Horizon

The war had a lot to do with it. GWTW was released in spring 1940 in the UK, and played at cinemas in Britain for the next five years - partly because there was a shortage of replacement films coming from the US. Cinema audiences during the 1940s were huge. Half of the BFI's Top 10 comes from the period.

It's also a pretty good movie.

My old Granny loved Gable- Valentino and then Gable. My dad recalls being bored stiff and taken many times to see GWTW--in was revived continually--and how people would take sandwiches and tea in with them because it was so long.

An article in The Believer last October said that during the Blitz there were special "raid libraries" in the London shelters consisting entirely of detective stories. True?

Clark Gable was so popular that he impacted the undershirt industry. His character in It Happened One Night took off his shirt and flashed a bare chest. Sales didn't increase again until Brando sported the wife-beater in The Wild One.

Bizarre. Sneering, grotesque man with funny ears. I don't get it.

It's not about appearance, it's about presence.

Explain?

You mean you've never seen the room light up when Gable walks in?

You mean you've never seen the room light up when Gable walks in?

Yeah, but he used to cheat by clapping.

So what you're saying, Alan, is that for $19.95 we can all be in show business.

And just in time for the holidays.

Gable had this rough and ready bad boy vibe. He was the public's choice to play the scoundrel Rhett Butler. There is a scene in GWTW where Rhett (Gable) first sees Scarlett. Scarlett says something like "he looks like he knows what I look like without my knickers". (Before any die hard fans post to correct me - I know that is not the exact quote) Gable seemed dangerous and that was sexy.

My mother almost swooned the first time it was ever shown on UK TV. It was at Christmas, sometime in the 1970s, and the entire family gathered to watch. I thought the only good bit was the burning of Atlanta, but I was about six*. I have since been known to weep copiously at it, and may well go to the re-release this winter. I suspect it is because it uses all the cliches of the Romance (capital R to indicate I mean literary romances such as Jane Eyre, rather than Mills&Boon) and at six I knew and cared nothing for the Doomed Romance but my teenage years were spent reading about Darcy, Rochester and Heathcliffe. There was an interesting article in the Guardian recently about why women find fictional scoundrels and emotionally repressed types attractive.

I also cry at Casablanca. I am a sap.

*a year later and the TV premiere of 2001: A Space Odyssey was the must-watch film in our household. I fell asleep after the apes.

I thought the only good bit was the burning of Atlanta

Did you know that that was actually the burning of redundant movie sets on the MGM backlot, including the huge doors which once held back King Kong?

I also cry at Casablanca.

Who doesn't?