Back With the WIND

"I'll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara ... Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day."

Almost forty years have passed since Scarlett O'Hara, spurned by Rhett Butler, sat down on the stairway of her Atlanta house to mull over the future. Now, at last, Scarlett's petty-paced tomorrow is about to dawn--in a new novel and movie. Hollywood Producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown have won the right to produce a movie sequel to Margaret Mitchell's classic tale of the Old South, Gone With the Wind.

The sequel, which the producers plan to call The Continuation of Gone With the Wind, was an idea whose time had come almost as soon as the original novel was published. GWTW devotees felt that Scarlett and Rhett were destined to be reunited, and scores of writers and producers were eager to oblige; they wanted to cash in on the sequel to a story that has since gone through 85 hard-cover editions and has almost certainly been seen as a movie by more people than any other film in history. Since Margaret Mitchell's death in 1949, however, the novelist's older brother, Stephens, had zealously guarded his sister's estate, crustily rebuffing all requests for sequel rights. Said he: "What Margaret was saying in her book, as I see it, was that many times a woman has a good man and doesn't know it until it's too late." Getting them together again, he felt, would destroy a great plot--as well as undermine a sound moral. Now, at 80, Atlanta Attorney Mitchell, a father of two sons, has had a change of heart. Probably impressed by the phenomenal success of Jaws, he approached its co-producers, Zanuck and Brown, who promptly snapped up his offer. "I figured I might as well let them have a go at it," says Mitchell. "Nobody can write like Margaret could anyway."

Survival Books. Zanuck and Brown have an author who is willing to try. They have hired Anne Edwards, 49, to write "a deep, rich and complex novel" from which the screenplay will be adapted (the novel will be published in paperback at the same time the movie comes out). Says Brown: "Bear in mind that this is not the kind of project where a screenwriter can just sit down and write 'fade in.' " Even so, the producers want an outline this fall and the finished novel within a year.

Edwards is a veteran author; her nine books include a historical novel about Emily Dickinson, a biography of Judy Garland, and a soon to be published work on Vivien Leigh, who played Scarlett in the movie. Says Edwards: "All my books are about survival, and Scarlett was an absolute master of the art. I also consider myself a great survivor. In fact, I think of myself as Scarlett O'Hara." There are some parallels. Edwards' father was born into a wealthy family, but was unable to earn a living after the money ran out in the 1930s. To help out, little Anne began earning her keep at the age of seven by singing and dancing in vaudeville theaters; by age 17, she was a junior writer at MGM, and she has been writing ever since. She has plunged into her formidable assignment with a single-mindedness worthy of Scarlett. Just returned from a seven-week sojourn in the South, Edwards works in her Manhattan apartment bedroom, which she has converted into a cluttered archive of Reconstruction exotica. Beginning every morning at 8:30, propped up in bed by five pillows, she sifts through the five cartons of photocopied newspaper clippings that she collected in Dixie.

Yellow Fever. Concentrating on items published between 1872 and 1882 in Atlanta, Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans and Jonesboro, she studies the big stories of the day, the proceedings of the state senate in Atlanta, and even advertisements for patent medicines hawked during the yellow fever epidemic of the period--a plague that will undoubtedly provide some of the melodrama for GWTW II. Plotting possible ways for Scarlett and Rhett "to get richer and richer," she leafs through the financial pages to see what was happening on the cotton and sugar exchanges.

In a bookcase full of historical and architectural volumes, Edwards has several issues of Godey's Ladies' Book with illustrations of clothing worn by Southern women during the Reconstruction era. "If I decide that Scarlett should have a new hat," she explained to TIME Correspondent Mary Cronin, "I'll go to my Godey's and I'll be able to describe it." Other descriptions will come from the 250 photographs, arranged by city and subject, borrowed and photocopied from libraries and historical societies. For the travels of Scarlett and Rhett, she has assembled a chronological collection of maps of many major cities in the South. "If Rhett is in New Orleans," Edwards says, pointing to an 1873 map of New Orleans, "I will want to know what buildings existed that year in this part of the city where he might be doing business or perhaps dining."

Does this mean that Rhett went to seek his fortune in New Orleans after leaving Scarlett? "I am not saying he did," hedges Edwards, who is keeping the developing novel strictly under wraps. "But I will say that he did not go to San Francisco." The only other clues she offers: Rhett and Scarlett will meet again and Scarlett will "become wiser."

Despite her tight deadline and the formidable research, organization and writing problems that lie ahead, Edwards remains buoyant and optimistic. "After all," she says, "it's something that I love to do--weave a story about marvelous characters." She is so secure about her task, in fact, that she stops work promptly at 4 p.m. and slips into a hot tub. Scarlett would have admired that.

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