The facade for Tara built for the 1939 film was dismantled in 1960 and shipped to the south.
Gone with the Wind remains one of the most beloved films of all time, due to the unforgettable love-triangle story of Southern Belle Scarlett O’Hara, her neighbor Ashley Wilkes and eventual husband Rhett Butler.
But there’s another character of the film that has fallen by the wayside over the last 75 years – ‘Tara’ the stately O’Hara family plantation home that serves as the backdrop of the Civil War-era movie.
While the movie-set facade for Tara remained on the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer back lot for several years, it eventually was purchased and shipped to Georgia where it remained all but forgotten for three decades as the pieces wore into disrepair.
Now, local historian Peter Bonner is working to display the set pieces in hopes of teaching tourists about the parallels between Gone with the Wind and author Margaret Mitchell’s real-life experiences growing up in the South during Reconstruction.
The shell of the home was built at MGM’s Selznick Studios, and was used for several years as a backdrop for other Western movies filmed there.
The set was dismantled in 1960, though the studio continued to mislead tourists for several years into thinking another southern mansion on ‘back lot 2’ was the frame used in the famous film.
Tara was first purchased by group Southern Attractions, inc in 1959 who had plans to turn the set into a museum and tourist attraction.
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