FRANKLY MY DEAR, every woman has been in love with Rhett Butler for more than half a century. Now that passion can be directed at Timothy Dalton as he steps into Clark Gable's shoes in the sequel to "Gone With the Wind."
Of the sequel, "Scarlett," Dalton says, "It's actually about human passion. I knew essentially that it wasn't going to be cheap exploitation when I saw the script and the cast," which includes Julie Harris, Ann-Margret and Joanne Whalley-Kilmer as Scarlett O'Hara.For his role as Rhett, Dalton, 48, nurtured a full mustache and replaced his British accent with a barely detectable Southern drawl.
"The Southern accent was deliberately subtle," Dalton told Reuters in a recent interview in his Manhattan hotel. "At first I thought it should be strong, but then I decided against that. Rhett is wealthy, aristocratic, educated and cosmopolitan. He's well traveled. He's left the South. In many senses he is of them, but he's separate from them. Rhett's been around."
How did he feel about stepping into Gable's shoes?
"All men know elements of all male characters," says Dalton. "Once I decided to take this role, I headed straight to Margaret Mitchell and read the original book for the first time.
"Rhett is a pirate and a crook, a businessman and a profiteer, but he's a creation of a woman's mind, and I suppose he might be what every woman would like to see in a man."
Dalton confesses that he first saw the film adaptation of "Gone With the Wind" four years ago, well before he was asked to reprise the romantic male lead.
"I was quite shocked by the film, really. It's not a `Citizen Kane,' but it is a big, sweeping, bold saga of human emotions. I was swept up in it. The elevation of style is deeply gripping. And I remember thinking that it could have been a miniseries."
"Gone With the Wind" was published in 1936 and brought to the silver screen in 1939. The eight-hour sequel is based on the novel by Alexandra Ripley.
Dalton concedes that comparisons between him and Gable and for that matter all of the main characters in the two films are inevitable. "But," he says, "even though the characters are the same it's a completely different story."
"The best work is work that is honest and comes from your heart. I originally turned down this role, but the producer was very tenacious," he says.
"I'm not sure what finally convinced me to take it. Sometimes it's something about a script that tangles with your heart or it's simply challenging," Dalton muses.
"There's danger underneath something that's been done before - a sense of risk that can be quite appealing. Of course it was there in `Scarlett.' "
But the true test of any character re-creation is when an actor makes an audience forget that there has been another before him. As Dalton boldly titilates us with his rendition of the quintessential American hero, it becomes easy to accept "Scarlett" as an independent work and Dalton's Rhett as somone familiar yet surprisingly, pleasingly new.
There are similarities between the Gable and Dalton versions of Rhett. But it is perhaps a feeling more than any visual presentation that captures Rhett's vulnerability and sensitivity and allows us to accept Dalton in this role.
Just as Gable set the world afire when he kissed Scarlett against the backdrop of a burning Atlanta, Dalton starts an inferno of his own when he makes love to Scarlett in the first segment of the miniseries. And it's just as ill-fated this time as it was in the original story.
"Rhett's walkout on Scarlett isn't just a spat," says Dalton. "It's the result of a seven-year failure. He couldn't make her love him, and yet he got trapped - no, he trapped himself.
"He was aware of what he was doing. He took a gamble and it didn't work. You always have to learn once, and then as soon as you see the way the wind blows you should know better the next time. He went into this with his eyes open, and it didn't work. I've done that in my life."
Dalton sees few other similarities between himself and Rhett but admits that he made the most of the commonalities that exist between them.
"You know from the book what the author intended Rhett to be," Dalton explains. "You find those parts of yourself that understand him, and then you go back to the character and absorb yourself in that person."
The key to playing a role that is burned into the American consciousness, Dalton says, is passion.
"Rhett needs to be fulfilled in love or to be made whole again or for the first time. You don't get a sense that he's had a fulfilling relationship before," says Dalton, who confides that unlike Rhett he has been in love "three and a half times."
"The half," he explains somewhat bittersweetly, "was when she didn't love me."