from Edward D.C. CAMPBELL, THE CELLULOID SOUTH: Hollywood and the Southern Myth (Knoxville, 1981)

The mythology was not sustained by Southerners; the area simply lacked the clout to shape a picture's outlook.

For one thing, there was the problem of how to monitor adequately the Southern market. During the 1930s when the most nostalgic films were released, Variety used only five Southern cities as gauges of how well a film did financially. Of the five, only Birmingham and New Orleans were of the Deep South; Louisville, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., made up the balance. The Motion Picture Herald used an equally inadequate gauge. As a result, the industry could misperceive what would play successfully in, say, Richmond or Atlanta. Hollywood believed that Mississippi, which hewed to the line of antebellum romanticism, would get an excellent response in the region, but the movie was not neatly as well liked there as in the North. Band of Angels, on the other hand, which dared to explore lightly the theme of miscegenation, seemed a sure candidate for poor reviews in the South, yet proved to be well received there. Many audiences and critics simply failed to grasp its unique significance. One local reviewer spoke for many, viewing it only as another picture in the traditional mold and enthusiastically exclaiming, "shades of Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Birth of a Nation, and Gone With the Wind and all the other sagas of the Deep South." [24-5]

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Another problem involved the fact that Southern theatres did not have the earning capacity of theatres in other sections. Many movie houses closed from May to September because of the heat. Moreover, the South, including Kentucky and Maryland, could only boast in the late 30s of 3,786 theatres, with a total capacity of under two million. The national total was 17,541 theatres, seating almost eleven million.

The figures raise an interesting point. With less than one-fifth the potential audience, the South could hardly dictate what Hollywood would present. The big profits were to be made elsewhere, and thus no amount of Southern lobbying by area managers or executives could be very persuasive.

However, the movies were consistently well attended and the part of the nation which proved the films' popularity was the non-Southern sector. So much more important were the other areas in determining a release's profitability that movies were shown first outside the South, and the area portrayed simply waited its turn. Even after rare premieres in the South, the productions were then quickly ushered off to the more lucrative Northern markets. Following the opening of Gone With the Wind in Atlanta in December 1939, for example, the film was shown by the second week of January 1940 or sooner not only in the largest northeastern cities but also in the Midwest. Cities as large as Richmond, Raleigh, and Birmingham waited until February. Frequently, the managers in the South after finally getting a print had to announce shorter runs than preferred as the demand was so heavy in the more profitable North. Southerners alone could never have made such productions viable enterprises.

The plantation epics thrived, then, only with the help of those sections which seemed at first glance the least likely to be enthralled by tales of antebellum wealth, honor, society, and servitude. Actually, the industry was agreeing with, rather than bending to, sectional whim. In the knowledge that large audiences everywhere would welcome the product, there was no inclination to do otherwise. [25]