gone with the wind

Museum Seeks Money To Repair Scarlett O'Hara's Gowns

In the 1939 movie "Gone With The Wind," Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara famously flirts with Clark Gable's Rhett Butler while wearing a dress made from her mother's curtains. But now those curtains are in need of mending. The Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas is home to five dresses worn by the actress Vivian Leigh in the movie including Scarlett O'Hara's Green Velvet Curtain Dress. The costumes are currently in such fragile condition that they cannot currently be exhibited.

The Center is raising money to help restores the costumes in time for a major exhibition celebrating the 75th anniversary of Gone With The Wind in 2014. The other dresses includes the figure-hugging burgundy gown she wears to Ashley Wilkes' birthday party, the wedding dress from when she married Charles Hamilton, a blue velvet peignoir and a green velvet dressing gown. The Center also wants to be able to loan the dresses to other museums around the world and is raising money for both restoration and protective housing for shipping. The center is hoping to raise $30,000 to restore five of Scarlett O'Hara's dresses.

[via Austin Business Journal]

Tags: costumes, costumes in films, gone with the wind, scarlett ohara

Forbes Ranks World's Most Expensive Fictional Houses

by Jared Paul Stern (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Estates

The fellows at Forbes must be feeling a little light-headed. The magazine just came out with its first ever ranking of the most expensive houses in the world - that don't actually exist. Well, it's fun anyway. First they laid out a few ground rules: 1. "All the properties had to be primarily residences (no schools, evil lairs or Death Stars) and we excluded castles (sorry Cinderella, Dracula). 2. "In the interest of variety, we limited our selections to no more than one or two of a 'type.'" 3. "We eliminated any selections that were deemed too obscure." Other than that, the properties in question could come from everything from comic books to TV shows to movies and videogames.

The most expensive fictional house, according to Forbes, is Xanadu, the home of newspaper baron Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane, at $160 million. The house is modeled on Hearst Castle (above), the real life San Simeon, Calif., estate of media mogul William Randolph Hearst. In the #2 spot is Richie Rich's cartoon mansion, complete with diamond-walled swimming pool, at $135 million. Elsewhere on the list: Tony Stark's bachelor pad in Iron Man, at $50.8 million; Gone With the Wind's antebellum plantation Tara, at $17.2 million; Croft Manor from Tomb Raider, at $46.1 million; and Jay Gatsby's Long Island mansion from The Great Gatsby, $42.5 million. Click here for a slideshow.

Tags: Citizen Kane, CitizenKane, Forbes, Gone With the Wind, GoneWithTheWind, Hearst Castle, HearstCastle, The Great Gatsby, TheGreatGatsby

Tarleton Oaks, Estate of the Day

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Estates, Auctions

Recently we saw a home where the owner seemed to have a Gone With The Wind obsession. They might want to know about today's home. It is in Barnesville, Georgia and belongs to Fred Crane who played Brent Tarleton in the 1939 movie. It is also is also home to a memorabilia museum and has been used as a Gone With The Wind-themed bed and breakfast. The home is on the National Historic register and was the home of a cotton magnate in the 1850s and later served as a headquarters for a Confederate militia group during the Civil War. The home is decorated in Antebellum style. It is being sold on in an auction February 11 and is estimated to bring $500,000 to $750,000. The memorabilia is being sold in separate lots on the same day and includes a huge collection of pictures, jewelry, clothing. The house may even be haunted.

Source

Tags: fred crane, FredCrane, georgia, gone with the wind, plantation, tarleton

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