Mockingbird (27 page)

*   *   *

The success of
To Kill a Mockingbird
caught Hollywood's attention almost immediately, and Annie Laurie Williams, as Nelle's agent for dramatic rights, had been reviewing proposals from filmmakers. She was in her element brokering deals between studios or production companies hunting for literary properties. Sifting through the proposals on her desk, however, she found too much of the usual overheated language about turning the book into a Hollywood hit.

The producer Robert P. Richards, for instance, wrote on behalf of himself and his partner, James Yarbrough. Yarbrough's credits included television dramas such as
Robert Montgomery Presents
and two western series,
Rawhide
and
Bonanza.
Richards felt strongly about the need to shoot on location and use “as many natives as possible for extras and bits.” For the roles of Aunt Alexandra and Miss Maudie, he suggested Bette Davis and Ann Sheridan. “Atticus is a problem,” Richards admitted; among the biggest leading men of the day—Marlon Brando, John Wayne, Burt Lancaster, Gregory Peck, and a few others—“the only one who might be right is Gary Cooper, but I'm afraid that his public image is wrong. The public is unwilling to think of Cooper as an intellectual.” Yarbrough had an idea, though: “to ask John Huston to play the part, he is Atticus, in thought, body and personality, a little wilder, a little crazier.”
37
Williams politely turned down their offer.

Most offers were from small outfits and partnerships. Major studios were conspicuously absent because
To Kill a Mockingbird
lacked the tried-and-true ingredients that attracted movie audiences: shoot-'em-up action, a love story, danger, or a clear-cut “bad guy.” In addition, the press had likened
To Kill a Mockingbird
's nine-year-old narrator Scout to preadolescent Frankie in Carson McCullers's
The Member of the Wedding,
and the film version of McCullers's novel had flopped. (The surface similarities of the two novels were not lost on McCullers, either, who commented acidly about Lee to a cousin, “Well, honey, one thing we know is that she's been poaching on my literary preserves.”)
38

It was just as well that the big studios weren't sniffing around, anyway. In thirty years of working with Hollywood, Williams had learned to adhere to a basic principle: try to get for authors and playwrights what they need to feel appreciated or satisfied. Some required top-dollar deals to feel validated; others would work only with directors or playwrights they admired. In Lee's case, Williams had an author who did not put emphasis on conventional marks of prestige. But she would be reluctant to let go of the story unless she could be assured that a film version would not be undignified or hurt people she loved. That was her price; and other considerations—the money paid for screen rights, percentage agreements, and so on—were of much less concern to her.

A second reality about doing business with Harper Lee was that the locus of control over the book was slipping from her hands alone and into Alice's. Williams knew she could close a film deal for the novel only if Alice approved of the people involved as much as Nelle did. Whoever was chosen to turn the novel into a film had to come across as decent and trustworthy.

The Lee family had come to the
To Kill a Mockingbird
party late, so to speak, but once it was clear that Nelle had achieved something grand, Alice began taking over her affairs. Previously, when Nelle was working full-time in New York as an airline reservationist and was down-at-the-heels, the Lees had allowed her to scrape along, probably figuring she would come to her senses eventually. Then, against all odds, this long run-up to what should have ended in a sorry admission that A.C. had been right all along instead resulted in Nelle's producing a novel that was becoming famous. Suddenly, the family was receiving calls from reporters, and with no choice except to acquit themselves well, they were undertaking the responsibility of managing their prodigy.

So it was that when Williams sent a follow-up letter to the Lee home about selling the motion picture rights to Alan Pakula and Robert Mulligan, 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.
39

She was not overstating their good luck in closing with Pakula and Mulligan, and she had held off a major studio until the pair could make their bid. As filmmakers, they were drawn to stories about character, life's tragic quality, and situations that were ripe for strong dramatization.

At first glance, Pakula would not give the impression of being the right man for the job of making a film about racial prejudice in a small southern town in the 1930s. Darkly handsome, the son of Polish immigrants, and a Yale graduate who dressed like a 1960s IBM salesman, Pakula was fastidious 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. At twenty-two, he had turned away from the family printing business in New York, and become a production assistant at Paramount. His father underwrote his first film as producer,
Fear Strikes Out
(1957), the story of baseball player Jimmy Piersall's mental illness caused by his obsessively critical father, for which Pakula teamed with Robert Mulligan as director. The film was well received, and it not only launched Mulligan and Pakula's careers but also earned praise for newcomer Anthony Perkins in the role of Piersall. A publicist at Lippincott had urged Pakula to read
To Kill a Mockingbird
, and Pakula in turn had made Mulligan read it.

