Yesterday, I told you about a new book from Susan Meissner, set around the movie Gone With the Wind and featuring a famous costume piece from the movie–the hat that accompanies the green curtain dress.
To go along with the release of the book, Susan provided some trivia about the dress. I learned some fascinating details, so I share them with you today! And keep reading for a chance to win a signed copy of Susan’s new book, Stars Over Sunset Boulevard. 
- Peggy Marsh (aka Margaret Mitchell) was inspired by her own great-grandmother’s elaborate curtains when she wrote the curtain-dress scene. According to the story passed down through the family, Peggy’s great-grandmother’s velvet drapes still hung in her home after the hell of the Civil War; one of a few remnants of the house’s lingering dignity.
- Did you know that a dress and hat made from curtains for that time in history wasn’t so far off the mark? Post-war Southern women were known to fashion pins from thorns and buttons from walnuts.
- Costume director Walter Plunkett knew that real drapes would be bleached from constant exposure to the sun, and he endeavored to re-create that look for Scarlett’s curtain dress, but the color saturation of Technicolor film was too intense and the fabric didn’t come across faded in the movie.
- In the novel Gone with the Wind, Scarlett’s green eyes are one of her most intriguing features. Vivien Leigh’s eyes were blue, however, so the producers used a combination of green clothes and camera filters to make her eyes appear green in close-ups.
- According to the book The Art of Gone with the Wind by Judy Cameron, the price tag for the curtain dress and the two hats (one was a back-up) was nearly five hundred dollars; far more than the $300 needed to pay the taxes on Tara! In today’s economy that would be close to nine thousand dollars.
- More than 2,500 costumes were made just for the female performers and extras. The entire budget for Gone with the Wind in 1939 was $4 million – the costumes alone would cost close to than $3 million today.
- While Gone with the Wind pretty much swept the 1940 Academy Awards, costume designer Walter Plunkett didn’t win one, but that’s only because there wasn’t an Oscar for Costume Design until 1948. Plunkett finally won his long-overdue honor in 1951 for An American in Paris.
- When The University of Texas acquired the famed curtain-dress, as well as other GWTW costumes and memorabilia in the late 1980s, it was so damaged restorers weren’t sure it would ever be on exhibit. The University raised $30,000 to restore the curtain-dress and other GWTW dresses.
- The dress Carol Burnett wore in her “Went with the Wind” 1976 parody is on exhibit in the Smithsonian – curtain rod and all.
Want to win your own copy of Stars Over Sunset Boulevard? Then, tell me one of the following things in the comments and I’ll enter your name in a random drawing. Don’t forget to provide an e-mail address so I can contact you if you win! (Open to U.S. and Canadian residents only.)
If you’re a fan of Gone With the Wind, what’s your favorite line/scene from the movie? What captures your attention from the story?
If you’ve never seen the movie, what other classic film is your favorite, and why?
I’ll take entries until the end of the day on Monday, January 11, when I’ll pick a winner.