This is John Batcher. Scott Iman's marvelous Charlie Chaplin versus America, the biography of the great comic of the 20th century.

In this particular detail, however, it has to do with Gone With The Wind, David Selznick's masterpiece.

Gone with the Wind, Vivian Lay, Scarlet O'Hara. How did David Selznick choose choose Vivian Lay, over Paulet Gottered. Here's the tale itself.

Charlie Chaplin's involved, Lord. So Olivier's involved, all of Hollywood's involved, all the gossip pages

are involved.

Wonderful. More of this later.

Behind Vivian Lee.

And the problem was, there was some discomfort amongst the general.

The choice of who's going to play Scarlett Hera was a big deal in 1938 because everybody knew

the Selznick had bought the screen rights and he was testing

dozens of actresses and it would became a real, the testing of the actresses and who's going to get the

part became a topic of general conversation.

And Goddard was living with Chaplin at his house.

And whether or not they were common law merit was a common law marriage.

I never actually checked out what

how many years they had to be together to constitute common law marriage but they were

living together as man and wife so he ended up going with Vivian Lee who was a better

choice because Vivian Lee's better

actress. But what he did, what was not generally known at the time was the fact that Vivian Lee was

living with Lawrence Olivier, whose divorce hadn't come through yet, nor had her divorce come

through yet.

They were also living in sin in Hollywood.

...