On Sept. 9, 1939, 85 years ago, some 1,300 moviegoers showed up at Riverside’s Fox Theatre for some Saturday night entertainment, even if they weren’t quite sure what it would be.
“Major Studio Preview,” the movie theater’s advertisement in the Riverside Daily Press declared. “Please Note The Following Schedule, Arranged Especially to Enable Stars, Directors, Officials to Attend … Come early — doors open 6:30.”
At 7 p.m., according to the ad, people would see “Hawaiian Nights.” That was a 65-minute trifle about a son who wants to pursue a career as a bandleader over his father’s objections.
At 8:05 would come a newsreel. The third movie, at an unspecified time, would be “Beau Geste,” a two-hour adventure film starring Gary Cooper about the French Foreign Legion.
Sandwiched in between at 8:15 would be the unnamed “Major Studio Preview.” What would it be?
Someone — either Fox manager Roy C. Hunt or producer David O. Selznick; accounts differ — took the stage after “Hawaiian Nights” to tell the audience that the movie they were about to see would be among the biggest pictures of the year. It was left at that.
Patrons could make a phone call if they liked (every moviegoer is, apparently, allowed one phone call) but once the movie started, no one would be allowed to enter or leave the Fox.
Imagine the anticipation all this must have caused.
In the audience, according to the 1980 book “David O. Selznick’s Hollywood,” was a contingent from the movie studio: Selznick and wife Irene, investor Jock Whitney and film editor Hal Kern.
The house lights went down. The curtains opened. Margaret Mitchell’s name came on the screen.
“There was this silence for just a second,” Kern recalled, “and then the audience started applauding, and when the title came on and swept across the screen, why I never heard such a sound in my life. The people stood up and cheered and screamed. … It was just thunderous, that ovation, and they just wouldn’t stop.”
This was the first-ever public screening of “Gone With the Wind,” three months before its premiere. Adapted from Mitchell’s bestselling novel, the movie won eight Oscars, including best director and best picture.
Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara has her corset tightened by Hattie McDaniel in this publicity still from “Gone With the Wind.” (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)
More than eight decades later, this Sept. 9, 1939 preview remains one of the most celebrated events associated with Riverside.
It’s inscribed on a historic marker outside the 1929 theater at the corner of Market Street and Mission Inn Avenue, still in use today as a performing arts center. “The first public screening of ‘Gone With the Wind’ took place in this building,” reads one line of the marker, which designates the Fox as city landmark No. 59.
The only newspaper coverage at the time was a four-paragraph story in the Riverside Daily Press on Sept. 11, 1939, headlined “‘Gone With the Wind’ Previewed Here.”
“Patrons of the Fox Riverside theater Saturday night enjoyed a privilege that millions of theater goers would envy when they saw a technician’s preview of ‘Gone With the Wind,’” the story begins.
“The moving picture about which a storm of comment has been raging since production began was brought into Riverside with complete secrecy,” the story continues, “the producers desiring to test audience reaction to scenes and sequences in unfinished form. Not even stars were informed of the preview, it is understood.”
More details have come to light since. Some contradict each other. Pity the poor newspaper scribe trying to sort them out on a Friday afternoon.
For example, the writer of that Press story “understood” that no stars were present. The Selznick book doesn’t mention any either. An usher, Geraldine Sumrall, in 2001 told the Press-Enterprise that while Clark Gable was a no-show, she had taken Vivien Leigh to a seat.
The Fox Theatre advertisement in the Riverside Daily Press on Sept. 9, 1939 announces a “major studio preview” that night of an unnamed movie. When the title “Gone With the Wind” came on the screen, the audience went wild. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
That and other newspaper stories were found for me by Ruth McCormick, archivist supreme at the Riverside Main Library. Then, on Thursday, on a whim, I asked her to find the Fox movie listings for Sept. 9.
She promptly did so. That theater ad, quoted above, disproves the lore that the Fox was chosen on the spot that day by Selznick, that moviegoers didn’t know there was a preview or that “Beau Geste” was elbowed aside entirely.
Another fact about the preview screening: “Gone With the Wind” was four hours, 25 minutes — with no intermission. That version was never seen again. The movie was trimmed to four hours for the next preview, in Santa Barbara, and then to three hours, 41 minutes for its premiere in Atlanta on Dec. 15, 1939.
That means the version Riversiders saw was more than 40 minutes longer than the completed film, containing extra or longer scenes and more dialogue. The trims are described in the Selznick book. Apparently all the outtakes were destroyed.
There’s a curious historical parallel. As recounted here two weeks ago, the first preview of “The Wizard of Oz,” on June 4, 1939, was at the Fox San Bernardino. And that rough cut was at least 11 minutes longer than the released version.
Inland Empire audiences in both cases were the only ones to see the longest-ever versions of two of the most beloved movies ever. Crazy, eh?
In finished form, “Gone With the Wind” played at Riverside’s De Anza Theater the week of March 7, 1940. The movie has returned in later years to the Fox, such as a lavish 1989 screening marking the 50th anniversary of the preview.
Bill Erickson, then 15, and his mother, Ethel, were among the 1,300 at the 1939 preview. Their story, as recalled in a 1989 P-E story, was not exactly Hollywood glitter.
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Erickson admitted that he and his mother had gone to the Fox on that hot evening largely for the air conditioning.
Fifty years later, Erickson said he had forgotten “Hawaiian Nights” and didn’t really remember “Gone With the Wind” either. His main memory was that after it was over, he wanted to stay to see “Beau Geste,” and his mother had reluctantly gone along with it.
Said Erickson: “We didn’t get out of the theater until around 2 or 3 a.m.”
By then, maybe Riverside had cooled down.
David Allen writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, mildly. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on X.
