Myron Selznick
Myron Selznick was an American film producer and talent agent. Born in Pittsburgh, Selznick was the son of film executive Lewis J. Selznick and brother of renowned producer David O. Selznick; as a young man, Myron Selznick learned the film production business from his father and worked for his father's film company as a production supervisor. In December 1918 while his father's publicity was declining, he signed Olive Thomas for $1,000 a week and put the Selznick name up in lights again; as he was still a minor at the time, his mother had to sign the contract on his behalf. After his father's company closed in 1925, Selznick worked for other studios as a production adviser. However, with his industry connections, aided by his brother's rise as one of the most powerful film producers in Hollywood, he saw a business opportunity and set himself up as a talent agent. Partnered with Frank Coleman Joyce, the brother of actress Alice Joyce, they formed Joyce-Selznick, Ltd. the first Los Angeles talent agency.
The agency became so successful that 20th Century Fox wound up banning him from their lot out of a concern that he was inflating too many actors' salaries. Selznick married Marjorie Daw in 1925, he owned which finished third in the 1938 Kentucky Derby. Myron Selznick died in 1944, aged 45, was buried at Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery in Hollywood near the Paramount and R. K. O. Studios; the pallbearers at his funeral included Walter Wanger and actor William Powell, who read the funeral oration. That year he was disinterred and buried in a crypt at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, California, where he was joined by his brother, David. Myron Selznick on IMDb Myron Selznick at Find a Grave
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States, is the county seat of Allegheny County. As of 2018, a population of 308,144 lives within the city limits, making it the 63rd-largest city in the U. S; the metropolitan population of 2,362,453, is the largest in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia, the second-largest in Pennsylvania, the 26th-largest in the U. S. Pittsburgh is located in the south west of the state, at the confluence of the Allegheny and Ohio rivers. Pittsburgh is known both as "the Steel City" for its more than 300 steel-related businesses and as the "City of Bridges" for its 446 bridges; the city features 30 skyscrapers, two inclined railways, a pre-revolutionary fortification and the Point State Park at the confluence of the rivers. The city developed as a vital link of the Atlantic coast and Midwest, as the mineral-rich Allegheny Mountains made the area coveted by the French and British empires, Whiskey Rebels, Civil War raiders. Aside from steel, Pittsburgh has led in manufacturing of aluminum, shipbuilding, foods, transportation, computing and electronics.
For part of the 20th century, Pittsburgh was behind only New York and Chicago in corporate headquarters employment. S. stockholders per capita. America's 1980s deindustrialization laid off area blue-collar workers and thousands of downtown white-collar workers when the longtime Pittsburgh-based world headquarters moved out; this heritage left the area with renowned museums, medical centers, research centers, a diverse cultural district. Today, Apple Inc. Bosch, Uber, Autodesk, Microsoft and IBM are among 1,600 technology firms generating $20.7 billion in annual Pittsburgh payrolls. The area has served as the long-time federal agency headquarters for cyber defense, software engineering, energy research and the nuclear navy; the area is home to 68 colleges and universities, including research and development leaders Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. The nation's eighth-largest bank, eight Fortune 500 companies, six of the top 300 U. S. law firms make their global headquarters in the area, while RAND, BNY Mellon, FedEx, Bayer and NIOSH have regional bases that helped Pittsburgh become the sixth-best area for U.
S. job growth. In 2015, Pittsburgh was listed among the "eleven most livable cities in the world"; the region is a hub for Environmental Design and energy extraction. In 2019, Pittsburgh was deemed “Food City of the Year” by the San Francisco-based restaurant and hospitality consulting firm af&co. Many restaurants were mentioned favorable, among them were Superior Motors in Braddock, Driftwood Oven in Lawrenceville, Spork in Bloomfield, Fish nor Fowl in Garfield and Bitter Ends Garden & Luncheonette in Bloomfield. Pittsburgh was named in 1758 by General John Forbes, in honor of British statesman William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham; as Forbes was a Scot, he pronounced the name PITS-bər-ə. Pittsburgh was incorporated as a borough on April 22, 1794, with the following Act: "Be it enacted by the Pennsylvania State Senate and Pennsylvania House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania... by the authority of the same, that the said town of Pittsburgh shall be... erected into a borough, which shall be called the borough of Pittsburgh for ever."
