Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn
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"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" is a famous line from the 1939 film Gone With The Wind starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh.
It was spoken by Gable, as Rhett Butler, in his last words to Scarlett O'Hara. It occurs at the end of the film when Scarlett asks Rhett, "Where shall I go? What shall I do?" when he leaves her. The line is memorable not only because it contains profanity, but also because it demonstrates that Rhett has finally given up on Scarlett and no longer cares what happens to her.
This quotation was voted the number one movie line of all time by the American Film Institute in 2005.[1]
Production code conflict[edit]
Prior to the film's release, censors objected to the use of the word "damn" in the film, a word that had been prohibited by the 1930 Motion Picture Association's Production Code that was first enforced in July 1934. However, before 1930 the word "damn" had been relatively common in films. In the silent era, John Gilbert even shouted "Goddamn you!" to the enemy during battle in The Big Parade (1925). The Production Code was ratified on March 31, 1930, and was effective for motion pictures whose filming began afterward. Thus, talkies that used "damn" include Glorifying The American Girl (1929), Flight (1929), Gold Diggers Of Broadway (1929), Hell's Angels (1930), The Big Trail (1930), The Dawn Patrol (1930), and The Green Goddess (1930). Although legend persists that the Hays Office fined producer David O. Selznick $5,000 for using the word "damn", in fact the MPA board passed an amendment to the Production Code a month and a half before the film's release, on November 1, 1939, that forbade use of the words "hell" or "damn" except when their use "shall be essential and required for portrayal, in proper historical context, of any scene or dialogue based upon historical fact or folklore...or a quotation from a literary work, provided that no such use shall be permitted which is intrinsically objectionable or offends good taste". [2] With that amendment, the Production Code Administration had no further objection to Rhett's closing line.
It is actually the second use of "damn" in the film. The term "damn Yankees" is heard in the parlor scene at Twelve Oaks. It would also not be the first time profanity would be used after the Production Code went into effect, as Warner Bros. made a "blooper" reel featuring Looney Tunes character Porky Pig saying the word "bitch" as an inside joke, though the "blooper" reel wasn't shown publicly until the Warner Bros. 50th Anniversary special, however by that point standards had eased enough for it to be shown without controversy. [3]
References[edit]
- ^ "AFI's 100 YEARS...100 MOVIE QUOTES". American Film Institute. 21. Retrieved 11 May 2013.
- ^ Lewis, Jon (2000). Hollywood V. Hard Core: How the Struggle Over Censorship Saved the Modern Film Industry. New York University Press. p. 305. ISBN 0814751423.
- ^ Burin, Rick (September 4, 2008). "Warner Releases Collection of Blooper Reels". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 May 2013.
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