Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

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Did you know? Gone With the Wind edition {And a chance to win a book!}

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. Q&ACurtaindress

  • 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.

SOSB_NEW_Final.inddWant 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.

You think you know a person: Review of Some Things You Keep by J.J. Landis {plus a giveaway!}

Confession: I can’t really say that I know J.J. Landis very well, but before I read her memoir, Some Things You Keep, she was at least someone  I had met in person and interacted with frequently on Facebook and blogs, and we have mutual friends.

Still, I was unprepared for the story I didn’t know. (That’s okay. It’s not a bad thing.)

But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.

When we moved to Lancaster two years ago, and I outed myself as a writer to people I barely knew, one of the names that popped up as “someone I needed to meet” was J.J. I took advantage of the technology of Facebook and like a creeper I sent her a message and insisted that we be friends because of our mutual writer-ness.

She didn’t think that was weird (or if she did, she didn’t say the words out loud) and we became computer friends even though we lived in the same basic area.

Many months later, we finally met in person. (She invited me–a practical stranger!–to her house for coffee. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so nervous!)

me and J.J.

Proof that we actually met in person!

She told Facebook later that one of the friends who lives inside her computer came to visit for real. It was a beautiful time of getting to know one another.

I knew then that she was writing/had written a book and was trying to decide what to do with it. She had a story to tell and it needed to get out, and I caught glimpses of it through her blog.

So finally–FINALLY–this year, she published her story, Some Things You Keep, a story of letting go, holding on and growing up.

Some Things You KeepAnd  let me tell you, friends, that I am often nervous about reading/reviewing my friends’ work because I’m afraid it a) won’t live up to my expectations and I won’t be able to figure out how to tell them without hurting them or b) it will far exceed my expectations and I’ll be so jealous that I’m friends with amazing writers who have PUBLISHED A BOOK that I won’t be able to think straight. A third fear is that no one will believe me when I say it’s good because the author is my friend. That, I can’t control.

Let me be clear: J.J.’s book falls in the “b” category of those fears. Her memoir holds up to the standards set by memoirs of far more famous bloggers that I’ve read. As I turned the pages, I sometimes forgot that I was reading the story of someone I actually know. Her story, which includes family tragedies, drug and alcohol abuse, abortion and redemption is dramatic but never seems overly dramatized, if that makes sense. J.J. conveys her feelings about the life she lived in a way that acknowledges the truth without sanitizing it but doesn’t leave readers stuck in the mire. Each chapter of the book leads you to the next chapter of her life, and even though I know the person on the other side of these events, I kept turning the pages, reading one more chapter, to find out what happened next.

And her writing is beautiful. Here’s a sample:

Like my quilt was made with scraps of discarded fabric sewn together into something beautiful, so was my life. New life had come from the tatters.

In a way, I’m sad that more of you don’t J.J. She’s a sweet, sassy, qwirky librarian type with a dry sense of humor and a big ol’ heart for people. I have so many questions for her after her reading this book. Not because she left readers dangling but because I want to know more about this person whose life has known sadness and forgiveness.

Maybe you can’t meet J.J. or be her friend, but you can read her book. And she has graciously offered a book for free to one reader of this blog!

Want to win? Leave a comment here on the blog telling me about the best memoir you’ve read recently, or a true story that inspires you. I’ll pick a winner on Saturday, May 23.

And definitely check out J.J.’s blog in the meantime. You’ll be encouraged by her take on life.