From 1891 to 1911, the city's name was federally recognized as "Pittsburg", though use of the final h was retained during this period by the city government and other local organizations. After a public campaign, the federal decision to drop the h was reversed; the area of the Ohio headwaters was long inhabited by the Shawnee and several other settled groups of Native Americans. The first known European to enter the region was the French explorer/trader Robert de La Salle from Quebec during his 1669 expedition down the Ohio River. European pioneers Dutch, followed in the early 18th century. Michael Bezallion was the first to describe the forks of the Ohio in a 1717 manuscript, that year European fur traders established area posts and settlements. In 1749, French soldiers from Quebec launched an expedition to the forks to unite Canada with French Louisiana via the rivers. During 1753–54, the British hastily built Fort Prince George before a larger French force drove them off; the French built Fort Duquesne based on LaSalle's 1669 claims.
The French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years' War, began with the future Pittsburgh as its center. British General Edward Braddock was dispatched with Major George Washington as his aide to take Fort Duquesne; the British and colonial force were defeated at Braddock's Field. General John Forbes took the forks in 1758. Forbes began construction on Fort Pitt, named after William Pitt the Elder while the settlement was named "Pittsborough". During Pontiac's Rebellion, native tribes conducted a siege of Fort Pitt for two months until Colonel Henry Bouquet relieved it after the Battle of Bushy Run. Fort Pitt is notable as the site of an early use of smallpox for biological warfare. Lord Jeffery Amherst ordered blankets contaminated from smallpox victims to be distributed in 1763 to the tribes surrounding the fort; the disease spread into other areas, infected other tribes, killed hundreds of thousands. During this period, the powerful nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, based in New York, had maintained control of much of the Ohio Valley as hunting grounds by right of conquest after defeating other tribes.
By the terms of the 1768 Treaty of
Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award
The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award is awarded periodically by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the Governors Awards ceremonies to "creative producers, whose bodies of work reflect a high quality of motion picture production." The award is named for Irving Thalberg, legendary head of the Production Division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who developed the company's reputation for sophisticated films. The trophy itself is a bust of Thalberg rather than the familiar "Oscar" statuette. However, it is still counted as an "honorary Oscar"; the award was established in 1937 and was first presented at the 10th Academy Awards, in March 1938. There have been 39 statuettes awarded to date. Other nominees for the 11th Academy Awards: Samuel Goldwyn Joe Pasternak David O. Selznick Hunt Stromberg Walter Wanger Darryl F. Zanuck Category:Recipients of the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award Official website
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. is an American media company, involved in the production and distribution of feature films and television programs. One of the world's oldest film studios, MGM's headquarters are located at 245 North Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, California. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, Louis B. Mayer Pictures. In 1971, it was announced that MGM was to merge with 20th Century Fox, but the plan never came to fruition. Over the next 39 years, the studio was bought and sold at various points in its history until, on November 3, 2010, MGM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. MGM emerged from bankruptcy on December 20, 2010, at which time the executives of Spyglass Entertainment, Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum, became co-chairmen and co-CEOs of the holding company of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; as of 2017, MGM co-produces, co-finances, co-distributes a majority of its films with Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros.
MGM Resorts International, a Las Vegas-based hotel and casino company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "MGM", was created in 1973 as a division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The company was spun out in 1979, with the studio's owner Kirk Kerkorian maintaining a large share, but it ended all affiliation with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1986. MGM was the last studio to convert to sound pictures, but in spite of this fact, from the end of the silent film era through the late 1950s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the dominant motion picture studio in Hollywood. Always slow to respond to the changing legal and demographic nature of the motion picture industry during the 1950s and 1960s, although at times its films did well at the box office, the studio lost significant amounts of money throughout the 1960s. In 1966, MGM was sold to Canadian investor Edgar Bronfman Sr. whose son Edgar Jr. would buy Universal Studios. Three years an unprofitable MGM was bought by Kirk Kerkorian, who slashed staff and production costs, forced the studio to produce low-budget fare, shut down theatrical distribution in 1973.
