Child star Mary Badham, of Robert Mulligan’s, “To Kill A Mockingbird ” (1962) is going to try to give Hollywood another try after a 40-year hiatus. How can you forget the beautiful tomboy “Scout”? I envied the relationship she had with her father Atticus (Gregory Peck). The story is timeless, and still resonates today. We still have the ugliness this movie brought to the forefront. These are hatred, racism, and prejudices, and like Badham said in this article these have, “Just changed their clothes.” The story however, still offers hope.
In a small Alabama town circa 1932 a widowed lawyer with deep integrity tries to make a childlike world for his 6-year-old daughter, Scout, (Mary Badham) and 10-year-old son, Jem (Phillip Alford). A world free of hatred, and prejudices. Both children are extremely loved and nurtured by their widowed dad. They live a fun life, carefree, just doing what kids do at this innocent stage of life. They play jokes on an eccentric neighbor, Mrs. Dubose (Ruth White). They dream up stories about Boo Radley, (Robert Duvall) a mentally retarded neighbor that they never seen. But you might as well say they’ve seen him in their heads and believe him to be some fiend. The stories scare them as well as their friend Dill Harris, (John Megna) a little boy who visits his aunts once a year for the summer.
Innocence ends one day in this small town when a white young woman, Mayella Ewell (Collin Wilcox) is raped and a black man Tom Robinson (Brock Peters) is accused of the crime. Its the 30′s folks– Tom didn’t have a prayer. It didn’t matter that he was innocent. It’s the 30′s and when a black man is accused of rape in the south, God Himself had to come down and declare him innocent and even then I don’t know that he’d be acquitted. Atticus agrees to defend this innocent man. This is a lot to take on for a white lawyer living in the heart of the south in the 30′s. There is a heavy price to pay for this. His kids are mocked at school and must defend themselves. Atticus takes on the case anyway, he will not compromise his values because some “thugs” in white robes are terrorizing him. A memorable court scene is when Atticus demonstrates that Tom is in fact innocent and confronts Mayella about her lying. He breaks her down and makes her admit that in fact her father had beat her for making advances toward Tom. The questioning is so powerful, and her admission is heart wrenching. The all white jury returns with a guilty verdict regardless of the evidence proving otherwise.
You can just go inside Atticus’ head and see the whirlwind inside. It blew the wind out of him. He assures Tom he’ll get the verdict reversed, but Tom knows differently. He knows the system. Tom attempts to escape prison fearing for his life. He is caught and killed by a pack of savage humans, which look more like a pack of hungry and angry wolves eating a lost sheep. The vengeance does not stop there; the thugs want more blood. Hatred has no bounds. They go after Atticus. Mayella’s father, Bob (James Anderson) attacks Scout, and Jem, but Boo Radley, the kid they feared becomes their savior. He’d been secretly watching over the kids and had left gifts for them in a tree trunk. Gifts the children kept in a cigar box. Boo kills Bob.
“A don’t ask, don’t tell” moment occurs when Atticus and Sheriff Tate (Frank Overton) are questioning the killing of Ewell. They looked at the very personification of innocence, Boo and concluded that Ewell fell into his own knife and therefore there will be no trial.
The movie done in 1962 at the height of the civil rights movement was brave to bring this topic home. The book “To Kill A Mockingbird,” by Lee Harper, according to the article had been banned in schools as recently as the 80′s. According to Badham it was “considered a naughty book.” Granted the book had subject matter like rape and so on that children should not be exposed to. Badham and the other children of this film were not privy to the adult dialogue in this movie. The filmmaker didn’t think it proper and rightly so. But for the most part the story is a powerful one. It is a story of hope, love, integrity and courage. These are great attributes needed in our world today. Good luck Scout.
