OSHM Shares Authentic Movie Stories

The audience at the recent Sunday At The Museum lecture was enthralled with some authentic stories behind the production of three classic American movies set in the Civil War years. The lecturer, Wilbur (Bill) Kurtz III, told the story of his grandfather, Wilbur Kurtz Sr. (1882-1967), an icon in the world of Civil War art and history and a technical advisor to Hollywood.

Born in Illinois, Kurtz Sr. moved to Atlanta in 1912 and quickly became a premier authority on Old South Atlanta. In 1939, Margaret Mitchell personally selected him as technical advisor and artistic director on the film set of her novel, Gone with the Wind. Kurtz’ historical knowledge led Hollywood to recruit him also for Song of the South (1946) and The Great Locomotive Chase (1956). Kurtz III’s maternal great-grandfather, Captain William Fuller, was the conductor of the famous locomotive, The General, and a participant in The Great Locomotive Chase.

Kurtz Sr.’s interest in the South was sparked by an article by William Pittenger, a survivor of the Andrew's Raid more commonly known as the Great Locomotive Chase. Kurtz was then a student of the Art Institute of Chicago. Kurtz traced Pittenger and the other six raiders and interviewed them extensively, getting every minute detail to the point of asking Captain Fuller to describe the pattern on the pants he wore that day. Kurtz first came to Atlanta to meet Fuller in 1903. After that he made numerous trips back and forth and in the process met one of Fuller's five daughters, Annie Laurie. After a lengthy courtship, they married and had five children, all of whom were extremely successful.

Kurtz Sr. met Margaret Mitchell in 1934 at a social function of the Atlanta Historical Society. In 1935, Mitchell sent him a letter informing that she had written a book. Mitchell called him “the foremost authority on the Battle of Atlanta” and asked him to read two and a half chapters of her book describing Atlanta to make sure that she was completely accurate with the history.

When Kurtz Sr. asked Mitchell about the title Gone with the Wind, she told him it was inspired by the poem by the English poet Ernest Dowson, who was in love with a waitress at the restaurant he had frequented. He had dated her for about two years, and then she ended up marrying one of the waiters. He was broken-hearted and wrote a poem, the third stanza of which was, “And she was gone with the wind.”

When it came to filming Gone with the Wind, producer David Selznick invited Mitchell to supervise the production. She refused and asked Kurtz Sr. to do it instead of her. He agreed.

On coming to California, Kurtz Sr. realized that Selznick and his team knew nothing about the South of the 1860s. They believed that every house in the South was “a grandiose huge mansion with columns everywhere,” Kurtz III said, and it wasn’t easy to convince them otherwise. When asked to describe Atlanta of that period, Kurtz Sr. said, “It was a town of 10,000 people. It had three churches with tall spires, a dirt main street, board sidewalks and merchant venues all up and down. And it had the Atlanta car shed, which was the focal point of the city.” Kurtz then had to explain what the car shed looked like and that it was an integral part of Atlanta, where every railroad running on the Western Atlantic Railroad and the Macon Railroad originated.

Undoubtedly, the production of the movie couldn’t go without funny incidents. For example, to describe the lampposts lining the main street in Atlanta for the carpentry department, Kurtz Sr. telegraphed his son, Kurtz III’s uncle, with a request to measure the original lamppost. When he climbed the pole to measure the top, two police officers pulled up and started asking questions, which nearly got him arrested. Another time a dog got tangled in an extra’s long skirt, and both panicked, creating a big commotion! The production of Gone with the Wind involved over 350 animals and an ASPCA representative to make sure they were well cared for. The production couldn’t go without problem solving either. For example, the picnic scene, that required oak trees, was filmed in Pasadena, CA, where oak trees didn’t grow. The oak trees were made out of guide-wired telephone poles with the taped actual tree limbs and attached real oak leaves. When the leaves began to fade, they were painted. The red clay, which is unavailable in California, was imitated by pulverizing terracotta ceiling tiles that were there in abundance.

Kurtz then talked about "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" – a song from another movie, Song of the South. “Very few people, if any, have never hummed or whistled that song,” said Kurtz III. He explained that Walt Disney purchased the rights to Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus stories for $10,000 in July 1938, but didn’t get to film Song of the South till 1944. By that time Disney knew that Kurtz Sr. knew a lot about the South and invited him as a technical advisor. Kurtz Sr. was willing to participate either in writing, on the telephone, or in person in Atlanta. He did not want to go to Hollywood again because his wife was ill.

A few weeks later Disney sent word that he would come to Atlanta with a few people so Kurtz Sr. could give them a feel for what living in the South was like. “They came to Atlanta, and my grandfather, and even my grandmother, even though she was ill, brought them to Eatonton,” reminisced Kurtz III. “They looked around the countryside of Eatonton. They went to Turnwold Plantation, which was an absolute, a perfect plantation of that era. They spent hours taking interior shots, outside shots, outbuilding and landscaping shots.” Kurtz also took Disney to Austell, GA, to see a working plantation that had livestock, soybeans, and cotton. This trip gave Disney a good idea of what this area was like.

Kurtz III also described his encounters with Disney and Fess Parker. “I remember it vividly,” he said. “He (Disney) was one of the nicest men I have ever met. He was so kind to me. I told him how much I liked Donald Duck, and he really appreciated that. I was his market; I was 10 years old. And then the heavens opened up. I was introduced to Fess Parker. He was six feet four, and I'm four feet five. Looking at him, I didn't see Fess Parker. I saw Daniel Boone. There wasn't a kid my age that did not have a coonskin cap at that time.”

Another interesting fact that Kurtz shared in his lecture was that Hattie McDaniel, the actress who played in both Gone with the Wind and Song of the South, was the first African American to win an Oscar as the Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind.

It was an afternoon of surprising and delightful stories for a most appreciative audience. After the lecture, numerous people stayed around to enjoy the rare and treasured family artifacts that Bill Kurtz brought to display.

When asked his impression of the lecture, visitor Will Deller said, “I found it extremely interesting. It’s amazing – so much history in one family, and it was all about the South.”

Another guest, Kathy Jones Warner, remarked, “It was very interesting. I’ve never heard many of those stories. That was really good…very glad I came!”

Submitted by Lena Hensley, OSHM reporter

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