SOURCE: Vertrees, Alan David. “Sidney Howard and the Screenwriting of Gone with the Wind.” In Gone with the Wind and Hollywood Filmmaking: Selznick's Vision, pp. 21-53. Austin: University Press of Texas, 1997.

In the following essay, Vertrees presents a detailed history and analysis of the screenwriting process for Margaret Mitchell's novel about the American Civil War, Gone with the Wind.

A commonplace in film history asserts that motion pictures are only as good as the scripts upon which they are based. In fact, this truism is informed by a fundamental relationship that developed between the scenario and the screen. Preparation of a detailed filmscript had become a pre-production requirement of the American film industry as early as 1914 in order for its studios to ensure both quality of product and efficiency of operation. According to Janet Staiger in The Classical Hollywood Cinema, the “continuity script,” in which each shot of...