Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania • Page 42

Jul 02 2010 Post-Gazette PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE 4, 2010 WWW.POST-GAZETTE.COM E-4 a few individual libraries are having events.) In addition, HarperCollins has released a 50th anniversary edition. It has also published a new book about the book: Atticus Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of Kill a by journalist and filmmaker Mary McDonagh Murphy. Ms. Murphy considers to be national cannot think of another novel that has such indelible characters, a story of suspense, this kind of beautiful writing and also a social message that she said in a phone interview. The new book is based on her documentary treatment of the same subject, now making the rounds at film festivals, and includes material she fit into the movie.

The book has 25 contributors, mostly writers, reflecting on the significance. Among those interviewed are Mary Badham, a non-actor who played Scout in the film; Rick Bragg; Wally Lamb (who wrote the foreword); James McBride; Anna Quindlen; Richard Russo; Scott Turow; Andrew Young and Oprah Winfrey. Predictably absent is anything new from Ms. Lee herself, who has famously declined interviews since 1964. Now 84, she lives in her hometown of Monroeville, the prototype for Maycomb in the book.

However, Ms. Murphy does succeed in interviewing the sister, Alice Finch Lee, 98, a lawyer who still goes to work in Monroeville every day. worked very hard getting that interview, and I enjoyed every minute of Ms. Murphy said. On the perennial question of why Harper Lee never wrote another book, Alice Lee says to Ms.

Murphy: told one of our cousins who asked her, anywhere to go but Another tidbit comes from Ms. Winfrey, who says she had a delightful lunch with Harper Lee but could not convince her to come on her show. you know Ms. Lee reportedly told her, you understand why I be doing an interview, because I am really Yet Harper Lee has never been a hermit. giving interviews should not be confused with being a said Ms.

Murphy. all accounts, Harper Lee has a normal life and friends. not holed up in a house like As her friend, the Rev. Thomas Lane Butts of Monroe- ville, put it, has controlled her own destiny. She have a PR person.

She need one. I think she has led a happier life and certainly more contented life because she has chosen how she has related to the Something else Ms. Lee told Ms. Winfrey bears noting, and something one rarely hears from famous people today: honey, I already said everything I had to Several people in Ms. book remark on the rumors that written by Ms.

Lee at all, but by Mr. Capote, or at least with a lot of his help, and why she never wrote another novel. To a one, they reject the notion because their writing styles were so completely different. Some say that the opposite was true, because she was the one who went to Kansas to help him research his book Cold Their friendship was ended by her success. As Alice Lee explained: became very jealous because Nelle Harper got a Pulitzer and he did not.

he got involved with the drugs and heavy drinking and all. And that was it. It was not Nelle Harper dropping him. It was Truman going away from Occasionally, someone will dispute the literary value of Ms. Murphy recounts a May 2006 New Yorker article by Thomas Mallon, dismissing Atticus as plaster and Scout as highly constructed doll, feisty and cute on every subject from algebra to When Ms.

Murphy asked her about Mr. comment, Pulitzer Prize-winning Diane McWhorter Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights replied, this guy is not going to be reading his book in 50 years. People are going to be reading Harper Lee in this country as long as they draw Ms. Murphy said that when first appeared, Harper hometown paper made note of it. But it was another six months before Newsweek did the first big story on her after the book had become hugely popular.

Other publications sought her out when the film version was released in 1962, with a screenplay by the young Horton Foote. was delighted by the said Ms. Murphy. then the civil rights movement was in full bloom, and she was being asked to discuss some of the most divisive racial issues of the One of those press conferences was witnessed by a reporter from Rogue magazine, then a counterpart to Playboy and Esquire, and described in a March 1963 story: When you wrote the book, did you hold yourself back? Well, sir, in the book I tried to give a sense of proportion to life in the South, that there a lynching before every breakfast. I think that Southerners react with the same kind of horror as other people do about the injustice in their land.

In Mississippi, people were so revolted by what happened, they were so stunned, I think it will happen again. like to know if your book is an indictment against a group in society. The book is not an indictment so much as a plea for something, a reminder to people at home. It turned out to be a reminder to the whole nation, and its central messages must hold as true today as ever. Otherwise, continue to be one of the most-read American novels of all time.

these years later, never been out of Ms. Murphy said. an astonishing phenomenon for a book that people expected might sell 4,000 Sally Kalson: gazette.com or 412-263-1610. still singing 50 years later MOCKINGBIRD, FROM PAGE E-1 Harper Lee, center, joins Brian Lamb, founder of C-SPAN, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia, as recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Nov. 5, 2007.

By Gary Rotstein Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Mary Badham was a young mother, long past age, when she finally read Kill a She had delayed picking up Harper acclaimed novel simply because the 1962 film version told the story of the events surrounding an upstanding, Depression-era Southern family so well for her. But after settling into the book at the urging of a college instructor who invited her to speak to his class, she found it moving and meaningful in its own right. Ms. Badham is now one of the foremost champions of on speaking engagements around the country, with a little more status than its other advocates. She was the Scout Finch, after all, and in many ways, Scout was her.

grew up in a houseful of boys and was very much a tomboy growing in Birmingham, the 57-year-old explained with a twang last week in a telephone interview from her home near Richmond, Va. She long ago settled into a very non-Hollywood lifestyle on a farm there with her high school sweetheart-turned-husband. Ms. mother was one of leading theatrical actresses, though Mary herself had never acted before winning the role at a casting call at age 9. She looked the part of the impish, smart-but-sassy heroine in overalls, and her naturalistic performance made it impossible to imagine anyone else as the daughter of Atticus Finch.

