Parting Glances: Nuthin' Bout Birthin' No Babies

It's been 75 years since Margaret Mitchell's classic novel of the Civil War South, "Gone With The Wind," had its movie premier in Atlanta, Georgia, Dec. 15, 1939. I saw GWTW for my first time during a 50th anniversary showing in Chicago.
How I remained a virgin so long on that score is still something of a mystery to me. (But then again, I've lost my virginity in the aptly named Windy City on many, many occasions.)
I have a friend who's seen GWTW — so he claims at senior citizen decaf coffee clutches — 50 times. He also loves to say, when offered four helpings of anything temptingly caloric, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!"
My friend's so-what admonition, when first originally climaxed by GWTW star Clark Gable to actress Vivien Leigh, caused a sensation. The audience shocker: DAMN! (Oh, my.) Leigh's response was more sanguine, "Oh, well. Tomorrow's another day."
It's hard to believe, what with today's "another PG-18 rating day" that GWTW's Rhett Butler's "damn!" shocked audiences in '39. But shock it did, thanks to Hollywood and Catholic Legion of Decency censorship that kept swearing, nudity, sex, perversion, suggestive tap dancing and limp wrists off the screen well into the 1960s. "Pregnant" came as a shocker that decade.
(A scenario from my not-so-innocent, prepubescent childhood: Several of us kids march up and down our neighborhood chanting, "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" It was an 8-year-old's clueless taste of forbidden fruit, and thanks to a grandmother with no hearing problems, also of Ivory Soap.)
Thirty years before GWTW, a gay playwright by the name of Clyde Fitch (1865-1909) shocked staid New York theatergoers with a well placed "goddamn" as a curtain closer for his 60th and final play, "The City." It was American theater's first swear in. It G-D'd for 190 performances.
If you've not heard of Fitch, he was this country's first internationally recognized playwright, once having four plays running at the same time on Broadway. (There's a passing reference to him in the Bette Davis movie, "All About Eve.") Fitch also liked to perform in drag.
Clyde met Oscar Wilde while visiting London in 1889 and fell for the Irish playwright. He wrote Oscar love letters, one of which began, "You precious maddening man," adding, with an "amazing beautiful brain," and closing with a presumptive, "Nobody loves you as I do."
Alas! Clyde Fitch's hope for a love affair with Oscar never came to — shall we embellish poetically — fruition. A poet by the name of "Bosie," Lord Alfred Douglas, entered stage right. Clyde exited stage left. The rest is history. With an RIP footnote. Both Oscar and Clyde as exiles took their final curtain call nine years apart in France. Merde alors!
Oh, yes! Bout birthin' no babies. It was Butterfly McQueen. If you're under 35, you probably haven't a clue who she was. Or, for that matter, who actors Clark Gable, Vivien Lee and Leslie Howard were.
As for GWTW. It starts to happen along about age 50. Don't hold your breath.