9. MOCKINGBIRD TAKES OFF

    1. Truman Capote, letter to David O. Selznick and Jennifer Jones, early June 1960, in Clarke, Too Brief, 284.

    2. John Beechcroft, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Literary Guild Book Club Magazine, August 1960, 1–2.

    3. Newquist, Counterpoint, 405.

    4. “Traffic Ticket Report,” Saturday Review, 6 August 1960.

    5. “Mocking Bird Call,” Newsweek, 9 January 1961, 83.

    6. Michael Stillman, “19th Century Shop Offers Selections from New York Antiques Show,” Americana Exchange, November 2004.

    7. Williams papers, undated news release, early January 1960, box 86.

    8. Frances Nettles, “Addenda,” Monroe Journal, 16 June 1960, n.p.

    9. Glendy Culligan, “Listen to That Mockingbird,” The Washington Post, 3 July 1960, E6. It was also about this time that the legend began, erroneously, that Harper Lee was related to General Robert E. Lee. In an undated letter, Williams wrote to her, “Yesterday we grabbed a copy of Newsweek off the stands and raced through the pages until we saw your smiling face then read what we think is a good piece. As a relative of General Lee, we must remember to bow a little lower next time we see you.”

  10. Williams papers, Williams to Truman Capote, 3 August 1960, box 41.

  11. Alden Todd, interview with author, 20 November 2004.

  12. R. A. Dave, “To Kill a Mockingbird: Harper Lee’s Tragic Vision,” Indian Studies in American Fiction (Calcutta: The MacMillan Company of India Limited, 1974), 311–23.

  13. Francine Prose, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read: How American High School Students Learn to Loathe Literature,” Harper’s Magazine, September 1999. Reviewers in 1960 didn’t touch on the significance of Scout’s wanting to be treated like a boy—like an equal. “Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that’s why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with.”

  14. Minor anachronisms in the story, for those interested: the Works Progress Administration did not exist until 1935, but it’s mentioned in the novel’s fourth chapter, which is set in 1933. Eleanor Roosevelt violated segregation law in 1938 by sitting with black audience members at the Southern Conference on Human Welfare in Birmingham, but the episode angers Mrs. Merriweather during the fall of 1935. “I think that woman, that Mrs. Roosevelt’s lost her mind—just plain lost her mind coming down to Birmingham and tryin’ to sit with ’em.”

  15. Chura, “Prolepsis and Anachronism.” Parallels worth noting that Chura points out: Emmett Till was killed on August 28, 1955, and his body found on August 31; Tom Robinson’s death took place when “August was on the brink of September.” Attorney Gerald Chatham, the prosecutor in the Till case, died a year later. Hearing the news that Robinson had been killed, Alexandra reacts angrily to the town’s seeming disregard for her brother’s health: “I just want to know when this will ever end.… It tears him to pieces … it tears him to pieces.… They’re perfectly willing to let him wreck his health doing what they’re afraid to do.” Emmett Till’s mother collapsed when she saw her son’s body; Helen Robinson, informed that Tom is dead, “just fell down in the dirt. Just fell down in the dirt, like a giant with a big foot just came along and stepped on her.”

  16. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947).

  17. Margaret Hunt Gram, “Matters of State: American Literature in the Civil Rights Era.” PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2013. The point needs to be raised, however, that Radley might not have been arrested, but Tom Robinson was, because Boo is white.

  18. Capote, letter to Alvin and Marie Dewey, 10 October 1960, in Clarke, Too Brief, 299.

  19. “Mocking Bird Call,” Newsweek, 9 January 1961, 83.

  20. Williams papers, W. D. Weinman to Harper Lee, 8 August 1965, box 86. Responses like these to the novel were to be expected. In 1949, Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote a song called ‘You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught’ for their hit show South Pacific, in which a soldier sings: ‘You’ve got to be taught to be afraid / Of people whose eyes are oddly made, / And people whose skin is a different shade, / You’ve got to be carefully taught.’ When the show toured the American South, demands were made that the song be cut; Rodgers and Hammerstein flatly refused.

  21. Hudson Strode papers, letter to Nelle Harper Lee, 24 January 1961, Hoole Library, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, box 1121, folder 158.

