Mockingbird (29 page)

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In spite of the significant changes, Nelle later hailed Foote's screenplay: “If the integrity of a film adaptation is measured by the degree to which the novelist's intent is preserved, Mr. Foote's screenplay should be studied as a classic.”
7

Director Bob Mulligan wasn't so sure. “You know what your problem is,” he told Pakula, after reading Foote's work, “too often you lose the point of the view of the children.”
8
It was true, but Foote had chosen to thrust Atticus onto center stage at the expense of the children's coming-of-age story, believing the adult character could carry drama that would appeal to moviegoers.

A still more drastic change was contemplated. Before Peck had even read the screenplay, he wanted to drop the title
To Kill a Mockingbird.
Annie Laurie Williams, who had assured Nelle that the novel's artistic integrity would be respected, was furious. “Don't believe any items you may see in the newspapers saying that Gregory Peck wants to change the title of
To Kill a Mockingbird
,” she wrote to George Stevens, managing editor at J. B. Lippincott. “He has been signed to play the part of Atticus, but has no right to say what the title of the picture will be. The change of title has been denied by Mulligan and Pakula in a column story in the
New York Times.
”
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Nevertheless, Peck was the star of the film, and had a considerable financial stake in it. Moreover, he had the support of Universal Studios in his back pocket. In ways that mattered, the film was more his than anybody else's.

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After speaking to the Reverend Polk in his church office, Peck and his wife, Veronique Passani, checked in at the ranch-style LaSalle Hotel in Monroeville. Working the hotel desk that night was Miriam Katz. Not recognizing the stranger signing the register, she quietly repeated, “Gregory P-e-c-k … Oh, Mr. Peck!” Startled, she turned to the hotel's only bellhop and mustered all the decorum she could. “‘D.J.! This is Mr. Peck. See that he gets anything he wants.'

“Peck smiled. ‘Thank you very kindly, Mrs. Katz, but I don't want any special favors.'”
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Accompanying Peck was a small production crew, sent to photograph period details, and director Bob Mulligan and his wife. But Monroeville only cared that Gregory Peck was in town. The next day, when the word spread—broadcast by the fact that the actor drove around in a convertible—a legion of dessert-bearing ladies got busy. The presence of a movie star led to some strange contretemps. Peck strolled into the Western Auto Store owned by A. B. Blass and asked for a soft drink from the cooler. When Blass presented him with a Dr. Pepper, Peck fished around in his pockets and then sheepishly admitted he didn't have any money with him. Blass gallantly replied that the drink was on him so that he could tell his grandchildren that Gregory Peck owed him six cents. Peck thanked Blass for his largesse, but next he went to the Monroe County Bank for some cash. The girl in the teller window primly informed him that she needed to see some ID. Behind her, the manager, feeling mortified, said evenly, “I think we can take Mr. Peck's check.” Finally, it was time to attend to the primary reason Peck was in town: to meet the Lees and study, as unobtrusively as possible, the gentleman he was going to play.

The Lees no longer lived on South Alabama Avenue, having moved to a brick ranch house across from the elementary school not long after the deaths of Mrs. Lee and Edwin in 1951. Alice, no doubt, had felt her father needed a small change of scene, away from painful memories. Mr. Lee was looking forward to meeting Gregory Peck, although he was feeling tired as a result of a mild heart attack. He'd never met a film star. For that matter, he'd never seen Gregory Peck in a movie. The two men sat in the living room getting to know each other, while Nelle and Alice shooed away neighbors trying to peek in through the picture window. Peck got the impression that the elderly lawyer “was much amused by the invasion of these Hollywood types. He looked on us with benign amusement.” For his part, the actor found Mr. Lee “a fine old gentleman of eighty-two, and truly sophisticated although he had never traveled farther than a few miles from that small Southern town.”
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They got along together well.

After an hour or so of conversation, Nelle offered to take Peck on a short tour of the square with a stop-off for lunch. The weather was brisk and overcast, but Peck, dressed only in a lightweight suit, gamely followed Nelle, who was wearing a parka, jeans, white socks, and sneakers, around town until they arrived at the Wee Diner.