The studio continued to produce five to six films a year that were released through other studios United Artists. Kerkorian did, commit to increased production and an expanded film library when he bought United Artists in 1981. MGM ramped up internal production, as well as keeping production going at UA, which included the lucrative James Bond film franchise, it incurred significant amounts of debt to increase production. The studio took on additional debt as a series of owners took charge in early 1990s. In 1986, Ted Turner bought MGM, but a few months sold the company back to Kerkorian to recoup massive debt, while keeping the library assets for himself; the series of deals left MGM more in debt. MGM was bought by Pathé Communications in 1990, but Parretti lost control of Pathé and defaulted on the loans used to purchase the studio; the French banking conglomerate Crédit Lyonnais, the studio's major creditor took control of MGM. More in debt, MGM was purchased by a joint venture between Kerkorian, producer Frank Mancuso, Australia's Seven Network in 1996.
The debt load from these and subsequent business deals negatively affected MGM's ability to survive as a separate motion picture studio. After a bidding war which included Time Warner and General Electric, MGM was acquired on September 23, 2004, by a partnership consisting of Sony Corporation of America, Texas Pacific Group, Providence Equity Partners, other investors. In 1924, movie theater magnate Marcus Loew had a problem, he had bought Metro Pictures Corporation in 1919 for a steady supply of films for his large Loew's Theatres chain. With Loew's lackluster assortment of Metro films, Loew purchased Goldwyn Pictures in 1924 to improve the quality. However, these purchases created a need for someone to oversee his new Hollywood operations, since longtime assistant Nicholas Schenck was needed in New York headquarters to oversee the 150 theaters. Approached by Louis B. Mayer, Loew addressed the situation by buying Louis B. Mayer Pictures on April 17, 1924. Mayer became head of the renamed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with Irving Thalberg as head of production.
MGM produced more than 100 feature films in its first two years. In 1925, MGM released the extravagant and successful Ben-Hur, taking a $4.7 million profit that year, its first full year. In 1925, MGM, Paramount Pictures and UFA formed a joint German distributor, Parufamet; when Samuel Goldwyn left he sued over the use of his name. Marcus Loew died in 1927, control of Loew's passed to Nicholas Schenck. In 1929, William Fox of Fox Film Corporation bought the Loew family's holdings with Schenck's assent. Mayer and Thalberg disagreed with the decision. Mayer was active in the California Republican Party and used his political connections to persuade the Justice Department to delay final approval of the deal on antitrust grounds. During this time, in the summer of 1929, Fox was badly hurt in an automobile accident. By the time he recovered, the stock market crash in the fall of 1929 had nearly wiped Fox out and ended any chance of the Loew's merger going through. Schenck and Mayer had never gotten along, the abortive Fox merger increased the animosity between the two men.
From the outset, MGM tapped into the audience's need for sophistication. Having inherited few big names from their predecessor companies and Thalberg began at once
King Kong (1933 film)
King Kong is a 1933 American pre-Code monster adventure film directed and produced by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack; the screenplay by James Ashmore Creelman and Ruth Rose was developed from an idea conceived by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. It stars Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot and Robert Armstrong, opened in New York City on March 2, 1933, to rave reviews, it has been ranked by Rotten Tomatoes as the greatest horror film of all time and the thirty-third greatest film of all time. The film tells of a huge, ape-like creature dubbed Kong who perishes in an attempt to possess a beautiful young woman. King Kong is noted for its stop-motion animation by Willis O'Brien and a groundbreaking musical score by Max Steiner. In 1991, it was deemed "culturally and aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. A sequel followed with Son of Kong, with several more films made in the following decades; the year is 1932. In New York Harbor, filmmaker Carl Denham, famous for making wildlife films in remote and exotic locations, charters Captain Englehorn's ship, the Venture, for his new project.
