Moment to Moment

The fact is, I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives - the time one climbed the Parthenon at sunrise, the summer night one met a lonely girl in Central Park…I, too, once met a girl in Central Park, but it is not much to remember. What I remember is the time John Wayne killed three men with a carbine as he was falling to the dusty street in "Stagecoach" and the time the kitten found Orson Welles in the doorway in "The Third Man."
from the 1961 novel The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

"My name is John Ford. I make westerns." That’s how the famed director (whose half-century career included more than 140 films, including the above-mentioned "Stagecoach") introduced himself at a controversial Directors Guild of America meeting in the midst of the Red Scare of the 1950s.

Fifty-five years after its release, John Ford’s "The Searchers" (1956) stands as arguably one of the best westerns ever made. A visually spectacular paean to the director’s beloved sandstone buttes of Monument Valley (a Navajo Nation park on the border of Arizona and Utah to which Ford had exclusive location rights for years), "The Searchers" could very well be, as The New York Times critic Roger Greenspun reckoned in 1973, the greatest American movie of all time, were it not for a gaping flaw or two. Particularly unsettling are a pair of "outdoor" sequences which Ford, in the words of The New York Times reviewer Bosley Crowther, "permitted…to be set in the obviously synthetic surroundings of the studio stage." Crowther wrote, "Mr. Ford’s scenic stuff, shot…in the expanse of Monument Valley that he loves, has his customary beauty and grandeur, but some of those campfire scenes could have been shot in a sporting-goods store window. That isn’t like Mr. Ford."

In his 1982 book Western Films, Brian Garfield, a novelist who wrote the original Death Wish, noted, "In essence ‘The Searchers’ tells the straightforward story of a grim ordeal: the relentless five-year hunt by two Texans for a young girl abducted by a Comanche chief…it’s too rich to be cheated by any perfunctory summary."

The two "Texicans" are Ethan Edwards (John Wayne), a Confederate veteran, suspected outlaw and the uncle of the kidnapped girl, Debbie (Natalie Wood), and Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), Ethan’s adopted nephew, a one-eighth Cherokee youth whose parents were killed in a Comanche massacre.

As portrayed in an unbridled performance of steely hatred by Wayne, Ethan Edwards "is perhaps (John) Ford’s most ambiguous character," according to J.A. Place, author of The Western Films of John Ford (1974) . "In him are the qualities that make a Western hero - strength, individualism, self-sufficiency, leadership, authority. He is linked to the small white community by ties of kinship, property, loyalty and duty, but he is never part of that community." Place noted, "There is more wildness and savagery in Ethan than in other men who must fight to protect their homes and families. From the very beginning of the journey…he is more concerned with vengeance than rescuing," deadly intent on killing his own niece, whom he is convinced has been defiled by her captors. It is later revealed that Debbie has indeed become one of Scar’s wives. By killing the once-pure Debbie, not Scar, Ethan is convinced that he can end his family’s disgrace.


"Wayne’s performance as the bigoted…Ethan Edwards," wrote Brian Garfield, "a man whose relentlessness is fueled by rage, is one of the finest sustained characterizations I’ve seen on film. It established that Wayne could be a fine actor…when he had proper direction."

Not at all subtly, the Comanche chief, Scar (a name of significance for both antagonists), is presented as Ethan’s alter ego. Danny Peary, in his 1981 book Cult Movies, wrote, "Ethan’s family was killed by Indians. Scar’s sons were killed by whites…both men are vengeance-bent, each determined to make the other’s race pay. They are racists but have learned each other’s tongues - which surprises, impresses, and annoys them both ("You speak good American for a Comanch, someone teach ya?" / "You speak good Comanche, someone teach?"). Both men are rejected by white society and are considered outlaws. Both are nomads…The only difference…is that Ethan pets a dog and Scar throws a rock at one."

"Wayne is not part of the Westward March of Civilization," Phil Hardy noted in 1984’s The Encyclopedia of Western Movies, "rather, like (Scar), he is an embodiment of the primitive forces that must be squashed before the foundations of civilization can be properly laid and the desert transformed into a garden."


A moment of recognition for veteran character actor Henry Brandon, who held his own opposite the imposing presence of John Wayne in an under-appreciated performance as the proud Comanche warlord Scar. Brandon, born Heinrich von Kleinbach in Berlin, made his first big-screen splash as the villainous Silas Barnaby (below) in Laurel and Hardy’s classic 1934 comedy "Babes in Toyland" (also known as "March of the Wooden Soldiers").

Thereafter typecast as the bad guy - Native American, Arabian, Oriental, French, German - Brandon finally enjoyed a lead role as a Siberian trapper in the 1974 family wilderness adventure "When the North Wind Blows." Director John Carpenter ("Halloween") gave Brandon, who died in 1990, a welcome cameo as the ill-fated Officer Chaney (below) in his 1976 cult classic "Assault on Precinct 13."

