Classic Films

[url]http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/gone-wind-actress-mary-anderson-694266[/url]

Mary Anderson, who played Maybelle Merriwether in Gone With the Wind and was one of the nine survivors cast adrift from a torpedoed ship in Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, has died. She was 96.

(SNIP)

While attending Howard College (now Samford University) in her native Birmingham, Ala., Anderson was discovered by director George Cukor, who was searching for an actress to play Scarlett O’Hara in the adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s Civil War epic Gone With the Wind (1939).

Cukor was fired, and the role of O’Hara went to Vivien Leigh, who went on to capture the best actress Oscar. Anderson was cast in a small role as Maybelle, Scarlett’s cousin and the wife of Louisiana native Rene Picard (Alberto Morin).

In Lifeboat (1944), Anderson played U.S. Army nurse Alice Mackenzie opposite Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix, Walter Slezak, John Hodiak and Hume Cronyn in the claustrophobic Hitchcock drama.

IMDB entry:

[url]http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0027156/[/url]