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Gone with the Wind

Written: 1937

Music by: Allie Wrubel

Words by: Herbert Magidson

Written for: Independent Publication
(not for a Broadway show, revue, movie, etc.)

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Julie London

performing

"Gone with the Wind"

(1955)

The track on the video can be found on the album Julie Is Her Name, Vol. 1 & 2.

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"Gone with the Wind"

Critics Corner || Lyrics Lounge

About the Origins of the Song

sheet music cover: "Gone with the Wind"
"Gone with the Wind"
(Sheet Music, 1937)

 


book cover: "The Tin Pan Alley Song Encyclopedia" by Thomas Hischak
Thomas Hischak, The Tin Pan Alley Song Encyclopedia, Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 2002

 


book cover: "Reading Lyrics" Ed. by Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball
Reading Lyrics,
Edited and with an Introduction by Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball, New York: Pantheon Books, 2000.

 

(Read our discussion on criteria (currently unavailable)for inclusion of songs in The Cafe Songbook Catalog of The Great American Songbook).

 

The Bottom Line

The novel Gone with the Wind (1936), the song "Gone with the Wind" (1937) and the movie Gone with the Wind (1939) are tied together in interesting but perplexing ways. Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball, in their book Reading Lyrics observe that one of Herb Magidson's" most challenging jobs was writing words for a song to be called 'Gone with the Wind' the year after the book was published, and he succeeded so well that it took on a life of its own, wholly apart from the country's most famous novel and film" (p. 386).

The song "Gone with the Wind" had, according to Thomas HIschak in his Tin Pan Alley Song Encyclopedia, nothing to do with the movie Gone With the Wind. Instead, it simply took advantage of the title of the very popular novel of the same name. As Hischak puts it, Gone with the Wind [the novel] was so popular that it inspired a handful of songs long before the movie version was made." Of these, Wrubel's and Magidson's song "was the most durable" (Hischak, p. 121), though neither its lyric, nor its mood, nor its style was in any way connected to the novel or the film.

Obviously the song couldn't have been inspired by the movie because it predated the film's release by nearly two years. The movie studio that produced the 1939 film (Selznick International Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), however, makes the claim on the 1937 sheet music cover that the song is "Based upon Margaret Mitchell's novel and [italics ours] the forthcoming Greatest of all Motion Pictures, 'Gone with the Wind' Written and Published by Arrangement with Selznick International Pictures, Inc." The studio's statement makes it sound as if the song was commissioned by the studio, not for use in the film but rather to help promote the movie, which had not yet even come out. This scenario gains some credence because Magidson and Wrubel made their living as Hollywood contract songwriters.

If this is what transpired, the studio made a very good bet because the song went to number 1 on the charts in a recording by Horace Heidt and His Orchestra (vocal by Larry Cotton) on July 3, 1937, and also made the charts with two other recordings (Guy Lombardo and Claude Thornhill) in the same year.

On the other hand, if Magidson and Allie Wrubel were not commissioned but wrote the song solely because they were inspired by the novel or even, in a more mercenary way, just by the name value of its title, the song's populariaty may have motivated the studio (through 20/20 hindsight) to claim (or buy) a role in its writing and publication in order to capitalize on that success -- thereby lending an added sheen to their film before it was released. This is only our speculation, but not beyond the realm of imagination considering Hollywood publicity campaigns. The bottom line may be that it was written to capitalize on the popularitiy of the novel or to capitalize on its publicity potential for the movie. In either case, the bottom-most line, as Gottlieb and Kimball point out, is that the song has taken on "a life of its own" and it, like its namesakes the novel and the movie, endures to this day.

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Critics Corner

Book cover: Alec Wilder, "America's Popular Song"
Alec Wilder, American Popular Song The Great Innovators, 1900-1950, New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.
"Gone with the Wind" is particularly interesting to Alec Wilder because Wrubel never wrote another song "nearly like it," that is nearly as good. Wilder puzzles over why "competent but unexceptional" writers can write one exceptional song but no others. He goes on to say that if one was a songwriter one couldn't help being envious of "the first eight measures of this song, or the last seven measures [which is] superb writing on a par with the best theater writers and yet still in the pop song genre. Not that it's a shade less good than a show tune nor that it lacks intensity or a dramatic quality. It simply isn't theatrical. Nor need it be"
(pp. 404-405).
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Lyrics Lounge

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Credits

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The Cafe Songbook
Record/Video Cabinet:
Selected Recordings of

"Gone with the Wind"


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