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I lived with GONE WITH THE WIND almost 16 hours a day for about H months. Along with Jack Cosgrove, head of the Special Effects department of Selznick International, 1 was involved in the preparation and making of the picture from the beginning, in spite of it all it was a wonderful experience.
The Selznick International Company was a very young organization, and the making of a picture of that magnitude was almost staggering. Also, at the time that we were making GWTW we made INTERMEZZO, Ingrid Bergman's first American picture, and REBECCA. Alfred Hitchcock's first American picture.
Before telling you about GWTW let me brief you about the events leading up to the picture, in the spring of 19361 was sent on location by Technicolor wo work on David O. Selznick's GARDEN OF ALLAH. It was only the second picture made with many exteriors using this Technicolor 3-color process and the first to use many matte painting shots. Jack Cosgrove, ASC, was in charge of these shots for the picture. As I had worked with Jack many times from the old Pathe-DeMille studio days, I was assigned to work with him. This was a new experience for both of us-making matte shots in color with the 3-strip camera. Due to the construction of the 3-strip camera and its matte box we were forced to enclose the camera and the matte glass in a small tent-like structure. This was very crude. So, for the next Selznick picture I designed a special matte box which could hold the Technicolor R. L. lens as well as three matte glasses and could attach to the Technicolor tripod head and require no tenting. I mention all this to show how, little by little, we were able to get together the means to be able to work on a picture like GWTW. it was most difficult to make a matte while looking through the camera" with the lens's photographic stop) since the matte changes with the stop. On a later picture I had a heavy line-up finder made. It was calibrated to match all of the Technicolor cameras, and it could use all of the Technicolor lenses. Thus it was easy to make a matte, and while doing so...