original photo via wikicommons

Gone with the Wind 80th Anniversary

Today we raise our glasses to the 80th anniversary of Margaret Mitchell‘s Gone with the Wind, published 80 years ago today in 1936. It became one of the best-selling novels of all time. We are marking the occasion with two of the official Gone with the Wind cocktails spawned by the merchandising mania that followed the release of the film version.

In 1926, Margaret Mitchell was recovering from a ankle injury — she was quite accident prone — and was forced to leave her job at the Atlanta Journal, where she had worked as a reporter since 1922. Faced with all of this idle time, Mitchell soon grew restless and began writing out of sheer boredom. John R. Marsh, her second husband, bought her a Remington typewriter and though she hated writing and though her work was “a rotten book”, was eventually convinced to have it published.

Although Gone With The Wind would be her only novel, Mitchell won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for her work. The book was adapted for the screen in 1939 and became one of the highest-grossing films of all time and would go on to win 9 Academy Awards

Margaret Mitchell Trivia:

She stood a mere 4 feet 11 inches tall, but was incredibly strong for her size.
She had a sharp tongue and was no stranger to using profanity
She smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and drank heavily
She occurred an unusual number of injuries and accidents, including three automobile accidents, two falls from a horse, severe burns from when her clothes caught fire, and a concussion from a bottle of whiskey thrown at her head.
She died in 1949 at age 48, five days after being hit by a speeding car in downtown Atlanta.

photo by Chris Yunker via flickr.com

Gone with the Wind Cocktails

Southern Comfort was one of the many traditionally southern brands to participate in commercial tie-ins with the 1939 movie release. The Scarlet O’Hara proved particularly popular and was billed as a “Grand Old Drink from the South.” SoCo’s New York ad campaign read: “try it in a Scarlet O’Hara cocktail, but no more than two lest you be Gone with the Wind.”