In 1939 one of the most watched films in American history premiered in Atlanta. Gone with the Wind told the story of the Confederate South. One of its actresses was born at 18 West 38th Street in Savannah.
Her name was Alicia Rhett. She played India Wilkes — the proud, unreconstructed Confederate woman who cannot accept that the world she was born into is finished. Her great-grandfather was Senator Robert Barnwell Rhett of South Carolina — known in the historical record as the Father of Secession.
Margaret Mitchell named her most famous character after the Rhett family specifically. Rhett Butler — the most iconic fictional Confederate in American literature — bears the name of Alicia Rhett's own family.
Her father Edmund M. Rhett was an electrical engineer at the Central of Georgia Railroad. He died in World War I. Alicia left Savannah and became a theatre actress before being cast in Gone with the Wind. She died in 2014 at age 98. The house at 18 West 38th Street is now a bed and breakfast. No marker.
| Name | Rhett, Edmund M. (Isabel) |
| Occupation | Elec engr C. of G. |
| Address | r 18 38th, w |
| Note | w confirms West of Bull Street |
| Building now | Bed and breakfast · No marker |