Bob Mulligan did not have Pakula's exterior polish, nor was he as reserved. Sandy-haired, informal, and impulsive, Mulligan was born in the Bronx and studied briefly for the priesthood before enrolling at Fordham University, where he majored in radio communications, receiving training that made him a specialist in the Marines during World War II. After the war, 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 aired on
The Philco Television Playhouse
,
Studio One
, and
Suspense.
Mulligan was part of a new wave of postwar directors learning their craft on television—men such as John Frankenheimer, Sidney Lumet, Arthur Penn, George Roy Hill, and Martin Ritt. Unlike Pakula, however, who later moved into directing films with a social-political agenda such as
Klute
(1971),
The Parallax View
(1974), and
All the President's Men
(1976), 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. Even better, the relationship between Nelle and Pakula had gotten off to a good start in Williams's office the previous autumn, during a meeting that Williams had presided over like an old-fashioned matchmaker. Well before the deal was closed, in January 1961, she had sent Pakula a letter lecturing him about not trifling with Nelle or her book: “From the very beginning, everybody who had anything to do with the book has felt that it was
special,
deserving the most thoughtful handling. Now if you can find exactly the right Atticus and exactly the right children, especially the little girl to play Scout, we will feel confident that you can produce the kind of picture you promised Harper Lee you would make when you first met her in our office.”
40

In the meantime, because Mulligan was still working on
The Spiral Road
(1962), a big-picture drama with Rock Hudson and Burl Ives about colonialism in the tropics, Pakula made arrangements to visit Monroeville and “see Nelle about the ‘creative side,'” as Williams put it—though he knew in advance he was auditioning for Alice and A.C.'s approval, too. When he arrived in Monroeville in February 1961, the weather was overcast and rainy. But even if he had seen the town 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 thirty 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 old courthouse, which was not in good repair, would have to be measured and reconstructed on a Hollywood soundstage.

After spending several days getting to know the Lees, Pakula left for California, apparently having secured their approval about 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. Nelle, trying to assuage Pakula's disappointment about Monroeville with a dose of lightheartedness, sent him a few photographs with a note: “Here is the courthouse, some rain-rotted lumber, and two sprigs of Spanish moss to keep you company. If you'll believe me, that's the sun, not a flashbulb, shining on the side of the house.”
41
He thanked her for the pictures, betraying no sense of concern about the crimp in his plans, and saying he was looking forward to meeting up with her in New York soon to introduce her to Bob Mulligan—“Affectionately, Alan.”

*   *   *

The setting for fictional Maycomb that Pakula had expected to find had seemingly vanished. Where Capote's house had stood—the one belonging to Dill's aunt in the novel—was an empty lot. The streets that had emanated sour red dust on a hot day in the 1930s were smooth with blacktop. Now, teenagers crowded into the Wee Diner for Cokes and hamburgers, a hot spot for dates made from two buses joined together, with flower boxes and brightly painted booths. A visitor resting on one of the benches on the courthouse square might conclude, just looking around, 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, blacks were not allowed to use the park or recreation facilities owned by the Vanity Fair underwear factory, the largest industry in town, and there were separate water fountains marked “White” and “Colored.”

A few days after newspapers announced the sale of the movie rights to the novel in February 1961, 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 of their homeland for pelf and infamous fame.”

*   *   *

In late spring 1961, planning for the movie entered a lull. Pakula and Mulligan were anxious to, in casting parlance, “set the star”—get a commitment for the leading man—so they could move on to making a 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 that made him suitable for the role of Atticus. Through the William Morris Agency, she sent a note to Spencer Tracy. “Frankly, I can't see anybody but Spencer Tracy in the part of Atticus.”
42
The actor replied via an agent, George Wood, 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.” Instead, Wood suggested Robert Wagner who “would love to hear from you and any ideas that you might have for him.” In March 1961, Maurice Crain wrote to Alice: “The latest development is that 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.”
43

Aside from the movie, things were continuing to percolate on the literary front. By mid-April,
To Kill a Mockingbird
was approaching its thirty-fifth week on the bestseller lists. Yet Lee apparently couldn't shake the feeling that she was still an amateur who could learn from her betters. After having lunch with Crain, she went back to his office and happened to see the manuscript for a new novel by Fred Gipson, author of
Old Yeller.
“She picked up the first page, just to see how Fred Gipson began a story,” Crain wrote to Gipson. “Under protest she was dragged away from it 111 pages later to keep another date, but took a copy of
Old Yeller
with her. You have another fan.”
44

Back home in Monroeville by the end of the month, Nelle was invited to attend a luncheon of the Alabama Library Association. At the table of honored guests was her former professor Hudson Strode, with one of his former creative writing students, Mississippi regionalist writer Borden Deal, who had just published his sixth novel,
Dragon's Wine.
At the conclusion of the luncheon, Nelle received the association's literary award.