June 18th, 2026
By Mike Orlock, Door County Pulse
Gone with the Wind is, arguably, the most famous movie ever made in “old” Hollywood. The 1939 MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) production was adapted from Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller, and it went on to set records for box office take and Academy Awards. It grossed hundreds of millions of dollars at a time when most films were considered hits if they scored revenues in the seven figures, and it received an unprecedented 10 Oscars (from 13 nominations) – a record haul that has since been eclipsed by Ben-Hur (1959), Titanic (1997) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) with 11 each.
It was one of the first films selected for the National Film Registry in 1989, and it has become a cultural landmark, both revered and lampooned, over the last 75 years in numerous books, movies, cartoons and TV shows. Its heroine, Scarlett O’Hara, and her rakish suitor, Rhett Butler, are as well-known as any fictional couple this side of Romeo and Juliet, even among generations of people who have never had the patience to sit through the movie’s four-hour running time.
Third Avenue PlayWorks’ (TAP) latest production, Moonlight and Magnolias, written by Ron Hutchinson, takes us behind the scenes of this classic movie for a hilarious depiction of a moment in its making, when circumstances nearly derailed the film from being completed.
Three weeks into filming, producer David O. Selznick fired his director, the esteemed George Cukor (The Philadelphia Story, A Star Is Born, My Fair Lady), and replaced him with Victor Fleming, who was in the final weeks of finishing a little musical fantasy for Selznick titled The Wizard of Oz.
He also decided to rework a screenplay that had already gone through multiple drafts by several writers, including Sidney Howard, Jo Swerling and even F. Scott Fitzgerald. Selznick ended up hiring the brash Chicago newspaperman-turned-screenwriter Ben Hecht (The Front Page) to rewrite the shooting script. It was an outrageous gamble that easily could have ended Selznick’s career under his father-in-law, Louis B. Mayer, since the studio seemingly had everything rolling on its adaptation of Mitchell’s epic novel.
Hutchinson’s play throws Selznick, Hecht and Fleming into a locked office for a five-day ordeal as they look to condense a thousand-page novel into a 200-page script. The three men subsist for days only on water, bananas and peanuts, trays of which are periodically replenished by Selznick’s exhausted secretary, Miss Poppenghul. They all have very different ideas of what a film version of Gone with the Wind should look like, especially since Hecht admits that he never read the book he is being asked to adapt.
TAP’s production, crisply directed by Nicole Ricciardi in front of a resplendent set designed by Amy Sue Hazel, features a cast of veteran actors who have a whole lot of fun trashing that set over the 95 minutes of this play’s running time.
Nick Vidal plays David O. Selznick, the powerful head of studio production, who has an idea of what he wants for his romantic recreation of the Civil War, but can’t quite articulate it. He dictates a torrent of wild ideas to his secretary (a hilarious Paige Klopfenstein, whose every appearance is a small gem of comedic exasperation).
Rudy Galvan stars as Ben Hecht, the sardonic Midwest journalist with an active social conscience. He considers an expensive epic glorifying the slave-owning Confederacy a vulgar waste of time and money when the world is inching closer to all-out war because of fascism and racism.
John Taylor Phillips plays journeyman director Victor Fleming, somewhat at a loss as to why he’s been taken off the job completing The Wizard of Oz, but flattered by Selznick’s obvious faith in him. A seasoned pro, he is convinced of his own ability to shoot anything handed to him, but even he has doubts about Gone with the Wind.
As the 120 hours of forced collaboration in cohabitation take their toll, the three principals take turns stealing scenes from each other in a stream of comical interactions that include everything from food fights to a ribald repartee about what Scarlett, Rhett, Melanie and Ashley were really up to at Tara. By the time they reach Selznick’s imposed deadline, you will have worn yourself out laughing at their foibles and exploits.
Moonlight and Magnolias will be performing through June 21 at TAP’s Steve and Jackie Kane Theatre, 239 N. 3rd Ave. in Sturgeon Bay. Tickets are available at the box office. Call 920.743.1760 for more information.
In another lifetime, Mike Orlock wrote film reviews for the Reporter/Progress newspapers in the western suburbs of Chicago. He has also taught high school English, coached basketball and authored five books of poetry. He finished his two-year term as Door County’s poet laureate in early 2023.