Nevertheless, Peck was the star of the film and had a considerable financial stake in it. Moreover, he had the support of Universal Studios in his back pocket. In ways that mattered, the film was more his than anybody else’s.
* * *
After speaking to the Reverend Polk in his church office, Peck and his wife checked in at the ranch-style LaSalle Hotel in Monroeville. The following morning, Peck visited the Lees.
A. C. Lee was looking forward to meeting the actor, although he was feeling tired as a result of a mild heart attack. He’d never met a film star. For that matter, he’d never seen Gregory Peck in a movie. The two men sat in the living room getting to know each other, while Nelle and Alice had to keep shooing away neighbors who were trying to peek in through the picture window. Peck got the impression that the elderly lawyer “was much amused by the invasion of these Hollywood types. He looked on us with benign amusement.”10 They got along together well.
After an hour or so of conversation, Nelle offered to take Peck on a short tour of the square with a stop-off for lunch. The weather was brisk and overcast, but Peck, dressed in only a lightweight suit, gamely followed Nelle, who was wearing a parka, jeans, white socks, and sneakers, around town until they arrived at the Wee Diner.
The Wee Diner was two Montgomery buses joined at a 45-degree angle, head to rear, creating a triangular courtyard effect. The intersection served as the entrance. To rustle up customers, owner Frank Meigs put a chopped onion on the grill and turned on the exhaust fan, a welcome smell to Nelle and Peck on such a chilly January day. They took one of the booths and ordered.
Suddenly through the door came Wanda Biggs, the official hostess for the Welcome Wagon. She had been tracking them all over town, she said breathlessly. On behalf of the Chamber of Commerce, she presented Gregory Peck with a basket of gifts and coupons for newcomers. “He was as polite and kind a man I had ever met,” she later told everyone. “He asked if I would mind taking it to his wife across the street at the hotel. That he would like for me to meet her. I did and found her to be equally as warm and friendly. They were just our kind of folks.”11
Nelle and Peck’s final stop after the Wee Diner was the home of Charles Ray Skinner. The production crew arranged to meet them there because they wanted to photograph what servants’ quarters looked like in an older home. Peck made small talk with Skinner about the spacious kitchen, including that he’d never had a real down-home Southern meal.
Probably as a result of that remark, by seven thirty that evening, the lobby of the LaSalle Hotel was jammed with ladies bringing covered dishes. Peck left a message at the front desk expressing his thanks and asked that items for him be left for him to pick up. Not to be denied, teenager Martha Jones and a friend pushed through to the receptionist and asked which room Mr. and Mrs. Peck were staying in. She told them huffily that the Pecks were not in at present. The two girls got in their car and drove around town on a scavenger hunt until they spotted Nelle’s car outside the Monroe Motor Court. Door by door they listened in. Finally, hearing voices, they knocked on one, and were confronted by Nelle, who was obviously not amused.
“Martha Louise Jones, what are you doing here?”
“I was just hoping I could get Mr. Peck’s autograph.”
Beyond Nelle, Martha could see Mr. Peck, his wife, and Mr. Lee.
“Well, we’re busy now. You just go on home,” ordered Nelle, and began to shut the door.
“Hold on, Nelle,” Peck interrupted. “I’ll be glad to give the young ladies my autograph.” Star struck, the two fans offered him damp scraps of paper. He signed both and then bid the girls a gracious good night.12
The following morning, until it was time to leave, Mr. and Mrs. Peck didn’t venture outside the LaSalle Hotel lest they send the town into a second uproar. Frank Meigs sent over breakfast from the Wee Diner, and later Peck sent him a handwritten note expressing his gratitude.
* * *
Production on the film was scheduled to begin in early February in Hollywood, and Nelle had been invited to attend. But she had also promised Truman she would go with him to Kansas again after Christmas. So during the middle of January—two weeks after Peck had left Monroeville—she was back in Garden City, once again as Truman’s “assistant researchist,” though by now her profile in town was higher than his.
“It was pretty dicey for Nelle, as she was known by local people who had come to like her very much,” said Dolores Hope.
