The film was the first Best Picture Oscar winner to be adapted into a regular prime-time TV series (NBC: 1988-1992 and CBS: 1992-1995), with Carroll O""Connor as Sheriff Bill Gillespie and Howard Rollins as Virgil Tibbs.When they were threatened, both were teleport-beamed away separately (rigged by Scotty) to he pad in the transporter room of theUSS Franklin, where hey were reunited with Scotty, Kirk, and Chekov...the man who goes to the Senate to take Sam Foley""s place can""t ask any questions or talk out of turn.Author Margaret Mitchell told a reporter she favored Basil Rathbone for the male lead.The four principal stars were billed in this order: Clark Gable, followed by Leslie Howard (as Scarlett""s obsessive love, he glum Ashley Wilkes) and Olivia de Havilland (as sweet Melanie Wilkes, Ashley""s cousin), and then Vivien Leigh last with ".The FBI intercepted Lecter""s return personalTattlercolumn addressed: "DEAR PILGRIM," containing numerous coded Biblical citations: John 6:22, 8:16, 9:1.