“THE LITTLE LADY OF THE BIG BOOK”
by Bob Foreman © 2013
As run in Ponce Press
Ranking second only to the Bible in book sales, and (allowing for inflation) the top grossing motion picture of all time, Gone with the Wind was the creation of an Atlanta girl, Margaret Munnerlyn “Peggy” Mitchell. Her Pulitzer prize-winning story of the old South was published in 1936, and the film was released in 1939, its world premiere held here at the Loew’s Grand Theatre. The film which captured ten Academy awards starred Clark Gable as Rhett Butler, Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes, Olivia de Havilland as Melanie and made an instant star out of newcomer Brit Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara.
Both book and picture are epic in scope, 1,073 pages and two minutes under four hours respectively and are set in Atlanta and environs before, during and after the Civil War.
Peggy Mitchell began to write as a child, beginning with playlets, some about cowboys and Indians, others about the old South. As a child, my grandmother “T” Crawford lived in a new house at 168 Peachtree Circle whose backyard met that of the Mitchell mansion at 1179 Peachtree. Peggy, T, and other children would perform the pieces, Miss Mitchell preferring to play only the male roles. “Thus I was Margaret Mitchell’s first Scarlett,” T would always claim.
The sudden and tremendous success of the novel and three years later the picture came as stupefaction to Peggy and her second husband John Marsh. Marsh provided the only source of encouragement to Peggy through her years of writing because that she had written a book was a family secret. Never a healthy woman, the petite Peggy wanted her newfound notoriety to go away, but alas, that was not in the cards.
On August 16th, 1949 Peggy Mitchell died after a five-day battle for life, having been struck by a speeding automobile and dragged fifteen feet up Peachtree Street. The vehicle operator was an off-duty cabbie, who continued to hold a license despite twenty-four previous convictions, half of them for speeding.
Peggy and John Marsh, who were to attend The Canterbury Tales at the Peachtree Arts Theatre, had parked their car in the yard of the old Foreman residence at 1140 Peachtree, near 13th Street. The couple was crossing Peachtree when the car, speeding north, veered to the left and struck her.
The little lady of the big book now resides permanently at Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery. She is always at home and welcomes callers, for first and foremost Margaret Mitchell was a Southern Lady.
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