However, he is unable to secure an actress for a female role. Searching in the streets of New York City, he finds Ann Darrow and promises her the adventure of a lifetime; the crew boards the Venture and sets off, during which the ship's first mate Jack Driscoll, falls in love with Ann. Denham reveals to the crew that their destination is in an uncharted territory, he alludes to a monstrous creature named Kong, rumored to dwell on the island. The crew anchor offshore, they encounter a native village, separated from the rest of the island by an ancient stone wall. They witness a group of natives preparing to sacrifice a young woman termed the "bride of Kong"; the intruders are spotted and the native chief stops the ceremony. When he sees Ann, he offers to trade six of his tribal women for the "golden woman", they return to the Venture. That night, natives kidnap Ann from the ship and take her to their altar, where she is offered to Kong, an enormous gorilla-like creature. Kong carries Ann into the wilderness as Denham and some volunteers enter the jungle in hopes of rescuing her.
They are ambushed by a Stegosaurus, which they manage to defeat. After facing a Brontosaurus and Kong himself and Denham are the only survivors. A Tyrannosaurus attacks Ann and Kong. Meanwhile, Driscoll continues to follow them. Upon arriving in Kong's lair, Ann is menaced by a snake-like Elasmosaurus, which Kong kills. While Kong is distracted killing a Pteranodon that tried to fly away with Ann, Driscoll reaches her and they climb down a vine dangling from a cliff ledge; when Kong notices and starts pulling them back up, the two fall unharmed. They run through the jungle and back to the village, where Denham and the surviving crewmen are waiting. Kong, breaks open the gate and relentlessly rampages through the village. Onshore, now determined to bring Kong back alive, knocks him unconscious with a gas bomb. Shackled in chains, Kong is taken to New York City and presented to a Broadway theatre audience as "Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World". Ann and Jack are surrounded by a group of press photographers.
Kong, breaks loose. The audience flees in horror. Ann is whisked away to a hotel room on a high floor, his hand smashes through the hotel room window, immobilizing Jack, abducts Ann again. Kong rampages through the city, he wrecks a crowded elevated train and climbs the Empire State Building. At its top, he is attacked by four airplanes. Kong destroys one, but succumbs to their gunfire, he ensures Ann's safety before falling to his death. Ann and Jack are reunited. Denham pushes through a crowd surrounding Kong's corpse in the street; when a policeman remarks that the planes got him, Denham tells him, "No, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast". Before King Kong entered production, a long tradition of jungle films existed, whether drama or documentary, such films adhered to a narrative pattern that followed an explorer or scientist into the jungle to test a theory only to discover some monstrous aberration in the undergrowth. In these films, scientific knowledge could be subverted at any time, it was this that provided the genre with its vitality and endurance.
In the early 20th century, few zoos had primate exhibits so there was popular demand to see them on film. At the turn of the 20th century, the Lumière Brothers sent film documentarians to places westerners had never seen, Georges Méliès utilized trick photography in film fantasies that prefigured that in King Kong. Jungle films were launched in the United States in 1913 with Beasts in the Jungle, the film's popularity spawned similar pictures such as Tarzan of the Apes. In 1925, The Lost World made movie history with special effects by Willis O'Brien and a crew that would work on King Kong. King Kong producer Ernest B. Schoedsack had earlier monkey experience directing Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness in 1927 and Rango in 1931, both of which prominently featured monkeys in authentic jungle settings. Capitalizing on this trend, Congo Pictures released the hoax documentary Ingagi in 1930, advertising the film as "an authentic incontestable celluloid document showing the sacrifice of a living woman to mammoth gorillas."
Ingagi is now widel
Jennifer Jones
Jennifer Jones known as Jennifer Jones Simon, was an American actress and mental health advocate. Over the course of her career that spanned over three decades, she was nominated for the Academy Award five times, including one win for Best Actress, as well as a Golden Globe Award win for Best Actress in a Drama. Jones is among the youngest persons to receive an Academy Award. A native of Tulsa, Jones worked as a model in her youth before transitioning to acting, appearing in two serial films in 1939, her third role was a lead part as Bernadette Soubirous in The Song of Bernadette, which earned her the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Actress that year. She went on to star in several films that garnered her significant critical acclaim and a further three Academy Award nominations in the early-1940s, including Since You Went Away, Love Letters, Duel in the Sun. In 1949, Jones married film producer David O. Selznick, appeared as the titular Madame Bovary in Vincente Minnelli's 1949 adaptation.