  22. Wayne Greenhaw, interview with author, 20 March 2004.

  23. Capote, letter to Andrew Lyndon, 6 September 1960, in Clarke, Too Brief, 291.

  24. “Mocking Bird Call,” 83.

  25. Williams papers, unsigned letter to Harper Lee from secretary in Williams’s office, 7 January 1961, box 86.

  26. Dannye Romine Powell, “A Visit with Capote’s Aunt, Uncle,” Charlotte Observer, 30 May 2006, n.p.

  27. Charles Ray Skinner, interview with author, 22 December 2002.

  28. Joel P. Smith, “‘Mockingbird’ Author Looking for Characters?,” Eufaula (Alabama) Tribune, 8 September 1960, 4.

  29. Williams papers, letter to Harper Lee, and her reply, 5 January 1961, box 86.

  30. Nelle Harper Lee to Leo R. Roberts, January 1960, Archives and Information Center, Houghton Library, Huntingdon Collection, Montgomery, AL.

  31. Max York, “Throngs Greet Monroe Writer,” Montgomery Advertiser, 13 September 1960, 3A.

  32. Hendrix, “Author’s Father Proud of ‘Mockingbird’ Fame.” Nelle’s sister Louise was unimpressed by all the hoopla surrounding her sister’s novel and didn’t think much of Nelle’s talent, either. She told her son’s teacher that To Kill a Mockingbird was just “ridiculous.” Emma Foy, interview with author, 5 July 2003.

  33. Journal of the 1964 General Conference of the Methodist Church (Nashville, TN: Methodist Publishing House, 1964), 1272.

  34. Reverend Thomas Lane Butts, remarks at “Maud McLure Kelly Award Luncheon” (award given to Alice Lee, Mobile, AL, 18 July 2003).

  35. Ibid.

  36. Hendrix, “Author’s Father Proud of ‘Mockingbird’ Fame.”

  37. Williams papers, Robert P. Richards to Williams, 8 November 1960, box 86.

  38. Frances Kiernan, “No Apologies Necessary,” The Atlantic Monthly, April 2001.

  39. Williams to Nelle and Alice Lee, 28 January 1961, Williams papers, box 86.

  40. Williams to Alan Pakula, 16 November 1960, Williams papers, box 86.

  41. Williams to “Boaty” Boatwright, 25 June 1962, Williams papers, box 86.

  42. Williams to George Stevens, with note attached from Harper Lee, 8 August 1960, Williams papers, box 86.

  43. Maurice Crain to Alice Lee, 22 March 1961, Williams papers, box 86.

  44. Maurice Crain to Fred and Tommie Gipson, 7 April 1961, Fred Gipson papers, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, box 18, folder 4.

  45. Murray Schumach, “Prize for Novel Elates Film Pair,” The New York Times, 19 May 1961, 26.

  46. “‘Luckiest Person in the World,’ Says Pulitzer Winner,” Birmingham News, 2 May 1961, n.p.

  47. “State Pulitzer Prize Winner Too Busy to Write,” Dothan (Alabama) Eagle, 2 May 1961, n.p.

  48. Strode papers, box 1211, folder 158.

  49. “Luckiest Person,” n.p.

  50. Capote to Alvin and Marie Dewey, 22 May 1961, in Clarke, Too Brief, 317.

  51. Nelle Lee to Helen Waterman, 20 November 1961, Caldwell Delaney papers, University of South Alabama Archives, Mobile, AL.

  52. Plimpton, Capote, 14.

  53. “Senate Lauds Pulitzer Winner,” Montgomery Advertiser, 20 May 1961, 7A.

  54. James B. McMillan, review of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Alabama Review, July 1961, 233.

  55. Note to Harper Lee, 12 July 1961, Williams papers, box 86.

  56. “Luckiest Person,” n.p.

10. “OH, MR. PECK!”

    1. Reed Polk, letter to author, 10 July 2003.

    2. Scott McGee, Kerryn Sherrod, and Jeff Stafford, “To Kill a Mockingbird: The Essentials,” Turner Classic Movies, www.turnerclassicmovies.com.

    3. Deitch, “Novelist of the South,” 6.

    4. Charles S. Watson, Horton Foote: A Literary Biography (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), 114. Miss Lee didn’t quite feel “indifference,” as she claimed. In a letter to Helen Waterman, a friend in Mobile, dated November 20, 1961, Lee wrote: “Please forgive the long silence from Monroeville. I had to do some things that had to be done as soon as I returned—the most pressing task was doctoring the movie script” (Caldwell Delaney papers, University of South Alabama).