She was always very protective of Capote and made sure the limelight was on him most of the time. She was quick to divert mention of the Pulitzer Prize back to Capote. She also gave him credit for his help and encouragement. My impression of the Pulitzer time is that people who had come to know Truman here in Kansas just had a gut feeling that he would have his nose out of joint about it. Nelle knew him so well and she was anything but an attention-getter herself. In fact, she shunned it. She was the exact opposite of Truman, being more interested in others than she was in herself.13
Her stay was necessarily brief, however, because filming was slated to begin in a few weeks. Consequently, at the end of the first week of February, she boarded the Super Chief in Garden City, having finished helping Truman, and continued on to Los Angeles. Total sales of her book, hardback and paperback, were approaching four and a half million.
Casting had been completed just in the nick of time, with some of the roles settled on just weeks before shooting began. Pakula and Mulligan preferred faces audiences wouldn’t recognize, “to retain the sense of discovery, which is so important in the novel,” Pakula said.14 They turned to character actors from films, Broadway professionals—unfamiliar then to most film-going audiences—and, for the roles of the children, complete unknowns. Another newcomer was Robert Duvall, who had impressed Foote when Duvall gave a first-rate performance in Foote’s drama The Midnight Caller at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. To prepare for the role of Boo Radley, Duvall stayed out of the sun for six weeks and dyed his hair blond, thinking it would give him an angelic look.
The competition for the role of Tom Robinson was down to two actors: Brock Peters and James Earl Jones. Peters badly wanted the part because his career seemed to be slipping into a rut of playing villains. “Well, of course, I was scared out of my wits,” he remembered. “I didn’t know how to present myself in order to get this coveted prize. I went into the meeting—it was in a building at Park Avenue and 57th Street and I tried not to appear frightened but I wanted to look cool and calm and still suggest the character of Tom Robinson, and do that dressed in a suit.”15 He got the part, and a few days before filming began, Peck called to congratulate him. Peters was so surprised he didn’t know what to say at first. “I worked over the years in many, many productions, but no one ever again called me to welcome me aboard, except perhaps the director and the producer, but not my fellow actor-to-be.”16
The part of Bob Ewell, the poor white who accuses Tom Robinson, was still open when actor James Anderson met with Bob Mulligan. Raised in Alabama, Anderson told Mulligan with conviction, “I know this man.” Mulligan believed he did, but he also had to confront Anderson with his reputation for drinking, fighting, and not showing up to sets. He told Anderson to come back in three days (probably to see whether he would be on time and sober). When Anderson arrived, Mulligan laid it on the line: “I want you to be in this movie but you and I are going to have to have a clear understanding. And you’re going to have to take my hand and shake it. If you do, you have to promise me that you will be sober, that you will be on time, that you will not cause trouble for me or for anyone. And that you will do honor to this script. He said, ‘I understand.’ He put out his hand and shook mine, and he kept his word.”17
The role of Jem went to 13-year-old Phillip Alford, a child with practically no acting experience who auditioned only because his parents promised him a day off from school. Hundreds of children competed for the roles of the Finch children, including nine-year-old Mary Badham, who was selected f
or the part of Scout. She was feisty and frank, a good match for her character. When a reporter commented, “You’re a very little girl for your age,” she replied, “You’d be little, too, if you drank as much coffee as I do.”18
Director Robert Mulligan encouraged Phillip Alford, Mary Badham, and John Megna to play together. Then he would move the cameras in quietly and tell them to begin saying their lines. (PhotoFest)
By coincidence, Phillip and Mary were Birmingham natives who lived four blocks apart. The Alfords were, however, working-class people, and the Badhams could afford a black nanny to help raise Mary. The part of the Finches’ next-door neighbor went to nine-year-old John Megna, who had recently appeared in the Broadway hit All the Way Home, based on James Agee’s Pulitzer prize–winning novel, A Death in the Family. “John looked up to me like a big brother,” Phillip later said, and the two boys formed a pact to hate Mary.19
The directors had already arranged to shoot many of the scenes on sound stages at the Revue Studios, but that left the question about what to do for exterior scenes, since Monroeville no longer resembled a Depression-era Southern town. Alexander Golitzen, a former architect and the film’s co–art director, studied sketches and photographs of Monroeville until he came up with an idea. Some of the older homes resembled the clapboard cottages that were disappearing from the outskirts of Los Angeles. Golitzen suggested to his colleague Henry Bumstead that they get tips from wrecking companies on houses slated for demolition. Near Chavez Ravine, where a new baseball park for the Los Angeles Dodgers was nearing completion, they found a dozen condemned cottage-style houses. For practically nothing they hauled the frames to the set. Sometimes known as “shotgun hall” houses because they have a center hall, with all the rooms off to the left or right, they were popular everywhere in the United States during the first 30 years or so of the 20th century. For a quarter of the cost of building them from scratch on the set, the relocated houses were placed on either side of a recreated Alabama street, with porches, shutters, and gliders (seat swings) added for a touch of Southern flair.20 When Nelle arrived on the set in early February, she was dazzled by the illusion.
