‘Gone With the Wind’: Breaking from a 34-year-old tradition
A classic academy award winning movie and 1st Academy winner for an African-American's. The film's most recent screening at the theater was on the night of the white nationalist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. A Memphis movie theater’s announcement that it will discontinue its annual screening of “Gone With the Wind” over concerns that the film is insensitive has prompted a heated discussion online. The Orpheum theater has shown that 1939 film each of the past 34 years, as part of its classics series. It won 10 Oscars, including one for Hattie McDaniel as best supporting actress for her portrayal of a slave named Mammy. (She became the first black actor to win an Academy Award.) After the film’s screening on Aug. 11 — the same evening as a march in Charlottesville, Va., by white nationalists ahead of the “Unite the Right” rally on Aug. 12 — the theater received complaints online from patrons and commenters, who denounced the film’s portrayal of blacks a...