“I am a longtime Gone With the Wind collector and researcher, and give presentations at GWtW events. I’ve also been the GWtW Answer Lady on several websites. Some asked: Did Churchill and Roosevelt read Gone With the Wind? It seems that FDR read quite a bit of the novel, but I couldn’t come up with anything about Churchill.

“I hope you don’t mind me tossing you this question. I assume that Churchill did see the film, as FDR did, on 26 December 1939, after it opened in Washington. Gone With the Wind opened in London on 18 April 1940.”  —K.M., Royal Oak, Michigan

A: Yes; with several side stories….

On the contrary, your question sent me on an interesting dive through the archives to learn about a compelling story and one of Churchill’s favorite novels.

Leslie Howard’s misfortune:  To start with a side note: Leslie Howard, who played Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind, had a business manager, Alfred Chenhalls, who closely resembled Churchill, affecting similar clothing and a homburg hat.

Legend has it that German spies in Lisbon, observing Chenhalls and Howard boarding a flight to London, mistook them for Churchill and his bodyguard. They informed the Luftwaffe, who shot down the plane. Poor Ashley Wilkes, ever the loser.

The story is not verified, but Churchill heard the tale of mistaken identity. He found it ridiculous and telling. “The brutality of the Germans was only matched by the stupidity of their agents,” he wrote in his war memoirs.

Gone With the Wind

In the late 1930s everybody was reading Gone With the Wind, from my mother (I have her copy) to Neville Chamberlain. (His biographer, Keith Feiling, wrote that Chamberlain was “taking delight in it” during the Czech crisis in 1938.)

Winston Churchill was reading it as he wrote the American Civil War chapters of his History of the English-Speaking Peoples (not published until after the war). Thanks to Martin Gilbert’s biography we know quite a lot…

Winston S. Churchill to Brigadier-General Sir James Edmonds, a Civil War authority (Churchill Papers: 8/626), 24 March 1939:

When one comes to look at it en bloc, the Confederates never had any chance at all. It was only a question of the North getting under way and the amount of time required to destroy, if necessary, every living soul in the Confederate states.

The dramatic point is the wonderful resistance which they made…. Have you read Gone With the Wind? It is a terrific book.

It is interesting to re-read Churchill’s Civil War chapters in A History of the English-Speaking Peoples in the knowledge that he was reading Gone With the Wind as he wrote. Norman Rose stated:

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples is generally acknowledged to be the least satisfactory of [Churchill’s] books. It reads as a kind of pastiche that proclaims his “secular [Whig] faith,” its finest section (written as he read Gone With the Wind) telling the story of the American Civil War….

[But] the fact that Churchill was not a trained historian had its merits. As every scholar knows, in research it is necessary to be dogged in pursuit of sources, but also ruthless in sensing when to stop and to start writing. —Norman Rose, Churchill: An Unruly Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 211

The Film

The 1939 film version also impressed Churchill. From the John Colville diary, 15 December 1940, Ditchley Park, Oxford:

We saw Gone With the Wind which lasted till 2.00 a.m. I thought the photography superb. The PM said he was “pulverised by the strength of their feelings and emotions.” —Martin Gilbert, The Churchill Documents, Vol. 15, Never Surrender, May 1940-December 1940 (Hillsdale College Press, 2011), 1241.

Sir Martin Gilbert adds:

On Sunday December 15, at Chequers, after watching the film Gone With The Wind, he had sat from two until three in the morning discussing the campaign in North Africa with Eden. As they talked, the total number of Italian prisoners of war captured by Wavell’s army reached 35,000. —Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. 6, Finest Hour 1939-1941 (Hillsdale College Press, 2011), 946.

The first time Churchill met Vivien Leigh he was rendered speechless by her beauty. This stemmed not only from her role as Scarlett O’Hara, but as Nelson’s “Lady Hamilton” (“That Hamilton Woman”)—beyond doubt his favorite film.

Following that film she married Laurence Olivier, whom Churchill had known since the 1920s. The Oliviers and Churchills were guests of each other. Alas we can only imagine their dinner table conversation.

Gone With the Wind in Churchill’s Pre-Munich speech…

Margaret Mitchell’s wonderful title inspired Churchill to use it twice. The march toward Munich in 1938 saw his first, highly effective application:

For five years I have talked to the House on these matters—not with very great success. I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf. It is a fine broad stairway at the beginning, but after a bit the carpet ends. A little farther on there are only flagstones, and a little farther on still these break beneath your feet….

If mortal catastrophe should overtake the British Nation and the British Empire, historians a thousand years hence will still be baffled by the mystery of our affairs. They will never understand how it was that a victorious nation, with everything in hand, suffered themselves to be brought low, and to cast away all that they had gained by measureless sacrifice and absolute victory —gone with the wind! —Winston S. Churchill, Arms and the Covenant (London: Harrap, 1938), 465: “The Danube Basin,” House of Commons, 4 March 1938.

