When he arrived in town in February 1961, the weather was overcast and rainy. But even if he had seen Monroeville under the best conditions, it wouldn’t have changed his mind about using it as a possible location: “There is no Monroeville,” Pakula wrote glumly to Mulligan, meaning that modernization over the last 30 years had rendered the town characterless. Except for the courthouse, which the citizenry was considering tearing down because a new, flat-roof, cinder-block version was on the drawing board, Monroeville was a mishmash of old and new. A façade for Scout’s neighborhood would have to be built on a studio back lot, and the interior of the courthouse, which was not in good repair, would have to be measured and reconstructed on a Hollywood sound stage.
After spending several days getting to know the Lees, Pakula left for California, apparently having secured their approval for the ideas he and Mulligan had in mind for the film: “They want to give the movie the same approach that the book had,” Alice said approvingly.23
* * *
The setting for fictional Maycomb that Pakula had expected to find had seemingly vanished. Where Truman’s aunts’ house had stood—the one belonging to Dill in the novel—was an empty lot. The Lees had moved to a brick ranch house across from the elementary school, and their trim white bungalow on South Alabama Avenue looked abandoned. The streets in town that had smoked with sour red dust on a hot day in the 1930s were smooth with asphalt now.
Just looking around, a visitor resting on one of the benches on the courthouse square might conclude that a film with a story like To Kill a Mockingbird was passé. How different times seemed from the days of lynch mobs and racist trials!
On the other hand, if anyone in Monroeville cared to notice—it was so much a part of life that no one would—blacks were not allowed to use the park or recreation facilities owned by Vanity Fair textiles, the largest industry in town, and there were separate water fountains marked WHITE and COLORED.
The long era of segregation and open racism was indeed dying—not gone, but dying—and To Kill a Mockingbird would help hasten its death. Some labeled the book just another of many cowardly blows falling on the South. In February 1961, a few days after newspapers announced the sale of the movie rights to the novel, an unsigned squib headed “Spreading Poison” appeared on the letters-to-the-editor page of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “That book ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is to be filmed. Thus another cruel, untrue libel upon the South is to be spread all over the nation. Another Alabama writer joins the ranks of traducers [traitors] of their homeland for pelf [ill-gotten money] and infamous fame.”24
Yet the novel, and the issues it treated, was a sign of change that had been on the horizon for years. Perhaps that’s why it wasn’t criticized more often, because it was part of a series of ever-more-important events. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund had won Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954 before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that segregation in the public schools was in itself unequal and thus unconstitutional. The following year, Rosa Parks, a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested for disobeying a city law that required blacks to give up their seats to whites. The Montgomery bus boycott by black riders lasted 382 days, ending when the city abolished the bus law. It was the first organized mass protest by blacks in Southern history, and it thrust Martin Luther King, Jr., onto the national stage. The year To Kill a Mockingbird was published, 1960, black and white college students formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to assist the civil rights movement with sit-ins, marches, boycotts, and demonstrations.
There was much trouble still ahead, but the days of overt social and legal inequities directed at blacks seemed numbered. In American culture, To Kill a Mockingbird would become like Catch-22, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, On the Road, Soul on Ice, and The Feminine Mystique—books that seized the imagination of the post–World War II generation—a novel that figured in changing “the system.”
* * *
There was a lull in late spring 1961 with plans surrounding the movie. Pakula and Mulligan were anxious to get a commitment for the leading man, so they could move on to making a film distribution deal. The previous fall, Nelle had engaged in some star hunting on her own, thinking that a direct approach might entice an actor with a reputation for integrity suitable for Atticus. Through the William Morris Agency, she sent a note: “Dear Mr. [Spencer] Tracy, My agent has told me that your agent is sending you a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. Frankly, I can’t see anybody but Spencer Tracy in the part of ‘Atticus.’”25 The actor replied via an agent that he “could not read the book till he has finished his picture ‘The Devil at Four O’clock.’ He must study and concentrate at present.” In March 1961, Maurice Crain wrote to Alice, “The latest development is that [entertainer] Bing Crosby very much wants to play Atticus.… He should be made to promise not to reverse his collar, not to mumble a single Latin prayer, not to burble a single note.… As for the Southern accent, he has been married for several years to a Texas girl and the accent is ‘catching.’”26
* * *
On Monday, May 2, when To Kill a Mockingbird was in its 41st week as a bestseller and had sold nearly half a million copies, a phone rang in Annie Laurie and Maurice’s offices. It was a friend of Annie Laurie’s at a publishing house who wanted to speak to Nelle about hearsay from a reporter.
