July 2006

To Kill a Mockingbird

• Starring: Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Phillip Alford, John Megna, Frank Overton, Rosemary Murphy, Brock Peters, Estelle Evans, Ruth White, Paul Fix, Collin Wilcox, James Anderson, Alice Ghostley, Robert Duvall
• Directed by: Robert Mulligan
• Theatrical release: 1962
• DVD release: 2005
• Video: widescreen
• Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0
• Released by: Universal

I was at Best Buy to pick up a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. The breathlessly delighted girl behind the counter, ecstatic that I’d made time in my day to come to her store, worried about whether or not I’d found everything I wanted and had enjoyed my visit. She was about 20, with pierced nose, lip, and eyebrows (welcome to Austin). I assured her that I was happy and handed her the DVD. She took one look and said, "Oh. I had to read that in school." "Lucky you!" I replied in all sincerity. She took it for irony and gave a cynical laugh. "Yeah, I know."

A little history

I felt sorry for that young woman. She’d missed an opportunity to take pleasure in one of the culturally significant works of art of the 20th century, one that also happened to be commercially successful. Nelle Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, was published July 11, 1960 and sold 2.5 million copies the first year. In 1961, it won the Pulitzer Prize. By July 11, 1962, it had sold more than five million copies and had spent almost its entire life on the New York Times best-seller list. Five and a half months later, the full muscle of Hollywood behind it, the film To Kill a Mockingbird hit the big screens of America in a faithful re-creation of the book.

Like the novel, the film was a huge hit with critics and the public alike. But for the juggernaut of Lawrence of Arabia, also released in 1962, To Kill a Mockingbird would have swept the Oscars. As it was, 20 days before her 37th birthday, Harper Lee watched the Oscar ceremonies as her film, nominated for eight awards, took home three: Best Actor (Gregory Peck); Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Horton Foote); and Best Art Direction/Set Direction, Black-and-White.

Screenplay writer Horton Foote did a masterful job of translating the novel to film. Of course, he had a great story to work from. Not too thinly veiled and autobiographical in feel if not in fact, To Kill a Mockingbird is the reminiscence of the adult Jean Louise "Scout" Finch (adult voice by Kim Stanley, played as a child by Mary Badham) of a year and a half when she had to go from overalls and pigtails to skirts and school. The film revolves around the events Scout’s father, attorney Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), faced in defending a black man accused of rape in 1930s Alabama. This and the side stories of drunken bigotry, heroism, schoolyard brawls, and a neighborhood bogeyman are expertly drawn together into a believable dénouement.

The cast

Each of the principal actors did the most powerful work of their lives. Unbelievably, Gregory Peck was not the first choice for Atticus Finch -- the studio chiefs first discussed Rock Hudson, Spencer Tracy, and Robert Wagner. But once Peck got the green light, he went to Harper Lee’s hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, to get a better idea of the pace and feel of life in the languid South. His portrayal of Finch is courageous without grandstanding, understanding without being obsequious, wise without being pedantic. He’s so ideal that even his foibles are captivating, and Peck gives his greatest performance. Two other actors deserve special attention. Brock Peters as Tom Robinson, the man accused of rape, is heartbreaking. During the scene in which he breaks down on the witness stand (chapter 27), Peck had to hide his face because Peters had reduced him to tears. And James Anderson as Robert E. Lee "Bob" Ewell, a bigot out for blood, is mean, despicable, and frightening.

But it is the kids who lead most of the film. Both Badham (then ten years old) and Phillip Alford (then 14), who plays Scout’s brother, Jeremy "Jem" Finch, were newcomers to the screen. Director Robert Mulligan wanted to cast Scout and Jem using unknown actors who really were from the South. Both Badham and Alford were from Alabama, so their accents came naturally -- but their acting was preternatural. Watch Badham in chapter 2 as she cuddles her dad and fingers a rosebush. She exhibits all the naturalism that actors of that era were paying thousands of dollars to acquire at the Actors’ Studio. Badham was even nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, but lost narrowly to Patty Duke’s melodramatic turn as the young Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker. Alford is also riveting, and nowhere so much as in chapter 21, when he defies his father’s orders so he can stand toe to toe with his dad against a lynch mob. John Megna, a ten-year-old New Yorker with a little acting experience, was a good choice to play Dill Harris, a character based on Lee’s childhood friend, Truman Capote. Megna plays Dill as the pre-gay Capote: Prim but game, he’s a little braggart who never lets his friends down.

