1939 Film Classic Ranked No. 1 for the ‘Greatest Movie Quote of All Time'-But It's Often Misquoted
A line from Gone With the Wind was named the greatest movie quote of all time by the American Film Institute, but viewers don't always get the line right. In a ranking of the film organization's 100 best movie quotes in history, Rhett Butler's "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" line topped them all.
The famous Gone With the Wind line, delivered by Clark Gable, ranked above everything from "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse" (The Godfather) to "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore (The Wizard of Oz).
Gable's famous line was delivered to Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) in the 1939 historical romance film based on Margaret Mitchell's novel about love and loss in the American Civil War era. It was the actor's last line in the film.
Gable's line is often misquoted as ‘Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn'
Over the years, the famous line has often been misquoted to include the Scarlett character's name instead of "my dear." In fact, Gable's line made The Hollywood Reporter's list of the 22 most misquoted movies.
The one word that was always in the quote-in both the book and the film- was "damn," although for the movie, the filmmakers had to fight to keep it in.
According to Today, in the early 1930s the film industry adopted the Hays Code, a self-regulated set of rules that dictated what was acceptable to show on screen - and expletives were a big no-no. Gone With the Wind producer David O. Selznick wanted to stick to the line in the book, but profanity-free phrases, such as "I don't give a hoot" and "Frankly, my dear, nothing could interest me less," were considered.
But Selznick felt strongly enough about including the "damn" line that he paid a hefty fine to the Motion Picture Association of America to keep it in, according to Collider. He reportedly once said of the famous line that Gable ultimately delivered, "It is my contention that this word as used in the picture is not an oath or a curse. The worst that could be said of it is that it's a vulgarism."
In a 1957 interview, Gable emphasized how important it was for filmmakers to stick as closely to the book as possible.
"My thinking about it was this, that novel was one of the all-time best sellers," he said, "People didn't just read it, they lived it. They visualized its characters, and they formed passionate convictions about them. … A lot of people thought I ought to play Rhett Butler, but I didn't know how many had formed that opinion. …But one thing was certain: they had a preconceived idea of the kind of Rhett Butler they were going to see, and suppose I came up empty?"
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