On February 12, principal photography began. Until now, Nelle had been harboring some doubts about Mr. Peck’s suitability for the role. “The first time I met him was at my home in Alabama.… I’d never seen Mr. Peck, except in films, and when I saw him at my home I wondered if he’d be quite right for the part.” But that was without seeing him in character. “[T]he first glimpse I had of him was when he came out of his dressing room in his Atticus suit. It was the most amazing transformation I had ever seen. A middle-aged man came out. He looked bigger, he looked thicker through the middle. He didn’t have an ounce of makeup, just a 1933-type suit with a collar and a vest and a watch and chain. The minute I saw him I knew everything was going to be all right because he was Atticus.”21
After two whirlwind days in Hollywood, she had to leave on family business. It was too bad she couldn’t have stayed to see the courtroom scenes. To film them, scenarists constructed a sound-stage set built to look exactly like the interior of the courthouse in Monroeville, based on painstaking measurements. Ironically, one of the novel’s major themes is tolerance, but a production assistant kept reassembling the extras for the trial by shouting, “All the colored atmosphere upstairs; all the white atmosphere downstairs.” Brock Peters had a word with him, and the call was changed to “Downstairs atmosphere in, please; balcony atmosphere upstairs, please.” Because of the values of the times, Phillip, Mary, and John were not allowed to attend the filming of the courtroom scenes, even though they appear to be watching from the courtroom gallery. For children that age, listening to a trial about rape and incest, even a fictional one, was considered inappropriate.
Producer Alan Pakula and Nelle Lee watch scenes on the set of To Kill a Mockingbird. (AP photo)
Gregory Peck points out something in the script to Nelle. (Corbis)
During the trial, Brock Peters delivered one of the most memorable performances in the entire film. For two weeks of rehearsals and filming, he was required to break down on the witness stand, begin to weep, and then make a dignified attempt to try to stifle his sobs. By the end of this slow disintegration, his self-respect has to gain hold again and turn into barely suppressed rage at being falsely accused. Bob Mulligan coached him until “Once we were on track I needed to go only to the places of pain, remembered pain, experienced pain and the tears would come, really at will.” Peters later called those two intense weeks “my veil of tears.”22 Peck found it difficult to watch Peters because the actor’s performance was so affecting.
Between Gregory Peck and James Anderson, however, there was no love lost. To begin with, Anderson would speak only to Mulligan for some reason. Peck tried to make a suggestion about one of their scenes; Anderson snarled back, “You don’t show me shit!”23 Second, he was a Method actor, meaning that he tried to remain in character at all times, which in this case was a violent man. In the struggle with Jem Finch near the end of the film, Mr. Anderson yanked Phillip out of the camera frame by his hair.24
* * *
In April, after a month of filming, word reached the set that Nelle had returned to Monroeville just in time because her family needed her again. At age 82, A. C. Lee died early in the morning on Palm Sunday, April 15, 1962.
