I Am Scout (17 page)

Annie Laurie also knew that in the long run working with a small company would be less threatening to the Lee family. She could close a film deal for the novel only if Alice and A. C. Lee approved of the people involved as much as Nelle. Whoever was chosen to turn the novel into a film had to come across as decent and trustworthy.

Her father and sister had arrived at the
To Kill a Mockingbird
party late, so to speak; but once it was clear that Nelle had achieved something grand, Mr. Lee and Alice—increasingly Alice as A. C. Lee's health declined—were taking over her affairs. Previously, when Nelle was working in New York full-time as an airline ticket agent during the
1950
s and was hard-pressed for money, the Lees had allowed her to scrape along, probably figuring she would come to her senses eventually and return home. Then, against all odds, Nelle was suddenly famous. Now the family was in the spotlight and were trying to manage their prodigy.

A. C. Lee and Alice also hinted that they didn't believe this wild ride could last. Nelle had better be careful with her money.

“I never dreamed of what was going to happen. It was somewhat of a surprise and it's very rare indeed when a thing like this happens to a country girl going to New York,” Mr. Lee said when his daughter's novel simultaneously landed on the
New York Times
and
Chicago Tribune
bestseller lists. “She will have to do a good job next time if she goes on up,” he continued, raising the issue of her possibly failing, even if he didn't mean it that way.
20

Nelle's sister Louise was the least impressed of all by the attention given her sister's book and didn't think much of Nelle's talent, either. She told her son's teacher that
To Kill a Mockingbird
was just “ridiculous.”
21

So it was that when Annie Laurie wrote to the Lees about closing the deal on the motion picture rights, she acknowledged that Alice, as family spokesperson and Nelle's self-appointed manager, would have to be reckoned with every step of the way. “Dear Alice and Nelle,” the letter began,

[I tried] to keep in mind everything you said[,] Alice[,] about not getting any
cash
money for Nelle this year and not too much each succeeding year.… The sale is to Alan Pakula and Robert Mulligan, who are forming their own company to produce together, with Bob Mulligan also directing. This is the real “prize” having him direct the Mockingbird picture. Alan is a good producer but he knew when he first talked to Nelle in our office, that he must have a sensitive director to work with him. We think that Bob Mulligan is just right for this picture.
22

She was not overstating their good luck in closing with Alan Pakula and Bob Mulligan. As filmmakers, they were drawn to stories about character, life's tragic quality, and situations that were ripe for strong dramatization.

At first glance, Mr. Pakula would not give the impression of being the right man for the job of making a film about racial prejudice and a small southern town in the
1930
s. Darkly handsome, the son of Polish immigrants, and a Yale graduate who dressed like a
1960
s IBM salesman, Pakula was neat in ways that extended even to his film crews, insisting they pick up their cigarette butts after shooting on location. But he was also personable, warm, and conscientious.

Bob Mulligan had neither Pakula's charm nor his reserve. Sandy-haired, informal, and impulsive, Mulligan was born in the Bronx and studied briefly for the priesthood before enrolling at Fordham University. After serving with the Marines during World War II, he started at the bottom at CBS, as a messenger, but rose during the popularly nicknamed Golden Age of Television to become a director of live dramas. Unlike Pakula, however, who later moved into directing films with a social-political agenda, Mr. Mulligan would remain attracted to telling human-interest stories:
Love with a Proper Stranger
(
1963
);
Up the Down Staircase
(
1967
);
Summer of '42
(
1971
); and
The Man in the Moon
(
1991
).

Overall, the fit was good between the content of
To Kill a Mockingbird
and what Pakula and Mulligan wanted to do artistically. In the meantime, because Mulligan was still working on
The Spiral Road
(
1962
), a big-picture drama about colonialism in the tropics, Pakula made arrangements to visit Monroeville and “see Nelle about the ‘creative side,'” as Annie Laurie put it, though he knew in advance he was auditioning for Alice and A.C.'s approval, too.

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
1930
s 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
41
st 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