In his memoirs…

…he summed up the results of Appeasement:

Look back and see what we had successively accepted or thrown away: a Germany disarmed by solemn treaty; a Germany rearmed in violation of a solemn treaty; air superiority or even air parity cast away; the Rhineland forcibly occupied and the Siegfried Line built or building; the Berlin-Rome Axis established; Austria devoured and digested by the Reich; Czechoslovakia deserted and ruined by the Munich Pact, its fortress line in German hands, its mighty arsenal of Skoda henceforward making munitions for the German armies…

…President Roosevelt’s effort to stabilise or bring to a head the European situation by the intervention of the United States waved aside with one hand, and Soviet Russia’s undoubted willingness to join the Western Powers and go all lengths to save Czechoslovakia ignored on the other; the services of thirty-five Czech divisions against the still unripened Germany Army cast away, when Great Britain could herself supply only two to strengthen the front in France; all gone with the wind. —Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 2, Their Finest Hour (London: Cassell, 1949), 271

Postscript

Minnie Churchill, Sir Winston’s grand-daughter-in-law, having read the above, offers another Churchill connection to Gone With the Wind, or at least Rhett Butler (Clark Gable). Here is Gable on bended knee with the then-Minnie d’Erlanger, on a date in Jamaica. “He was a complete gentleman.”

Making the rounds again is an off-color piece of “Churchillian Drift.” Years ago, columnist Jonah Goldberg greeted its last appearance by calling it “A Thorny Porn-y Issue.” Porn-y maybe, Thorny not. Winston Churchill never said anything like it.

For connoisseurs of made-up Churchill quotations, here’s the alleged exchange. Sir Winston says to a woman at a social event: “Madam, would you sleep with me for a million pounds?” The lady stammers: “My goodness, Mr. Churchill. Well, I suppose….”

Churchill interrupts: “Would you sleep with me for a fiver?” She responds hotly: “What kind of woman do you think I am?!” Churchill replies: “Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.” Amusing, but no cigar. There is no attribution to WSC. And it is entirely out of character.

The Astor collection

Nancy Witcher Langhorne, Viscountess Astor CH MP (1879-1964) was the first woman to take a seat as a Member of Parliament. She and Churchill sparred frequently, not without a certain thinly disguised affection. They liked to stir each other up.

Harold Nicolson (generally reliable) reported that in 1919, when Lady Astor arrived in the House of Commons, Churchill told her: “I feel you have come into my bathroom and I have only a sponge with which to defend myself.” Nicolson does not record her response, but she usually gave as good as she got.

Far more famous is Churchill’s fictitious encounter with Lady Astor at Blenheim or the Astor mansion Clivedon: “If I were married to you,” says Nancy, “I’d put poison in your coffee.” The response—”If I were married to you, I’d drink it”—almost certainly was by Churchill’s friend F.E. Smith, Lord Birkenhead, who was much faster off the cuff. This has not prevented it working its way into spurious Churchill quote books—and, of course, the Internet.

A few genuine encounters

Of course it’s true that WSC put down another woman MP, the redoubtable Edith Summerskill (Lab., Fulham West). On 8 December 1944, Churchill was extolling the “ordinary man” who had gone off to fight for King and country. “He is the foundation of democracy,” WSC intoned. “And it is also essential to this foundation that this man…”

Summerskill interrupted: “And woman, Mr. Speaker….And woman!”

Churchill continued: “I beg pardon. There is always the stock answer that man embraces woman, unless the contrary appears in the context.”

This brilliant riposte lacks the fun in print that it must have generated when delivered, especially with Churchill’s famous lisp: “embrashes woman…”

“You’re drunk” … “You’re ugly”

The most famous genuine barb is of course in the exchange with Bessie Braddock MP (Lab., Liverpool Exchange) in 1946 (click here). His daughter Lady Soames had her doubts: “Preposterous. Papa always treated women with Victorian gallantry.” She finally bought it when I produced an eye-witness. Bodyguard Ronald Golding was standing next to a tired and tottery (but not drunk) Churchill at the time. He vouched for it word for word.

Braddock was an exception, and WSC admired many film stars. “Papa was so dazzled by Vivien Leigh, star of Gone with the Wind, that he became tongue-tied,” Lady Soames continued. “When he met Merle Oberon on a beach in the South of France after the war, he turned somersaults in the water.” Off-color jests were not in his make-up.

Like his lifelong friend Hilaire Belloc, Churchill never looked on women as intellectual inferiors. That view, Belloc said, “was held only by young, unmarried men. The rest of us, as we grow older, come to look on the intelligence of women first with reverence, then with stupor, and finally with terror.”

I don’t know about stupor and terror, but the first was true of Winston Churchill.

In 1927, Winston Churchill wrote to his wife Clementine, “I am becoming a film fan.” He had projection equipment installed at Chequers, the country home of British prime ministers, in 1943, and at his family home Chartwell in 1946. “Churchill and the Movies” is the fourth and final event of the Center for Constructive Alternatives in the 2018-19 academic year. We will view and discuss two films widely regarded as Churchill’s favorites, and two Churchill biographic movies in their historical context.

