Leslie Howard

Vanity Fair, January 1934

Fifty years ago, Leslie Howard (1893-1943) entered movie mythdom as Gone with the Wind's Ashley Wilkes. He loathed the film. Technicolor forced him to wear makeup, and at forty-six he played a twenty-eight-year-old "dreadful milksop." He complained, "lam suspicious that 50 million Americans can't be right." His son, Ronald, hinted that Wilkes's tom emotions hit too close to home: Howard's own Melanie was his wife, Ruth, and a cast of women fueled his incurable Scarlett fever. But, frankly, he didn't give a damn about Hollywood. He preferred the stage (he was a smash on Broadway), writing (Fitzgerald critiqued his work, some of which ran in Vanity Fair), and directing (he once rejected the young Clark Gable). Then, as W.W. II broke out, he deserted the Confederacy for British intelligence, producing stiffer-upper-lip films and broadcasts. Howard was returning from Portugal when his civilian plane was shot down—apparently the Luftwaffe thought Churchill was on board.