<P> According to Hecht biographer, William MacAdams, "At dawn on Sunday, February 20, 1939, David Selznick...and director Victor Fleming shook Hecht awake to inform him he was on loan from MGM and must come with them immediately and go to work on Gone with the Wind, which Selznick had begun shooting five weeks before . It was costing Selznick $50,000 each day the film was on hold waiting for a final screenplay rewrite and time was of the essence . Hecht was in the middle of working on the film At the Circus for the Marx Brothers . Recalling the episode in a letter to screenwriter friend Gene Fowler, he said he hadn't read the novel but Selznick and director Fleming could not wait for him to read it . They would act out scenes based on Sidney Howard's original script which needed to be rewritten in a hurry . Hecht wrote, "After each scene had been performed and discussed, I sat down at the typewriter and wrote it out . Selznick and Fleming, eager to continue with their acting, kept hurrying me . We worked in this fashion for seven days, putting in eighteen to twenty hours a day . Selznick refused to let us eat lunch, arguing that food would slow us up . He provided bananas and salted peanuts...thus on the seventh day I had completed, unscathed, the first nine reels of the Civil War epic ." </P> <P> MacAdams writes, "It is impossible to determine exactly how much Hecht scripted...In the official credits filed with the Screen Writers Guild, Sidney Howard was of course awarded the sole screen credit, but four other writers were appended...Jo Swerling for contributing to the treatment, Oliver H.P. Garrett and Barbara Keon to screenplay construction, and Hecht, to dialogue ..." </P> <P> Principal photography began January 26, 1939, and ended on July 1, with post-production work continuing until November 11, 1939 . Director George Cukor, with whom Selznick had a long working relationship, and who had spent almost two years in pre-production on Gone with the Wind, was replaced after less than three weeks of shooting . Selznick and Cukor had already disagreed over the pace of filming and the script, but other explanations put Cukor's departure down to Gable's discomfort at working with him . Emanuel Levy, Cukor's biographer, claimed that Clark Gable had worked Hollywood's gay circuit as a hustler and that Cukor knew of his past, so Gable used his influence to have him discharged . Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Havilland learned of Cukor's firing on the day the Atlanta bazaar scene was filmed, and the pair went to Selznick's office in full costume and implored him to change his mind . Victor Fleming, who was directing The Wizard of Oz, was called in from MGM to complete the picture, although Cukor continued privately to coach Leigh and De Havilland . Another MGM director, Sam Wood, worked for two weeks in May when Fleming temporarily left the production due to exhaustion . Although some of Cukor's scenes were later reshot, Selznick estimated that "three solid reels" of his work remained in the picture . As of the end of principal photography, Cukor had undertaken eighteen days of filming, Fleming ninety - three, and Wood twenty - four . </P> <P> Cinematographer Lee Garmes began the production, but on March 11, 1939--after a month of shooting footage that Selznick and his associates regarded as "too dark"--was replaced with Ernest Haller, working with Technicolor cinematographer Ray Rennahan . Garmes completed the first third of the film--mostly everything prior to Melanie having the baby--but did not receive a credit . Most of the filming was done on "the back forty" of Selznick International with all the location scenes being photographed in California, mostly in Los Angeles County or neighboring Ventura County . Tara, the fictional Southern plantation house, existed only as a plywood and papier - mâché facade built on the Selznick studio lot . For the burning of Atlanta, new false facades were built in front of the Selznick backlot's many old abandoned sets, and Selznick himself operated the controls for the explosives that burned them down . Sources at the time put the estimated production costs at $3.85 million, making it the second most expensive film made up to that point, with only Ben - Hur (1925) having cost more . </P>

When was gone with the wind filmed in color