In California, Pakula had heard the same rumor and was excitedly calling his partner, Bob Mulligan.
When Mulligan answered, Pakula shouted, “We got it! We got it!”
“We got what?” asked Mulligan.
“The Pulitzer prize. Our book won it!”27
Nelle hardly dared believe the news until she received an official call. When she finally did hear from a spokesperson for the Pulitzer committee, she called Alice several times, who by now was becoming adept in the role of her sister’s spokesperson and fielding phone calls from reporters. “Nelle was anxious to find out the local reaction,” she said in response to questions. “She still claims Monroeville as her home, and when she leaves, it is usually for business purposes” (a hint that Alice was still not reconciled to Nelle’s living for months at a time in New York). “The whole town of Monroeville is amazed about the Pulitzer prize.”28
The annual Pulitzer prizes in drama, letters, and music, created by newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer in a bequest to Columbia University, were worth only $500 at that time, but in terms of bringing artists’ names to the public their influence was enormous.
A bookstore in New York City’s Grand Central Station advertising that it carries To Kill a Mockingbird, shortly after Nelle won the Pulitzer prize in May 1961. (Popular Library)
Besieged by phone interviews that kept her pinned inside her agents’ office for hours, Nelle resorted to modesty and humor as ways of modulating questions about herself. “I am as lucky as I can be. I don’t know anyone who has been luckier.”29 She claimed that the effort to write the book had worn out three pairs of jeans. And about whether a movie was forthcoming based on the book, all she would say was that production was slated to begin in the fall.
Almost immediately, a second avalanche of correspondence began. “Snowed under with fan letters,” wrote Newsweek, “Harper Lee is stealing time from a new novel-in-progress to write careful answers.”30
It was the proverbial Cinderella story: from nowhere comes a young writer without benefit of grants, fellowships, or even an apprenticeship at a major newspaper or magazine, who produces, on her first try, a novel snapped up by three American book clubs: Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, the Literary Guild, and the Book-of-the-Month Club. In addition, the British Book Society had selected it for its readers, and by the spring of 1961, translations were under way in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Czechoslovakia.
Truman Capote, who craved winning the Pulitzer or the National Book Award, and hoped he w
ould when In Cold Blood was finished, could barely conceal his envy in a letter to Kansas friends: “Well, and wasn’t it fine about our dear little Nelle winning the Pulitzer Prize? She has swept the boards.”31
And there was surely more to come from an author so promising. Nelle had written an essay, “Love—in Other Words,” that appeared in the April issue of Vogue magazine. She told reporters that she had several short stories under way. She seemed to have talent and a work ethic that indicated a long career was just beginning.
In its first year, To Kill a Mockingbird sold more than 2,500,000 copies. Nelle wrote to friends in Mobile that W. S. Hoole, director of the University of Alabama libraries, “nearly fell over his size thirteens asking for the manuscript” for his archives, but she didn’t give it to him for some reason.32
Maurice Crain, Annie Laurie Williams, and certainly Tay Hohoff couldn’t wait for Nelle’s second novel. In July 1961, a teasing note arrived at Nelle’s apartment.
