Vivien Leigh

"Vivien Leigh, of course, was on duty all the time. I shall never forget the first time I heard her doing her stuff. Curiously enough we never met in England though we had both worked for Korda at one time. I had wanted her to come out to New York to play Ophelia for me in the theatre but she was tied up with her film work and with a play in London The first tests I made for Ashley in Hollywood were with another actress altogether. Just as I was coming off the floor from the test, thoroughly disheartened, I heard the most terrific Southern accent on the next set. It was the best southern I'd heard yet—talking to the coloured Mammy in the scene where she pulls up Scarlett's stay-laces. I asked who it was, and they told me it was an English actress, Vivien Leigh, just come over to Hollywood on a visit. She had worked up her Southern accent in about five days, but she must have stuck at it like a Trojan. It was perfect. I believe she got the job on that scene. You realised in a flash why David Selznick believed he'd got just the right girl for Scarlett at last." In Search of My Father, pg. 19


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