On the Road to Tara

Rating:
Summary: Burning The "Bridges"...
Review: Finally, a new and interesting book on the film Gone With The Wind! For years a certain Gone With The Wind "Authority" has published book after book containing the same fuzzy and out-of-focus photographs...many mislabeled !

Furthermore, Aljean Harmetz provides the reader with FRESH & NEW information...and does not, as other's have done, plow the same old field of familiar"facts" regarding this film .

BRAVO to Ms. Harmetz for giving the readers and collectors something FRESH & NEW !

Rating:
Summary: good overview with complex characters
Review: Overall, ON THE ROAD TO TARA gives dozens of wonderful anecdotes about the making of the epic film GONE WITH THE WIND, using Selznick as the focal point. The real life characters seem much larger than life here, and not the one's you'd expect. Issues of that time resonate in our own, including racism, Hollywood's role in shaping national morality, ageism, drug addiction, homophobia and meglomania.

Unfortunately, David Selznick is a very unsympathetic character. He's troubled, undisciplined, unwittingly cruel, irrational-and those are his endearing qualities! Though the author takes pains to show that Selznick was always apologetic after he flew off the handle, there is no soft side to warm this character up a bit. He is reminiscent of Charles Foster Kane but with no love interest but a wife who stays completely out of sight.

Vivien Leigh is just as complex, living a life filled with scandals-she was living out of wedlock with Laurence Olivier, which had to be kept a complete secret from press and public. She was British, and many thought it a crime that a non-Southerner, let alone a non-American play Scarlett. But her determination closely mirrors Scarlett O'Hara's in single-mindedly getting just what she wanted. Over all, a good overview of the making of a classic.

Rating:
Summary: good overview with complex characters
Review: Overall, ON THE ROAD TO TARA gives dozens of wonderful anecdotes about the making of the epic film GONE WITH THE WIND, using Selznick as the focal point. The real life characters seem much larger than life here, and not the one's you'd expect. Issues of that time resonate in our own, including racism, Hollywood's role in shaping national morality, ageism, drug addiction, homophobia and meglomania.

Unfortunately, David Selznick is a very unsympathetic character. He's troubled, undisciplined, unwittingly cruel, irrational-and those are his endearing qualities! Though the author takes pains to show that Selznick was always apologetic after he flew off the handle, there is no soft side to warm this character up a bit. He is reminiscent of Charles Foster Kane but with no love interest but a wife who stays completely out of sight.

Vivien Leigh is just as complex, living a life filled with scandals-she was living out of wedlock with Laurence Olivier, which had to be kept a complete secret from press and public. She was British, and many thought it a crime that a non-Southerner, let alone a non-American play Scarlett. But her determination closely mirrors Scarlett O'Hara's in single-mindedly getting just what she wanted. Over all, a good overview of the making of a classic.

Rating:
Summary: Tops--or bottoms--"The Tara Treasury"
Review: Surprisingly, considering Harmetz's previous books, this volume is, without a doubt, the WORST book ever written on "Gone With the Wind." The text is riddled with mistakes, and many of the illustrations are mislabeled. Thank goodness, the book apparently has been a huge failure in the sales department, so there should be NO trade paperback edition. May it soon be "gone with the wind" ...

Rating:
Summary: Tops--or bottoms--"The Tara Treasury"
Review: Surprisingly, considering Harmetz's previous books, this volume is, without a doubt, the WORST book ever written on "Gone With the Wind." The text is riddled with mistakes, and many of the illustrations are mislabeled. Thank goodness, the book apparently has been a huge failure in the sales department, so there should be NO trade paperback edition. May it soon be "gone with the wind" ...

Rating:
Summary: For GWTN Collectors Only
Review: This book is seriously lacking. The pictures are not great and the text is uninteresting. There is nothing here that you haven't seen before.