Dear Nelle: TOMORROW IS MY FIRST BIRTHDAY AND MY AGENTS THINK THERE SHOULD BE ANOTHER BOOK WRITTEN SOON TO KEEP ME COMPANY. DO YOU THINK YOU CAN START ONE BEFORE I AM ANOTHER YEAR OLD? We would be so happy if you would. [SIGNED] THE MOCKINGBIRD AND ANNIE LAURIE AND MAURICE CRAIN.33
To reporters asking the same question—what are your plans for a second book?—Nelle replied, “I guess I will have to quote Scarlett O’Hara on that. I’ll think about that tomorrow.”34
The remark was more than apt. Like the heroine from Gone With the Wind, for whom unpleasantness and hard decisions could always be put off until an eternal tomorrow, “tomorrow” would never come for Nelle Lee as an author. With her first novel, which became the most popular novel in American literature in the twentieth century, and which readers in surveys rank as the most influential in their lives after the Bible, Nelle seemed poised to begin a career that would launch her into the annals of illustrious American writers.
Nelle in 1961, in the “Colored Only” gallery overlooking the courtroom of the Monroe County Courthouse, where her father once argued cases. (Donald Uhrbrock/Time & Life Pictures)
Harper Lee and her father at home on a summer day. Neighbors asked Mr. Lee to sign their copies of To Kill a Mockingbird “Atticus,” which he gladly did. (Donald Uhrbrock/Time & Life Pictures)
Instead, almost from the day of its publication, Mockingbird took off and gradually left its author behind.
Chapter 8
“Oh, Mr. Peck!”
One cold night in early January 1962, Wednesday night services had just ended at the imposing First Baptist Church on Monroeville’s town square when a stranger made his way up the front steps through the trickle of worshippers exiting the sanctuary. By his downcast and rough appearance, he appeared to be homeless.1
“May we help you?” asked one of the ushers.
“I’d like to see the reverend,” came the gruff reply.
The usher assured the man that if he needed a meal or a place to stay, then that could be taken care of. No, that wasn’t the problem, said the stranger. He needed to see the reverend. The usher, beckoning over a couple of gentlemen who were busy returning hymnals to the backs of pews, explained the situation. They agreed to accompany the visitor to Dr. L. Reed Polk’s office.
Reverend Polk was just hanging up his vestments when the little group appeared on the threshold of his office. He thanked the ushers, invited the tall and rather well-built man in, and shut the door so they could have some privacy.
“What can I do for you?” asked Reverend Polk.
Looking up suddenly and extending his hand, the stranger said, “How do you do, sir? I’m Gregory Peck.”
Peck was in town to meet the Lee family and observe the setting for the character he was going to play in the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird. The reason he had stopped at the First Baptist Church, he told Dr. Polk, was that he wanted to speak to someone who knew the town and its people. Dr. Polk had been the minister at First Baptist for more than 15 years. Peck apologized for the disguise, but he didn’t want word to get around that he was visiting before he met the reverend. Dr. Polk was amused and flattered that Peck had come directly to him.
For the next hour, the two men talked about the town and about the man Peck was going to play. The actor asked for particulars about Mr. Lee’s standing in the community, his thoughts and behaviors—anything that “set Mr. Lee apart” would be helpful. Dr. Polk stood up and demonstrated how Lee had a tendency to fumble with his penknife as he talked and how he paced back and forth. Peck watched intently, making mental notes about how he was going to embody Atticus Finch on the screen.
* * *
Actually, Gregory Peck had not been Universal Studios’ first choice for the role. Rock Hudson was offered the part. But Pakula didn’t want Mr. Hudson; he wanted Peck. The studio agreed that if the latter signed on, then it would provide part of the financing and see to the distribution. Pakula sent the actor a copy of the novel. “I got started on it,” said Peck, “and of course I sat up all night and read straight through it. I understood that they wanted me to play Atticus and I called them at about eight o’clock in the morning and said, ‘If you want me to play Atticus, when do I start? I’d love to play it.’”2 Peck formed a production company called Brentwood Productions, which would be a three-way partnership with Pakula and Nelle. Peck, however, would have input into the film’s casting, the development of the screenplay, and other creative decisions.
