a nomad named bandit: "Quite frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

No joke.

Proof:

This was the weirdest part of our trip to the Cyclorama. Clark Gable as a dead UNION soldier… The story goes that before the cast of Gone With the Wind began filming, they were taken to the Atlanta Cyclorama to see a little bit of the history. Clark Gable made a joke about how he would the painting more beautiful and asked to be put into it. The thing is, he didn’t say it HAD to be in the painting portion of the Cyclorama. In the 1920’s a 30 ft deep diorama was added to create a 3D effect, and well… they added Clark Gable to the diorama as a union soldier, lol. Awesome!

The cyclorama – as an art form is centuries old and is kin to those lighted carousels that made light shapes dance around your dark room. It is the precursor to movies. A cyclorama is a 360° painting that immerses the patron in a special time or event. It encompasses you and you are swallowed by the silence and the overwhelming knowledge that your eyes cannot move fast enough to absorb all of the brush strokes.

My daddy went to the Atlanta Cyclorama - which is in Grant Park next to the Atlanta Zoo – when he was a little boy in the 70’s. It was much different when he went. It was so cool to have him tell me all of the differences between the before and the after. The Atlanta Cyclorama is an American Civil War Cyclorama and was completed in 1886. It depicts the battle of Atlanta… aka part of Sherman’s march to Atlanta. It is SOOO massive and there is such a nifty museum there about the Civil War that I highly recommend it. You’ve got to be sure to make it in time for a guided tour of the Cyclorama because you’ll miss the cool Jeopardy facts otherwise.

Here are some pictures that I wasn’t supposed to take, but of course did…