Hillsdale’s Center for Constructive Alternatives (CCA) is the sponsor of one of the largest college lecture series in America. CCA seminars are held four times each year. Students are required to complete one CCA seminar during their undergraduate years. They may elect to enroll in more. Lectures are open to the public, and out-of-town guests are welcomed. There is no registration fee and the program includes dinners and lunches. “Churchill and the Movies” is now sold out, and up to 400 guests are expected plus students. Watch this space for the web stream video locations.

Partial Schedule:

Sunday 24 March

4:00pm Showing of That Hamilton Woman (1941, 125 minutes). Produced and directed by Alexander Korda, this was Winston Churchill’s clear favorite among movies. It stars two actors he vastly admired, Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier.

8:00 p.m. Filmmaker John Fleet: “Churchill and Alexander Korda.”  Mr. Fleet has made a study of their long and fruitful relationship might have produced several more epic movies, had not World War II intervened.

Monday 25 March

10:00 a.m. “Assault on Churchill”: John Miller interviews Richard Langworth on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 fm. The station will offer an audio stream.

4:00 p.m. Showing of Henry V (1944, 137 mins.) Arguably runner-up in Churchill’s affections was the 1944 British Technicolor adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “Henry V.” The on-screen title is “The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agin Court in France” (derived from the title of the 1600 quarto edition). It stars WSC’s longtime friend Laurence Olivier, who also directed.

“The Play’s the Thing…”

8:00 p.m. Richard Langworth: “Churchill, Shakespeare, and Henry V.”  Excerpt:

How well did Churchill know Shakespeare? Well enough, I think, to ace a Hillsdale Shakespeare course. Both by formal quotations, and by well-known phrases almost hidden in his text, Churchill draws allusions and understanding from sixteen Shakespeare plays, from Macbeth to A Midsummer Night’s Dream—though not, surprisingly, the sonnets.

The producer Marlo Lewis says Henry V introduces us “to urgent problems of statesmanship and, through them, to questions of political philosophy….the delicate matters of legitimacy and the founding of regimes.” I think that is an aspect, but not the most important aspect. Above that and first, the importance of Henry V is what it teaches about leadership.

Churchill wrote in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples that when one of Henry’s officers “deplored the fact that they had ‘but one ten thousand of those men in England that do no work to-day,’ the King rebuked him and revived his spirits in a speech to which Shakespeare has given an immortal form: ‘If we are marked to die, we are enough To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour.’” Compare that to Churchill’s greatest speech, 18 June 1940: “If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”

Tuesday 26 March

4:00 p.m. Showing of Young Winston (1972, 143 mins.)

8:00 p.m. “Young Winston and My Early Life,” with James W. Muller, University of Alaska Anchorage. An expert on Churchill’s autobiography, Professor Muller is well qualified to survey of this remarkable 1972 biopic, starring Simon Ward as Young Winston. The cast was sensational. Anne Bancroft as Lady Randolph, is leered at by Lloyd George (Anthony Hopkins). Robert Shaw is Lord Randolph (remember “Quint” in Jaws?). Young Winston’s evil headmaster at St. George’s School is the great Robert Hardy, who would memorably play Churchill many times in later years.

Wednesday 27 March

2:00 p.m. Richard Langworth: “Current Contentions- Winston Churchill and the Invasion of the Idiots.” A review of the virulent attacks on Churchill in the wake of Gary Oldman’s Oscar for his role as WSC in Darkest Hour. We will discuss four slanders in detail: Fake history in the television series The Crown. Churchill’s alleged 1930s “secret affair” with Lady Castlerosse. The continuing fable that Churchill exacerbated the 1943-44 Bengal Famine. And a renewed “golden oldie” beloved of socialists for a century: the Tonypandy riots of 1910. Excerpt:

Netflix’s The Crown is a not-so-crowning-achievement about the present Queen’s ascent to the throne and her first years as monarch. It starts off well enough. Claire Foy is an honest Elizabeth II.  Matt Smith is a gaudy Prince Philip, acting the foolish playboy. Dame Harriet Walter plays a graceful Clementine Churchill.

John Lithgow as Churchill is good on the voice and mannerisms, minimizing his 6-foot-4 stature with a stoop, and by sitting down a lot. But the script gives him a cartoonish image, far from reality. All too quickly, Lithgow becomes a wheezing old gaffer, clinging stubbornly to power. Productions like The Crown suggest that truth and accuracy matter less than style and perception; that reality must bend to fit the creator’s mindset.

* * *

4:00 p.m. Showing of The Gathering Storm (2002, 96 mins.) Stars the late Albert Finney as Churchill and Vanessa Redgrave as Clementine. This is one of the better World War II biographical movies. Even in a cynical and anti-hero age, filmmakers still can avoid reducing Churchill to a flawed burlesque or a godlike caricature. Except for huge gap in the story line, The Gathering Storm is outstanding. (The gap is Munich, because the film skips it in the rush to war.)

8:00 p.m. Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn: “Churchill as War Leader.” Dr. Arnn is co-editor with Martin Gilbert of The Churchill Documents. Few scholars have devoted more time over the years to studying Churchill’s statesmanship; his remarks stand to be the outstanding feature of this event.

Thursday 28 March

4:00 p.m. Faculty Round Table: Daniel Coupland, James Brandon, Darryl Hart, David Stewart