I wish Leslie Howard hadn’t always been cast into roles where he was seen as weak. Case in point, as Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind. Wilkes was a generally distasteful character who paled in comparison to Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler. It wasn’t the first time Gable showed him up, Leslie almost lost Norma Shearer in A Free Soul to Gable years earlier.

Leslie Howard was an incredible actor who could seamlessly shift from doing serious drama to lighthearted comedy and he was strikingly good-looking to boot. I wish that when people looked at Leslie Howard they wouldn’t just see Ashley Wilkes, but the brilliant man behind him.

But most of all I wish Leslie Howard hadn’t died so young. His early death has prevented the world from ever knowing what could have been