    5. Don Noble, Bookmark: Interview with Horton Foote, videocassette, Alabama Center for Public Television, Tuscaloosa, AL, 27 August 1998.

    6. To Kill a Mockingbird: Then and Now, videocassette, Prince William County Public Schools, Manassas, VA, 25 April 1997.

    7. M. Jerry Weiss, Photoplay Guide: “To Kill a Mockingbird,” NCTE Studies in the Mass Media (Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1963), 18.

    8. To Kill a Mockingbird (commentary section), Universal City, CA: Universal Home Video, 1998, compact disc.

    9. Williams papers, Williams to George Stevens, 23 May 1961, box 86.

  10. Jones, “Stand Up, Monroeville, Gregory Peck Is Passin’,” Happenings, vol. 2, 159–60.

  11. Gary Fishgall, Gregory Peck: A Biography (New York: Scribner, 2002), 233.

  12. Jones, “Stand Up,” Happenings, vol. 2, 160.

  13. Ibid., 160–61.

  14. Dolores Hope, e-mail to author, 15 October 2002. “My impression of the Pulitzer time is that people who had come to know Truman here in Kansas just had a gut feeling that Truman would have his nose out of joint about it. He always made sure he was the center of attention at any gathering here that I know of. Nelle knew him so well and she was anything but an attention getter herself. In fact, she shunned it. She would change the subject as quickly as she could when people exclaimed about her book and the prize. She was the exact opposite of Truman, being more interested in others than she was in herself.”

  15. Thomas McDonald, “Bird in Hand,” The New York Times, 6 May 1962, 149.

  16. Jane Kansas, “To Kill a Mockingbird and Harper Lee: Why the Site?,” mockingbird.chebucto.org/why.html.

  17. “Brock Peters, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ Actor, Dies at 78,” USA Today, 23 August 2005.

  18. To Kill a Mockingbird (commentary section), compact disc.

  19. Barbara Vancheri, “Author Lauded ‘Mockingbird’ as a ‘Moving’ Film,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 20 February 2003.

  20. Philip Alford, interview with author, 21 May 2004.

  21. Murray Schumach, “Film Crew Saves $75,000 on Shacks,” The New York Times, 19 January 1962, 26.

  22. Jane Kansas, “To Kill a Mockingbird and Harper Lee: The Film,” mockingbird.chebucto.org/film.html. Lee’s remark about the set is from Bob Thomas, “Harper Lee Returns Visit, Sees Movie Sets, Hollywood,” Monroe Journal, 4 May 1961.

  23. Newquist, Counterpoint, 406.

  24. Gipson papers, Tommie Gipson to Maurice Crain, 19 February 1962, box 18, folder 4.

  25. Gipson papers, Maurice Crain to Tommie Gipson, 20 February 1962, box 18, folder 4.

  26. Kansas, “To Kill a Mockingbird and Harper Lee: The Film.”

  27. Philip Alford, interview with author, 21 May 2004.

  28. Ibid.

  29. Vernon Hendrix, “Firm Gives Books to Monroe County,” Montgomery Advertiser, 23 December 1962, n.p.

  30. E. L. H., Jr., “The Obvious Is All Around Us,” Birmingham News, 22 April 1962, n.p.

  31. Capote, letter to Alvin and Marie Dewey, 5 May 1962, in Clarke, Too Brief, 348.

  32. Joy Hafner-Bailey, interview with author, 21 December 2005.

  33. Williams papers, Harold Hayes, Esquire editor, to Nelle Harper Lee (regarding “Dress Rehearsal,” submitted by Lee), 27 October 1961, box 86.

  34. Fishgall, Gregory Peck, 236.

  35. Ibid.

  36. Watson, Horton Foote, 143.

  37. Fishgall, Gregory Peck, 236.

  38. To Kill a Mockingbird (commentary section), compact disc.

  39. Capote, letter to Alvin and Marie Dewey, 16 August 1962, in Clarke, Too Brief, 361.

  40. Strode papers, Elise Sanguinetti to Hudson Strode, box 1211, folder 161.