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Where it has remained on rusting hinges until last week. Scarlett (Warner Books; 823 pages; $24.95), the carefully prepared, shrewdly promoted novel by Alexandra Ripley, is finally out in the U.S. and 40 other countries. Warner Books paid $4.9 million for the American rights and has backed up its bet with print orders totaling nearly 1 million copies. The William Morris Agency, representing Ripley and the Margaret Mitchell estate, sold the foreign rights for $5 million more. William Morris' Robert Gottlieb believes film rights could sell in the "high seven figures." Scarlett is the first published sequel to Gone With...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Frankly, It's Not Worth a Damn | 10/7/1991 | See Source »

...book conceived, produced and marketed like a theatrical property. The deal came first, the writer came second, and then the publicity machine passed them all. The project was draped in a gauze of secrecy that, now removed, reveals no great surprise. The book is a tease. Rhett and Scarlett remain rascals and opportunists. He continues to profit from the defeat of the Confederacy; she shrewdly expands her Atlanta business interests and plots her slippery husband's recapture. For those who were on Mars last week, the most famous bickerers in literature since Petruchio and Katharina get back together again. Although...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Frankly, It's Not Worth a Damn | 10/7/1991 | See Source »

Once again publicity foreplay is more exciting than what goes on between the covers. The managed anticipation that preceded Scarlett's publication was enlivened by the intricacies of copyright law and the persistent, though unconfirmed, rumor that Sidney Sheldon had been a candidate before the Mitchell estate settled on Ripley, 57, a native of Charleston, S.C., and author of three solid historical romances. There was also the confirmed rumor that Ripley threatened to quit when told by her editor that the first draft of Scarlett was not commercial enough. Finally, there was the author's disarming candor. "Margaret Mitchell...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Frankly, It's Not Worth a Damn | 10/7/1991 | See Source »

Despite the helping hand of Jeanne Bernkopf, one of Manhattan's most experienced free-lance editors, Scarlett still needs a story stronger than girl chases boy. The excessive number of extended and inconclusive family gatherings recalls Mitchell's comment in Gone With the Wind: "When a Southerner took the trouble to pack a trunk and travel 20 miles for a visit, the visit was seldom of shorter duration than a month." Scarlett could also use a dose of Joyce Carol Oates' gothic intensity...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Frankly, It's Not Worth a Damn | 10/7/1991 | See Source »

...takes the reader only a few pages to realize that Ripley has had to / forfeit the novelist's right to create her own characters. Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara sprang from everything Mitchell knew and felt about a time that was still fresh in her region's memory. Ripley's self-imposed handicap shows in the dialogue. Mitchell gave her sardonic hero the best lines, hard- bitten and vivid in the Raymond Chandler style. "I've seen eyes like yours above a dueling pistol," he says to Scarlett. "They evoke no ardor in the male breast." Ripley's Rhett...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Frankly, It's Not Worth a Damn | 10/7/1991 | See Source »

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