She appeared in several films throughout the 1950s, including Ruby Gentry, John Huston's adventure comedy Beat the Devil, Vittorio De Sica's drama Terminal Station. Jones earned her fifth Academy Award nomination for her performance as a Eurasian doctor in Love is a Many-Splendored Thing. After Selznick's death in 1965, Jones married industrialist Norton Simon and went into semi-retirement, she made her final film appearance in The Towering Inferno. Jones suffered from mental health problems during her life and survived a 1966 suicide attempt in which she jumped from a cliff in Malibu Beach. After her own daughter committed suicide in 1976, Jones became profoundly interested in mental health education. In 1980, she founded the Jennifer Jones Simon Foundation for Mental Education, she spent the remainder of her life withdrawn from the public, residing in Malibu, where she died in 2009, aged 90. Jones was born Phylis Lee Isley in Tulsa, the daughter of Flora Mae and Phillip Ross Isley, her father was from Georgia, while her mother was a native of Sacramento, California.
An only child, Jones was raised Roman Catholic. Her parents, both aspiring stage actors, toured the Midwest in a traveling tent show that they owned and operated. Jones accompanied them. In 1925, Jones enrolled at Edgemere Public School in Oklahoma City subsequently attended Monte Cassino, a Catholic girls' school and junior college in Tulsa. After graduating, she enrolled as a drama major at Northwestern University in Illinois, where she was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, before transferring to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City in September 1937, it was there that she met and fell in love with fellow acting student Robert Walker, a native of Ogden, Utah. The couple married on January 2, 1939. Jones and Walker returned to Tulsa for a 13-week radio program arranged by her father, made their way to Hollywood, she landed two small roles, first in a 1939 John Wayne Western titled New Frontier, which she filmed in the summer of 1939 for Republic Pictures. Her second project was the serial entitled Dick Tracy's G-Men for Republic.
In both films, she was credited as Phylis Isley. After having failed a screen test for Paramount Pictures, Jones became disenchanted with Hollywood and decided to return to New York City. Shortly after Jones married Walker, she gave birth to two sons: Robert Walker Jr. and Michael Walker. While Walker found steady work in radio programs, Jones worked part-time modeling hats for the Powers Agency, as well as posing for Harper's Bazaar while looking for possible acting jobs; when she learned of auditions for the lead role in Claudia, Rose Franken's hit play, in the summer of 1941, she presented herself to David O. Selznick's New York office but fled in tears after what she thought was a bad reading. However, Selznick had overheard her audition and was impressed enough to have his secretary call her back. Following an interview, she was signed to a seven-year contract, she was groomed for stardom and given a new name: Jennifer Jones. Director Henry King was impressed by her screen test as Bernadette Soubirous for The Song of Bernadette and she won the coveted role over hundreds of applicants.
In 1944, on her 25th birthday, Jones won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Bernadette Soubirous, her third screen role. Simultaneous to her rise to notoriety for The Song of Bernadette, Jones began an affair with producer Selznick, she separated from Walker in November 1943, co-starred with him in Since You Went Away, formally divorced him in June 1945. For her performance in Since You Went Away, she was nominated for her second Academy Award, this time for Best Supporting Actress, she earned a third successive Academy Award nomination for her performance opposite Joseph Cotten in the film noir Love Letters. Jones's dark beauty and initial saintly image — as shown in her first starring role — was a stark contrast three years when she was cast as a provocative bi-racial woman in Selznick's controversial Western Duel in the Sun, in which she portrayed a Mestiza orphan in Texas who falls in love with an Anglo man; the same year, she starred as the title character in Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Cluny Brown, playing a working-class English woman who falls in love just prior to World War II.