Atticus was played, of course, by Gregory Peck, who won an Academy Award for the role of gentleman lawyer battling prejudice. (Ms. Badham was nominated for best supporting actress, losing out to Patty Duke for Miracle The relationship between Atticus and Scout on screen mirrored the real-life bond between Mr. Peck and Ms. Badham until his death in 2003.

He reminded her of her own upright, distinguished father, an Air Force general. She always called Mr. Peck On the studio lot in California, she said, was encouraging of that relationship, so it would show up on film, and we got so tight. My dad really come out there, and Atticus jumped right in. He had small children at the time, and I would go to their house on weekends and play with It was the same close relationship with Phillip Alford, who played Jem Finch, her older brother.

They played and fought together all during filming, just as a real brother and sister might much to the delight of director Robert Mulligan and the rest of the crew trying to make a realistic film deserving of Ms. work and Horton Oscar-winning screenplay. Their effort led to a total of eight Academy Award nominations and ranking of by the American Film Institute as the greatest courtroom drama of all time, the second most inspiring film ever and the 25th-best U.S. film. Many of those who worked on the movie stayed in touch long afterward, just like a family, Ms.

Badham said with the notable exception of Robert Duvall, who made his film debut as the reclusive Boo Radley. Boo ultimately saves Scout and Jem from the villainous Bob Ewell, played by character actor James Anderson. Ms. Badham said she and the other child actors were never permitted to interact during filming with other key performers such as Mr. Duvall and Mr.

Anderson except when they were in character which helped the children maintain their natural manner when the cameras rolled. Anderson was a method actor, so when he walked on the set Bob he was that she recalled. gave everybody the willies, and we were all intimidated by Ms. Badham said she avoids watching the film now because of sadness from the deaths of nearly everyone associated with it except Mr. Duvall and Mr.

Alford, who, like her later left acting. Ms. Badham made a couple of movies following but did not like tilt toward more graphic film-making as the 1960s progressed. She raised two children in Virginia and worked at a community college there for years until taking a more active interest in promoting both the film and novel as part of The Big Read project of the National Endowment for the Arts. She has been making one or two speaking appearances a month to trumpet the message of the story, including a 2007 visit to Pittsburgh when it was being performed as a play.

(Separately, she has frequently visited the Ligonier-Latrobe area, where her husband has relatives.) And she will be among the celebrities doing a public reading of the book later this week in Ms. hometown of Monroeville, as part of an anniversary celebration of the book. such an amazing educational Ms. Badham says. film touches people, and seen where the book and the film both have brought people together and showed them what a family can do.

just Gary Rotstein: gazette.com or 412-263-1255. Scout recalls bonding with actors on the set May 1954 Supreme Court declares segregated public schools unconstitutional. August 1955 Emmett Till, 14, is murdered in Mississippi for allegedly flirting with a white woman. December 1955-December 1956 The Montgomery bus boycott takes place. October 1957 Central High School in Little Rock, is integrated.

July 11, 1960 Harper Collins publishes Kill a by Harper Lee. May 1961 The cross racial lines in bus stations throughout the South. September 1962 James Meredith integrates the University of Mississippi. April-May 1963 Police dogs and fire hoses are turned on peaceful demonstrators in Birmingham, Ala. June 11, 1963 Integration of the University of Alabama sparks riots and President landmark civil rights speech.

June 12, 1963 NAACP officer Medgar Evers is assassinated in Jackson, Miss. Aug. 28, 1963 The march on Washington draws 250,000 people; Dr. Martin Luther King gives his Have a speech. Sept.

15, 1963 Birmingham church bombing kills four little girls. July 2, 1964 President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act into law. Source: Dennis Simon, Southern Methodist University Sally Kalson, Post-Gazette staff writer In the context of history: A sampling of local events Inter-generational discussion of Kill a for teens and adults, Carnegie Library of Beechview at noon, July 27. 412563-2900. Also holding an intergenerational discussion of the book will be Andrew Carnegie Free Library in Carnegie in late August.

For information, call 412-2763456, ext. 8. Brentwood Library will screen the film for families at 6 p.m. Aug. 24.

412882-5694. Mary McDonagh Murphy, author of the new Atticus Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of Kill a considers the 1960 classic to be national What do you think our national novel is? Please send your comments in an e-mail to maga and put in the subject line. publish the results in a week or two. What is our national novel? Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and Mary Badham as his daughter, Scout, in the film Kill a In the book Atticus and theatrical agent Alice Lee Boatwright recounts meeting Mary and casting her in the role. Ms.

Boatwright tells the 9-year-old that she looks younger and smaller than her age. looked at me and said, if you drank as much buttermilk and smoked as many corn silks as I do, you might be smaller, When Kill a was published, the nation teetered on the brink of the most sweeping changes to racial equality since Reconstruction. how it unfolded: Birmingham News Pivotal events in civil rights battle, clockwise from top: Students of Central High School in Little Rock, including Hazel Bryan, shout insults at Elizabeth Eckford, 16, as she walks to a line of National Guardsmen, who blocked the main entrance and would not let her enter, Sept. 4, 1957. A policeman uses a dog to control a civil rights demonstrator in Birmingham, May 3, 1963.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his Have a speech Aug. 28, 1963, in Washington.

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