While my memories of that time period are vague, I do know that director Robert Mulligan's 1962 film left a strong impression on me, and throughout the years it has become one of my all time favorites. The story is told through the perspective of 6-year-old Jean-Louise Finch, nicknamed Scout, as she grows up in a small Alabama town with her older brother Jem and their attorney father, Atticus. They live next door to a strange, reclusive man named Arthur Radley, known to them as Boo. The Finch children spend a lot of their time trying to get a glimpse of the almost mythical figure they've heard so much about, and dare each other to run up onto his porch and knock on the door. They're told ghost stories about Boo by their neighbors, and it seems Boo tried to stab his father and was sent away for awhile before returning to the Radley home as a recluse.
It'd be easy to fill this article with the cultural impact the novel and film had on our society, especially with the storyline of Tom Robinson, a black man wrongfully accused of raping a white woman, and Atticus's subsequent defense of Tom Robinson despite getting no support from the white community around him. If you want to read about that, there are plenty of more well informed takes to be found on the internet, especially those originating in the last five to ten years as the book has been examined with a modern eye. It's certainly not an element of the material that should be overlooked, but I'm absolutely not well versed enough to speak to that. I am, however, able to share my personal connection to the material and its small town Alabama roots.
I've always drawn comparisons between Mockingbird and another favorite of mine, John Carpenter's Halloween. Both films are set in small American towns with a "haunted" house at the center of the story. The Radley House and Myers house are pieces of Americana that are incredibly relatable to anyone who grew up in a similar town. As kids, we all encountered our own haunted house. For me, there was an old cottage home a few houses down from my grandmother's house off main street in Hartselle, Alabama.
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| Courtesy of Hartselle Living Magazine |
I was terrified of the house, based on it's weathered look and overgrown bushes in the yard. I was equally afraid of the old lady who lived alone in the house, Annie Ruth Waldsmith. She died in 2000 at the age of 95, but thankfully I was able to meet her before her passing, to see there was nothing frightening about her or her house. I don't recall what we talked about, I was probably only eight or nine-years-old when we met, but I remember her being warm and pleasant. She was highly intelligent, had taught piano lessons for years, and had a vast collection of old books inside her home. Her home, known as the Rosebud Cottage, was the Boo Radley house of my youth.
Harper Lee, born in Monroeville, Alabama, would become childhood friends with Truman Capote (Scout's friend Dill in Mockingbird is supposedly based on a young Capote), and the two would find themselves forever connected in American pop culture lore, with Lee being linked to Capote through her research assistance on Capote's true crime novel In Cold Blood. Capote himself would walk the streets of my hometown of Hartselle, blocks away from my grandmother's house, when he visited journalist and author William Bradford Huie, who was born and raised in Hartselle and wrote about his experiences in a quasi-autobiography titled Mud on the Stars. Huie himself would have numerous novels adapted into films, including The Klansman (starring OJ Simpson) and The Execution of Private Slovik.
My connection to Mockingbird continues to grow over the years, as I look back on my own childhood experiences.. Though the most universal quality to the film is our protagonist, Scout. She is portrayed by Birmingham, Alabama native Mary Badham, and became the youngest actor to ever be nominated for an Academy Award. It's easy to see why, as her take on Scout is easily one of my favorite performances of all time. Even in moments where the performance could be scrutinized, there's still truth to everything Badham gives the audience. While Gregory Peck's performance is arguably the greatest asset to the film (Peck was nominated and won the Oscar for Best Actor), it's Badham's work that connects you to the world. Without it, or with a lesser performance, the film would not be nearly as effective as it is.
We are all Scout, and I'm very appreciative of the fact that she exists, both in the novel, and on screen. Truly great stories can be dissected at an academic level, the technique of filmmaking and what makes a great film can be studied and broken down, yet we still talk about the magic of film. The magic of great storytelling. There isn't a singular thing that gives Mockingbird its magic, but it's best represented by Mary Badham's performance. It's the pure innocence of a child, a tangible representation of the human condition, and it gets to the heart of the great writing in both the book and screenplay. Scout is the voice of the writer, Harper Lee, as interpreted through the performance of Mary Badham, with assistance from screenwriter Horton Foote and the direction of Robert Mulligan. Harper Lee's Scout and Mary Badham's Scout both work exceptionally well through any medium because they're based on something pure. It gets at what we really are on the inside, and it is magic.
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
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