Obituaries

Ann Rutherford, one of the last living credited actors in the 1939 classic Gone With the Wind, has died. She was 94 and had some heart problems in her later years.

Rutherford also played in the "Andy Hardy" series of movies for MGM. She was married to producer William Dozier until his death in 1991.

There are at least two credited actors still alive from GWTW: Alicia Rhett, who played India Wilkes, and Olivia de Havilland, as Melanie Wilkes, one of the four main stars in the picture.

Under contract with MGM, she was a regular in the hugely successful Andy Hardy series when studio head Louis B. Mayer informed her that his son-in-law, producer David O. Selznick, wanted to borrow her for "Gone With the Wind."

Mayer called it "a nothing part" and planned to say no, Rutherford told the Los Angeles Times in 2010.

A fan of the Margaret Mitchell novel, Rutherford implored Mayer to reconsider. When she uncharacteristically burst into tears, he relented.

"I just wanted to watch the book come to life," she said in the Times interview.

According to the AllMovie Internet database, Rutherford was "quite appealing" as the optimistic Carreen O'Hara in the romantic drama that starred Vivien Leigh as her sister Scarlett and Clark Gable as Rhett Butler.

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