Annie Laurie Williams had considerable experience with Hollywood when she sold the rights to Nelle’s novel. One of the first books she successfully handled was Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. (Papers of Annie Laurie Williams, Columbia University)
Gregory Peck and Harper Lee took a brisk walk around Monroeville, Alabama, when he visited to meet her father, whom he would portray as Atticus Finch. (The Monroe Journal)
With Gregory Peck on board, the next piece of business was turning the novel into a screenplay. Pakula deferred to Nelle before approaching anyone else, but she wasn’t interested. First, she was busy with a new novel, also set in the South. Working on it, she told a journalist, was like “building a house with matches.”3 The second reason was that she didn’t mind if someone else pruned the book to fit a feature-length movie. She felt “indifference. After all, I don’t write deathless prose.” So Pakula turned to playwright Horton Foote. “I was asked to write the script,” said Foote, “because the actor, producer, and Miss Lee were familiar with my writings.”4
A stocky, soft-spoken Texan with blue eyes, Foote actually had very little experience as a film writer. The only other screenplay he’d written was a film-noir piece, Storm Fear (1955), the adaptation of a novel by Clinton Seeley.
When he was given the job of adapting To Kill a Mockingbird, he recognized a historical kinship with Nelle. His forebears had come from Alabama and Georgia in the early 1800s. Nevertheless, he worried about “despoiling the quality of the story” because “it’s agonizing to try to get into someone else’s psyche and to catch the essence of the work, yet knowing you can’t be just literal about it. There has to be a point where you say, ‘Well, the hell with it—I’ve got to do this job for another medium, and I’ve got to cut out this over-responsible feeling and roll my sleeves up and get to work.’”5
At Pakula’s urging, Foote ratcheted up the drama by compressing the novel’s three years into one. He also added a touch of backstory, too. “Harper never mentions the mother, and I was wondering how I could sneak in that emotional element. I remember as a boy my bedroom was right off the gallery on the porch and when I was supposed to be asleep I would hear things I was not supposed to hear from the adults. This was something I invented for the two children.”6
Most important, he heightened the intensity of the novel’s social criticism. Social protest, particularly about racial conditions in the South, receives more emphasis in Foote’s screenplay than it does in Nelle’s novel, a reflection of the civil rights movement’s growing stronger. To underscore the
film’s seriousness, Foote removed some of Nelle’s satire on “southernness.” Gone are Aunt Alexandra’s racist church ladies; Colonel Maycomb, admirer of Stonewall Jackson; and Miss Fischer, the barely competent first-grade teacher from north Alabama.
Foote also added a dab of love interest to the story. Miss Maudie from across the street appears at Atticus’s breakfast table one morning, hinting that a romance might be in the offing. Nelle, on the other hand, preferred Atticus to be absolutely asexual—deaf, in fact, according to a political cartoon described in the novel, to the “yoo-hoo”s of ladies in the state capital who find the eligible attorney-legislator attractive.
In spite of the changes, Nelle later hailed Foote’s screenplay. “If the integrity of a film adaptation is measured by the degree to which the novelist’s intent is preserved, Foote’s screenplay should be studied as a classic.”7
Director Bob Mulligan, on the other hand, wasn’t so sure. “You know what your problem is,” he told Alan Pakula, after reading Foote’s work, “too often you lose the point of view of the children.”8 It was true, but Foote had chosen to thrust Atticus onto center stage at the expense of the children’s coming-of-age story, believing the adult character would appeal to moviegoers.
A still more drastic change was contemplated. Before Peck had even read the screenplay, he wanted to drop the title To Kill a Mockingbird. Annie Laurie, who had assured Nelle that the novel’s artistic integrity would be respected, was furious. “Don’t believe any items you may see in the newspapers saying that Gregory Peck wants to change the title of To Kill a Mockingbird,” she wrote to George Stevens, managing editor at J. B. Lippincott. “He has been signed to play the part of Atticus, but has no right to say what the title of the picture will be. The change of title has been denied by Mulligan and Pakula in a column story in the New York Times.”9
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