Gone With the Wind: the Game

Classic Games

Perhaps one of the most popular films of all time, Gone With the Wind remains deeply entrenched in the American psyche. It stands, as both art and life, at the nexus of momentous events - it is about the Civil War and how it changed the soul of the South; it was made in those few, precious moments between the Great Depression and World War II, when America would be changed forever; and its real life drama of 20th-century racism closely paralleled the portrayal of slavery and the lives of ex-slaves after the war. (For the premiere in Atlanta, for instance, the black members of the cast, including Oscar-winner Hattie McDaniel, had to stay at a segregated hotel rather than with the white cast members, and had to sit in the segregated parts of the theater; McDaniel wasn't even allowed in the theater in which she won her Academy Award.) And it embodies the American hunger to recapture a golden age that may never even have existed. It simultaneously made and broke the careers of many actors, some even before it was finished. Whatever you think of the subject matter, Selznick's masterpiece is no less moving than Mitchell's, no less deep, and has no less resonance with the American soul.

This particular game is a trivia board-game with a small twist. In addition to drawing cards and answering questions in your quest to win, this game includes two complete decks of playing cards. These form the 104 question cards, but can be used as regular playing cards as well. Instead of spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds, we have Scarletts, Rhetts, Mammies and Ashleys. There appears to be no correlation between the picture on the card, the subject matter of the questions, or the suit, but I'm sure I'm just not looking hard enough. The pictures are repeated on some cards, and not with regularity, so there must be something going on. But card correlations are hardly that interesting to the players of the game, only meticulous collectors like me.

In addition to the game itself, there are also rules for playing other games with only the cards, including variations on rummy and go fish, as well as other games that make use of the trivia questions. The game definitely travels well, even if the cards are enormous.

All images and text  © 1993 Classic Games, © 1967 Metro Goldwyn Mayer and © 1993 Turner Entertainment; presented here solely for analysis and appreciation.