The Wee Diner was built from two Montgomery buses joined at a forty-five-degree angle, creating a triangular courtyard effect. The intersection served as the entrance. To rustle up customers, owner Frank Meigs put a chopped onion on the grill and turned on the exhaust fan, a welcome smell to Lee and Peck on such a chilly January day. They slid into one of the booths and ordered.

Then, suddenly, through the door came Wanda Biggs, the official hostess for the Welcome Wagon. She had been tracking them all over town, she said, out of breath. On behalf of the Chamber of Commerce, she presented Gregory Peck with a basket of gifts and coupons for newcomers. “He was as polite and kind a man as I had ever met,” Biggs later told everyone. “He asked if I would mind taking [the basket] to his wife across the street at the hotel. That he would like for me to meet her. I did and found her to be equally as warm and friendly. They were just our kind of folks.”
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Nelle and Peck's final stop after the Wee Diner was the home of a local resident. The production crew had arranged to meet them there because they wanted to photograph what servants' quarters looked like in a grand old home. While flashbulbs popped, Peck made small talk with the owner about his spacious kitchen, including how he'd never had a real down-home southern meal, being from California.

Probably as a result of that remark, by seven thirty that evening, the lobby of the LaSalle Hotel was jammed with not only dessert-bearing ladies but also other well-wishers bringing covered dishes. Peck left a message at the front desk expressing his thanks and asked that the items be left for him to pick up. Not to be denied, teenager Martha Jones and a friend pushed through to the receptionist and asked which room Mr. and Mrs. Peck were staying in. They were informed huffily that the Pecks were not in at present. The two girls got in their car and drove around town on a scavenger hunt until they spotted Nelle's car outside the Monroe Motor Court. They went door by door, listening. Finally, hearing voices, they knocked, and were confronted by Nelle opening the door, who was obviously not amused.

“Martha Louise Jones, what are you doing here?”

“I was just hoping I could get Mr. Peck's autograph.”

Behind Nelle in the room, intrepid Martha could see Peck, Mr. Lee, and Peck's wife, Veronique.

“Well, we're busy now. You just go on home.”

“Hold on, Nelle,” Peck said. “I'll be glad to give the young ladies my autograph.” Star-struck, the two adolescents offered Peck damp scraps of paper. He signed both and then bid the girls a gracious good night.
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The following morning, the Pecks didn't venture outside the LaSalle Hotel lest they send the town into a second uproar. From the Wee Diner, Frank Meigs sent over breakfast on trays, and later the star sent him a handwritten note expressing his gratitude.

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Production on the film was scheduled to begin in early February in Hollywood, and Nelle had been invited to attend. But she had also promised Truman that she would go with him to Kansas again after Christmas. So the middle of January—two weeks after Peck had left Monroeville—found her back in Garden City, Kansas, once again as Capote's “assistant researchist,” though by now her profile in the town was higher than his. “It was pretty dicey for Nelle, as she was known by local people who had come to like her very much,” said Dolores Hope.

She was always very protective of Capote and made sure the limelight was on him most of the time. She was quick to divert mention of the Pulitzer prize back to Capote. She also gave him credit for his help and encouragement. My impression of the Pulitzer time is that people who had come to know Truman here in Kansas just had a gut feeling that he would have his nose out of joint about it. Nelle knew him so well and she was anything but an attention-getter herself. In fact, she shunned it. She was the exact opposite of Truman, being more interested in others than she was in herself.
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As gifts for her Kansas friends, she brought an armload of autographed copies of
To Kill a Mockingbird.
Her stay was necessarily brief, however, because filming was slated to begin in a few weeks. (Her notes for Truman don't mention this second trip to Kansas, or a third one she made a year later. But indications are that she forged a closer relationship with Perry Smith and Dick Hickock while they were on death row because Truman let them know to expect a letter from her now and then.) Consequently, at the end of the first week of February, she boarded the Super Chief in Garden City, having finished helping Truman, and continued on to Los Angeles. Total sales of her book, hardback and paperback, were approaching 4.5 million. In an unusual move at the time for a publisher, J. B. Lippincott took out eighteen radio ads in major markets to announce that production was beginning on
To Kill a Mockingbird,
starring Gregory Peck.

