Casablanca could actually have been filmed in color with the technology available at the time. Two years before its release, the film adaptation of Gone with the Wind had already premiered. Pomona had always remembered Scarlett's dress, sewn from emerald-green curtains.
She wore it to meet Rhett Butler, but though Scarlett remained beautiful and captivating, Rhett immediately recognized that she was no longer the pampered young lady she had once been.
Her face was pale from prolonged malnutrition, and her hands had grown rough from labor. Then Rhett angrily drove Scarlett away without lending her any money.
At the time, Scarlett was so poor that she had nothing but herself to offer Rhett as collateral, but Pomona did not think she would have minded. If that idiot had not suddenly lost his mind after rescuing her and Melanie from Atlanta and gone off to join the Southern army that was doomed to lose, he could have lived with Scarlett and the others. Scarlett would not have needed to shoot the deserter who broke into the plantation either.
Then Scarlett promptly married Frank, the man who had originally been meant to become her brother-in-law. She had set her sights on the lumber business run by the grocery store owner. Rebuilding Atlanta required vast quantities of lumber at the time.
America was unlike Europe. It did not have so many "historic cities" and "historic buildings." Demolishing them and building supermarkets or shopping centers on the land was nowhere near as troublesome. They could be completed in a few years.
In Europe, approval for the demolition alone could take more than a decade. New buildings could not look too out of place beside the surrounding structures, and in some places even outdoor air-conditioning units were forbidden. Then another decade or more would be