowed Scarlett goes to Melanie’s home in Atlanta. She meets Rhett at a charity fund-raising bazaar, and she dances with him, violating the customary rules of mourning. Rhett, a successful blockade runner, continues to visit Scarlett over the next few months, as Atlanta comes increasingly under siege. Ashley returns home on a Christmas furlough and asks Scarlett to take care of Melanie, who is pregnant. Melanie goes into labour as Atlanta is being evacuated, and Scarlett and her servant Prissy (Butterfly McQueen) must attend the birth on their own. Scarlett summons Rhett to take her, Melanie, Prissy, and the baby back to Tara, and they flee through the burning city, only to find that Tara has been pillaged by Union soldiers. Scarlett’s mother has died, and her father has fallen into a depression. The only people remaining there are her father, her sisters, and the former slaves Mammy (Hattie McDaniel) and Pork (Oscar Polk). In June 1936, a blockbuster of a book was published; it gave the world a sense of the Old South, an unforgettable heroine and (in the movie version) the phrase "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind sold one million copies in its first six months, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 and brought an explosion of unexpected, unwished-for celebrity to its author. In Mitchell's hometown of Atlanta, a lovely old apartment building on South Prado Street bears a big brass plaque. It reads: In memory of Margaret Mitchell, who lived in this building from 1939 until 1949. The manuscript of "Gone with the Wind" was burned in the boiler room by her secretary and the building custodian the day after her death. Intriguing ... but true? Partially, says John Wiley, co-author of the new biography, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. Yes, the book was burned, but "the evidence generally points to that it was burned in a wire basket," Wiley explains. A little trash basket outside — not in the boiler room. As for whether it happened on the day after her death? Well, that detail makes for a good story and a good plaque. There are hundreds of stories about Mitchell and the 19th-century epic she wrote — the story of how the Civil War affected her strong, vivid, sly, manipulative, mesmerizing Southern heroine Scarlett O'Hara.