At the TCM Classic Film Festival, we’ll be showing Edwin S. Porter’s groundbreaking The Great Train Robbery (1903) the way audiences originally saw it! A hand-cranked 35mm projection will take place as part of the presentation “The Return of the Dream Machine.”
Helen Gahagan Douglas (25 November 1900 – 28 June 1980) was a Broadway actress and singer, but performed in only one film, She (1935), the epic story of an ancient, ageless queen who rules a forgotten realm. Produced by Merian C. Cooper and directed by Irving Pichel and Lansing C. Holden, the film was staged on a colossal scale... but turned out to be a colossal flop and effectively ended Gahagan's film career. She eventually went into politics and became a U.S. Representative for California in Congress.
Okay, so this is where things get really weird. The movie was long believed lost, until the only surviving print turned up in Buster Keaton's garage. Buster gave it to film historian Raymond Rohauer, so it has been preserved and you can watch the noble failure for yourself.
In 1937, long before the lead roles for the film of Gone with the Wind were cast, Vincentini imagined Rhett and Scarlett in this sketch for Photoplay magazine. Clark Gable was far and away the public favorite to play Rhett so we shouldn't be surprised that he's clearly portrayed as such. However, it's absolutely uncanny how much the artist's vision of the Southern belle looks like Vivien Leigh, the one and only, even though she wasn't even on Hollywood's radar then—and the other women considered for the role didn't look at all like this picture!
