Where is Scarlett O’Hara’s Famous Green Curtain Dress From ‘Gone with the Wind’ Today?
If you know almost nothing else about 1939’s Gone with the Wind, you know about Scarlett O’Hara’s green curtain dress. Sewn from the drapes hung in her estate, Tara, O’Hara’s improvised dress — designed by Hollywood costume great Walter Plunkett — has been immortalized on a special edition Barbie doll and famously parodied by Carol Burnett in her skit, “Went with the Wind.” But where is the actual dress that Vivien Leigh wore on the big screen today? And can you visit it in person?
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Scarlett’s dress is in Texas …
First, the good news: unlike a lot of classic Hollywood memorabilia, Scarlett O’Hara’s green curtain dress has not been lost or destroyed. Today, it is housed as part of the permanent collection in the David O. Selznick Papers at the Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin.
That doesn’t mean the dress was in perfect condition when they got it, though. When the curtain dress arrived at the Ransom Center, curators found that it was discolored, possibly due to being sprayed with a chemical similar to Lysol (!!) in the past. In the video below, curators from the Ransom Center discuss their work preserving the dress, as well as other outfits from the film:
… but you probably won’t be able to visit it any time soon
And now, the bad news for fans of the film: While both the original, time-damaged curtain dress and a replica that has appeared in multiple major exhibits both reside in the Harry Ransom Center, there is no current plan to exhibit the dresses to the general public any time soon. The dress was last exhibited by the Ransom Center in 2015, as part of their exhibit “Making Gone with the Wind.”
For now, fans can check out the Center’s collection of Gone with the Wind costumes online, and keep their eyes peeled for future announcements of exhibits. After all, tomorrow is another day … to check in on museum listings.
Hollywoods Golden Year
April 2024
Return with us to the year film fans acknowledge as the finest in Hollywood history, 1939.
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