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Casting had been completed just in the nick of time, with some of the roles being settled on just weeks before shooting began. Pakula and Mulligan preferred faces audiences wouldn't recognize “to retain the sense of discovery, which is so important in the novel,” Pakula said.
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They turned to character actors from films, Broadway professionals—unfamiliar then to most film-going audiences—and, for the roles of the children, complete unknowns.

Frank Overton, as Sheriff Heck Tate; Paul Fix, as the judge; Richard Hale, as Mr. Nathan Radley; and Crahan Denton as Walter Cunningham, Sr.—all four were fixtures in Westerns, playing ordinary folk, and could be depended on to render solid performances. Alice Ghostley, who played Dill's aunt Stephanie Crawford; William Windom, who became prosecutor Horace Gilmer; Estelle Evans, who transformed herself into the Finches' housekeeper, Calpurnia; and Rosemary Murphy, who took the role of Miss Maudie Atkinson—all were stage and Broadway performers. Newcomers to film were Collin Wilcox Paxton as Mayella Violet Ewell, and Robert Duvall as Boo Radley, who had impressed Horton Foote when he gave a first-rate performance in Foote's drama
The Midnight Caller
at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. To prepare for the role of Boo Radley, Duvall stayed out of the sun for six weeks and dyed his hair blond, thinking it would give him an angelic look.

The competition for the role of Tom Robinson was down to two actors: Brock Peters and James Earl Jones. Peters badly wanted the part because his career seemed to be slipping into a rut of playing heavies and villains. “Well, of course, I was scared out of my wits,” he remembered. “I didn't know how to present myself in order to get this coveted prize. I went into the meeting—it was in a building at Park Avenue and 57th Street and I tried not to appear frightened but I wanted to look cool and calm and still suggest the character of Tom Robinson, and do that dressed in a suit.”
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He got the part, and a few days before filming began, Peck called to congratulate him. Peters was so surprised, he didn't know what to say at first. “I worked over the years in many, many productions, but no one ever again called me to welcome me aboard, except perhaps the director and the producer, but not my fellow actor-to-be.”
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The part of Bob Ewell, the impoverished white man who accuses Tom Robinson of having raped his daughter, was still open when actor James Anderson met with Mulligan. Raised in Alabama, Anderson told Mulligan with conviction, “I know this man.” Mulligan believed he did, but he also had to confront Anderson with his reputation for drinking, fighting, and not showing up on sets. He told Anderson to come back in three days (probably to see whether he would be on time and sober). When Anderson arrived, Mulligan laid it on the line. “I want you to be in this movie but you and I are going to have to have a clear understanding. And you're going to have to take my hand and shake it. If you do, you have to promise me that you will be sober, that you will be on time, that you will not cause trouble for me or for anyone. And that you will do honor to this script. He said, ‘I understand.' He put out his hand and shook mine, and he kept his word. Boy, did he know that man.”
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The role of Jem went to thirteen-year-old Philip Alford, a child with practically no acting experience who auditioned only because his parents promised him a day off from school. Hundreds of children competed for the roles of the Finch children, including nine-year-old Mary Badham, who was selected for the part of Scout. A year later, she appeared in a
Twilight Zone
episode. She was feisty and frank, a good match for her character. When a reporter commented, “You're a very little girl for your age,” she replied, “You'd be little, too, if you drank as much coffee as I do.”
19
By coincidence, Alford and Badham were Birmingham natives who lived four blocks apart. Alford's parents were, however, working-class people, while Badham's could afford a black nanny to help raise her. The part of the Finches' next-door neighbor Dill went to nine-year-old John Megna, brother of actress Connie Stevens, who had recently appeared in the Broadway hit
All the Way Home,
based on James Agee's Pulitzer Prize–winning novel,
A Death in the Family.
“John looked up to me like a big brother,” Alford said, and the two boys formed a childish pact to hate Badham.
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(The threesome banded together when they were bored, however. One day, Alan Pakula was handed a note from studio security saying that they must stop fishing in the pond on a back lot. It was a freshwater reservoir and placed off-limits by the California Fish and Game Commission.)