In 1947, she filmed Portrait of Jennie, a fantasy film released in 1948, based on the novella of the same name by Robert Nathan. The film reunited her with co-star
Gone with the Wind (film)
Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American epic historical romance film, adapted from Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel of the same name. The film was produced by David O. Selznick of Selznick International Pictures and directed by Victor Fleming. Set in the American South against the backdrop of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era, the film tells the story of Scarlett O'Hara, the strong-willed daughter of a Georgia plantation owner, it follows her romantic pursuit of Ashley Wilkes, married to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton, her subsequent marriage to Rhett Butler. The leading roles are played by Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland. Production was difficult from the start. Filming was delayed for two years because of Selznick's determination to secure Gable for the role of Rhett Butler, the "search for Scarlett" led to 1,400 women being interviewed for the part; the original screenplay was written by Sidney Howard and underwent many revisions by several writers in an attempt to get it down to a suitable length.
The original director, George Cukor, was fired shortly after filming began and was replaced by Fleming, who in turn was replaced by Sam Wood while Fleming took some time off due to exhaustion. The film received positive reviews upon its release in December 1939, although some reviewers found it overlong; the casting was praised, many reviewers found Leigh suited to her role as Scarlett. At the 12th Academy Awards, it received ten Academy Awards from thirteen nominations, including wins for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, it set records for the total number of nominations at the time. Gone with the Wind was immensely popular when first released, it became the highest-earning film made up to that point, held the record for over a quarter of a century. When adjusted for monetary inflation, it is still the most successful film in box-office history, it became ingrained in popular culture. The film is regarded as one of the greatest films of all time.
In 1989, the United States Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. Part 1On the eve of the American Civil War in 1861, Scarlett O'Hara lives at Tara, her family's cotton plantation in Georgia, with her parents and two sisters and their many slaves. Scarlett learns that Ashley Wilkes—whom she secretly loves—is to be married to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton, the engagement is to be announced the next day at a barbecue at Ashley's home, the nearby plantation Twelve Oaks. At the Twelve Oaks party, Scarlett declares her feelings to Ashley, but he rebuffs her by responding that he and Melanie are more compatible. Scarlett is incensed when she discovers another guest, Rhett Butler, has overheard their conversation; the barbecue is disrupted by the declaration of war and the men rush to enlist. As Scarlett watches Ashley kiss Melanie goodbye, Melanie's younger brother Charles proposes to her. Although she does not love him, Scarlett consents and they are married.
Scarlett is widowed when Charles dies from a bout of pneumonia and measles while serving in the Confederate Army. Scarlett's mother sends her to the Hamilton home in Atlanta to cheer her up, although the O'Haras' outspoken house slave Mammy tells Scarlett she knows she is going there only to wait for Ashley's return. Scarlett, who should not attend a party while in mourning, attends a charity bazaar in Atlanta with Melanie where she meets Rhett again, now a blockade runner for the Confederacy. Celebrating a Confederate victory and to raise money for the Confederate war effort, gentlemen are invited to bid for ladies to dance with them. Rhett makes an inordinately large bid for Scarlett and, to the disapproval of the guests, she agrees to dance with him; the tide of war turns against the Confederacy after the Battle of Gettysburg in which many of the men of Scarlett's town are killed. Scarlett makes another unsuccessful appeal to Ashley while he is visiting on Christmas furlough, although they do share a private and passionate kiss in the parlor on Christmas Day, just before he returns to war.
Eight months as the city is besieged by the Union Army in the Atlanta Campaign and her young house slave Prissy must deliver Melanie's baby without medical assistance after she goes into premature labor. Afterwards, Scarlett calls upon Rhett to take her home to Tara with Melanie, her baby, Prissy. Upon her return home, Scarlett finds Tara deserted, except for her father, her sisters, two former slaves: Mammy and Pork. Scarlett learns that her mother has just died of typhoid fever and her father has become incompetent. With Tara pillaged by Union troops and the fields untended, Scarlett vows she will do anything for the survival of her family and herself. Part 2As the O'Haras work in the cotton fields, Scarlett's father is killed after he is thrown from his horse in an attempt to chase away a scalawag from his land. With the defeat of the Confederacy, Ashley returns, but finds he is of little help at Tara; when Scarlett begs him to run away with her, he confesses his desire for her and kisses her passionately, but says he cannot leave Melanie.
Unable to pay the taxes on Tara implemented b