The times

To Kill a Mockingbird, book and film, couldn’t have hit at a better time. The United States was waking up to the ugliness of institutional racism. When Lee began writing her novel, in 1957, nine black students, later to be called the Little Rock Nine, had just been ushered into Little Rock’s Central High School against the orders of the Governor of Arkansas, escorted by the National Guard under orders from President Eisenhower, setting up the almost unbelievable possibility of armed conflict between a state and the federal government. That same year, Martin Luther King, Jr., helped establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to establish peaceful protests, stating, "We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline." (Note how dignified and disciplined all the black actors are in this film.) Just months before the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, four young black men -- Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair, Jr., and David Richmond -- staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, refusing to leave until they were served. This sparked peaceful sit-ins all over the US, all demanding desegregation. Just after the novel won the Pulitzer, James Meredith became the first black man to enroll at the University of Mississippi, causing an insurrection. President Kennedy sent 5000 troops to quiet the riots. By the time both book and film had swept through the country, a whole generation of white people were beginning to understand the modern plight of the African-American.

Martin Luther King’s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"; the deaths of Medgar Evers and the four young girls at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama; the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the assassinations of Malcolm X, in 1965, and Martin Luther King, in 1968 -- all of these things pushed the issue of civil rights for the black American to the front of middle America’s consciousness. But like the seed that had been planted before the Civil War by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the seed was planted before the 1960s Civil Rights campaign by To Kill a Mockingbird.

A hero for all time

For all that, the film never descends to being preachy. It is, after all, a reminiscence, as if you were sitting with a favorite aunt on a porch swing on a hot, humid afternoon in southern Alabama, sipping iced tea as she remembers her youth. Most of the time we just swing along from scene to scene, happy to be hearing the stories but dying to know what’s happening with Atticus’s case and the psyche of the mysterious neighborhood recluse, Boo Radley (Robert Duvall in his first film role). The only time we stray from this comfy point of view is to clean up a single detail that would matter mostly to adults -- a detail that also happens to show another aspect of Atticus’s heroism. It takes place when he and the sheriff are discussing a death that has occurred. All I’ll say is that Atticus experiences a crisis of conscience.

In a movie world full of Rambos and Rockys, Han Solos and Indiana Joneses, Supermans and Batmans, when the American Film Institute got around to picking the top 100 heroes of American cinema, No.1 was a mild-mannered attorney quick with a hug, upright and brave in the face of a mob, and whose main heroism was in his being a good father: Atticus Finch.

The disc

Universal has given us a gorgeous version of To Kill a Mockingbird on two DVDs. The set folds out to reveal elegant sepia-tone stills from the film. Inside is an envelope with 11 nicely printed 5" x 7" reproductions of the posters used for the film in its release around the world. Disc 1 contains a perfectly mastered transfer, the black-and-white print looking better than it did in its original release; and the sound is buffed to flawless intelligibility. The extras on disc 1 are OK, but the commentary, by producer Alan J. Pakula and director Robert Mulligan, and which originally appeared on the laserdisc edition, is well worth hearing. Disc 2 is given over to the making-of documentary that appeared on the LD, and a new documentary produced by Gregory Peck’s daughter, Cecilia. Peck fans will love it; others will find it interesting to watch once.

Read the book

This column should give you an idea of why everyone loved To Kill a Mockingbird as a story, but to really experience it, read the novel and let Harper Lee’s glorious prose roll around in your mind a little. Watching the film is like eating a great big delicious biscuit steaming-hot from the oven, all flaky and tender. Reading the book is like getting to put butter and honey on it, too. Despite what that young woman in Best Buy thought, Lee’s delicately crafted, affecting prose and poignant storytelling are pleasures everyone should experience at least once.

Harper Lee has never written another book.

...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com

• Go Back