Yesterday I posted Al Pacino and Robert De Niro’s screen tests for ‘The Godfather’, in which we also got a view of the young, then-fatso Francis Coppola directing. Today we move backwards thirty-five or so years for a glimpse of Paulette Goddard’s test for the role of Scarlett O’Hara in…oh, you know what film. We hear the voice of the test’s director George Cukor (who was supposed to go on to direct the whole movie but who was fired because of…oh, you know that story…) giving instructions to Paulette–at one point he tells her to relax because “your face is so hard”. Paulette was probably never seriously considered for the role, but David O. Selznick made a big show of testing every actress in Hollywood, known or unknown, and giving the process of finding the right Scarlett a lot of ballyhoo in the press. As for Goddard, she was–as you can see for yourself–a stone-cold fox. I love the way she teases a crew member when Cukor asks her to turn around so they can see the back of her head for some reason. Goddard was my big movie-star crush in my adolescence and I never missed a showing at a revival theater of ‘The Women’–if you ever run across the movie on TCM pay special attention to the last scene in which Paulette is wearing a dress so sheer you can clearly see one of her adorable nipples. I was so mad for her that I actually wrote her a gushing fan letter. Please don’t tell anyone I told you that…