Of his daughter Nelle, A. C. Lee had said, “It was my plan for her to become a member of our law firm—but it just wasn’t meant to be. She went to New York to become a writer.”25 It was typical of him that he tended to think the best of others, including his headstrong daughter, who had proven him wrong about her choice to drop out of law school and write fiction instead. He believed that people are basically good, capable of improving, and as eager as the next person for a better future.
Worth pointing out, however, is that A. C. Lee himself only gradually rose to the moral standards of Atticus during his life. Though more enlightened than most, he was no saint, no prophet crying in the wilderness with regard to racial matters. In many ways, he was typical of his generation, especially about issues surrounding integration. Like most of his contemporaries, he believed that the current social order, segregation, was natural and created harmony between the races. For him, it was a point not even worth discussing that blacks and whites were different. As the Bible said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” That divine structure’s great roof covered all humanity. Hence, blacks deserved consideration and charity as fellow creatures of God; and the law should protect them. But they were not the same as white people; and for that simple reason—to continue the biblical metaphor—they did not need to be in the same room with whites.
And it may surprise admirers of Atticus Finch that the man he was modeled after did not believe that a church pulpit was the proper place for preaching about racial equity. He insisted that the mission of the Methodist Church, where his family had worshipped for generations, was to bring people to salvation, not to promote social justice.26 On this point he was in agreement with Methodist pastor G. Stanley Frazier, an outspoken segregationist in Montgomery who believed that the church should bring souls to God, and not ensnare them in passing social problems.
But A. C. Lee changed his views during the remainder of the 1950s. And Nelle watched as her father, formerly a conservative on matters of race and social progress, became an advocate for the rights of blacks.
Part of the reason for his change of mind was the influence of events that no thoughtful American in the 1950s could ignore. In 1954, two white men murdered Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black visiting Mississippi from his home in Chicago because he had whistled at a white woman. The killers were acquitted, and then bragged about their crime to the media. Two years later, Autherine Lucy, a black student, attempted to enroll at Nelle’s alma mater, the University of Alabama, but racist violence on the campus for three days forced her to flee.
A contest of warring principles was gearing up in the South, and a civic-minded man
such as A. C. Lee could not fail to recognize it happening in his own backyard. In 1959 in Monroeville, the Ku Klux Klan forced the cancellation of the annual Christmas parade by threatening to kill any members of the all-black Union High School band who marched. The morning after the parade was canceled, A. C. Lee walked into the store owned by A. B. Blass, noting that the store’s exterior was covered with racist graffiti. As president of Kiwanis, Blass had made the decision to call off the parade for safety’s sake. “Mr. Lee came down to our store from his office and knowing what we had done put his hand on my shoulder,” said Blass, “looked me in the eye and said, ‘Son, you did the right thing.’”27
By the time To Kill a Mockingbird was published, A. C. Lee counted himself an activist in defending the civil rights of blacks. In 1962, while a reporter was interviewing Nelle in Monroeville, he and Alice stopped by on their way to the offices of Barnett, Bugg & Lee. The 81-year-old A. C. Lee interrupted to speak earnestly about the importance of reapportioning the voting district to provide fairer representation for black voters. “It’s got to be done,” he said.28
Though this was not a complete reversal of his belief that the church should stay out of nonreligious affairs, it was clear that racial equity had become a matter of conscience for A. C. Lee, and so it had entered the realm of moral judgment where he had to confront what he believed about humanity. Like his persona, Atticus Finch, he came to believe “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”29
Influencing him, too, was his daughter Alice, more progressive in outlook in matters concerning race than he was. At a critical moment in reorganizing the Methodist Church, for instance, Alice took her stand.
During a meeting in the mid-1960s of the Church’s Alabama–West Florida Conference, one of the few regional holdouts against integrating black Methodists with whites, a “committee report concerning the problems of our racially divided church and society had come to the floor,” said Reverend Thomas Butts of Monroeville. “Amendments had been made, and debate had started. The advocates of continued racism were poised and ready to try to drag the church deeper into institutional racism, but before their titular leader could get the floor, a wee woman from Monroeville got the attention of the presiding officer of the conference.”
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