In 1939, producer David O. Selznick locked a director and a screenwriter in a room, acted out scenes from the novel and kept the writer typing for 18 to 20 hours a day on a diet of bananas and salted peanuts. That frantic session was just one piece of a production that cycled through three directors, fired its cinematographer for footage that looked too dark and saw Selznick personally trigger the explosives for the burning of Atlanta. This episode traces how that logistical nightmare became the highest-grossing film of all time.

The story runs from a two-year nationwide casting search that doubled as a stalling tactic to secure Clark Gable from MGM, through the Atlanta premiere where 300,000 people lined the streets while the film's Black cast members were barred by Jim Crow law, to Hattie McDaniel's historic Oscar and the film's strange r ...