Paulette Goddards Screen Tests for Gone With The Wind

David O. Selznick, with whom Paulette Goddard had signed a contract, liked her work in The Young in Heart and was then thinking of Paulette for the role of Scarlett O Hara in Gone With The Wind. Screen tests convinced Selznick and the director George Cukor that Paulette would need coaching to be effective in the role, but that she was promising and she was the first actress who made a Technicolor screen test. After they made screen tests with Vivien Leigh that pleased Selznick he cancelled the further tests that should be made for Paulette and the part was given to Leigh. It has been suggested that Paulette lost the part because Selznick feared that questions about her marital status with Charlie Chaplin would cause a scandal. Chaplin s biographer Joyce Milton later wrote that Selznick was worried about issues by signing her to a contract that could cause a conflict with her existing contracts with the Chaplin studio.