The Moment: The illuminating moment in "The Searchers," that singular moment "so truthful and so profound," as delineated by writer William Bayer in the book Breaking Through, Selling Out, Dropping Dead and Other Notes on Filmmaking, occurs after the death of Scar, significantly not by Ethan’s hand but by Martin’s. Ethan does momentarily purge himself of his savage instincts in a final act of scalping the dead warrior, but moments later seems dead-set on literally riding his niece down to kill her. At the last second, he sweeps her up into his arms and after staring intently into her eyes, utters the unforgettable line, "Let’s go home, Debbie." It is a breathtaking get-out-the-handkerchiefs moment.

Before he started filming "The Searchers," John Ford reportedly announced, "I should like to do a tragedy, the most serious in the world, that turned into the ridiculous." He would later describe the movie as "the tragedy of a loner…(who) could never really be a part of the family."

Although Ethan lovingly embraces what he hated for so long, even ultimately accepting his eighth-breed nephew, Martin, as family, he, in the words of The Western Films of John Ford author J.A. Place, "never comes to terms with his own essence…If such a resolution of interior forces were possible, Ethan could enter the house in the last scene with the rest of his family." As the door shuts on Ethan at the end of the movie, he is depicted just as he was when the door opened on him at the beginning - alone and deeply scarred. Place noted, "He is larger than life and the demons that pursue him cannot be satisfied through cleansing ritual or social rites." Borrowing dialogue from the film, Place wrote, "Ethan is bound to ‘wander forever between the winds.’"

Early in his career, director Sam Peckinpah observed that "most of my work has been concerned one way or the other with outsiders, losers, loners, misfits, rounders - individuals looking for something besides security," a statement as reflective of the contentious filmmaker himself as the conflicted protagonists he brought to life on the screen in "The Deadly Companions" (1961), "Ride the High Country" (1962), "Major Dundee" (1965), but nowhere as evident as in his 1969 masterpiece, "The Wild Bunch." Here, Sam Peckinpah was in total control of his feverish genius, unable to do wrong, operating at the top of his game.

The year 1969 was itself a tumultuous period for motion pictures, fluctuating between pulp like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "Where Eagles Dare," "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice," "True Grit" and "On Her Majesty’s Secret Service," and provocative eye-openers the likes of "Midnight Cowboy," "Easy Rider," "They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?" and "Z." Somewhere in between lies the artistry and appeal of "The Wild Bunch."

The film was a landmark of controversy for its "lengthy depictions of bloodletting," in the words of author Brian Garfield in Western Films, "all of which contain graceful slow-motion intercuts, rendering the violence rhythmic and quite beautiful." The New York Times critic Vincent Canby remarked, "This sort of choreographed brutality is repeated to excess, but in excess, there is a point to a film in which realism would be unbearable. ‘The Wild Bunch’ takes the basic element of the Western movie myth, which once defined a simple, morally comprehensible world, and by bending them turns them into symbols of futility and aimless corruption."

Like most of Peckinpah’s films, "The Wild Bunch" was mutilated by the studio to suit their needs. None of the deletions was an especially violent scene, but cuts were made to bring the film’s running time down to two hours, to enable theaters to turn more of a profit from multiple showings, and to establish the studio’s power over the increasingly difficult director.

"The Wild Bunch" concerns a band of aging outlaws in 1913 who, after a disastrously botched bank robbery in a small southern Texas town, are pursued by a former comrade coerced into the employ of a ruthless railroad boss. Fleeing south of the border, the surviving bandits reluctantly help a corrupt, perpetually drunken Mexican general named Mapache rob a U.S. Army munitions train, ostensibly to help fight Pancho Villa’s revolutionary forces.

The remnants of the Bunch, their number halved in the aforementioned bloody ambush in Texas, struggle to live by a code of honor out of place in the burgeoning 20th century. "We’re gonna stick together!" the outlaw leader, Pike Bishop, barks. "Just like it used to be! When you side with a man, you stay with him! And if you can’t do that, you’re like some animal! You’re finished! We’re finished! All of us!" Their anachronistic sense of principles is challenged when the youngest member of the Bunch, an impassioned Mexican romantically named Angel - revealed to be a revolutionary - is captured and tortured by General Mapache.

Lee Marvin, a friend of Sam Peckinpah’s who reportedly had a hand in the original concept for "The Wild Bunch," initially voiced enthusiasm to play Pike Bishop, but his agent persuaded the rough-hewn actor that he needed to broaden his image with a starring role instead in the over-the-top musical-comedy "Paint Your Wagon," costarring Clint Eastwood.

Burt Lancaster, James Stewart, Charlton Heston, Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum and Richard Boone were all sent copies of the script for consideration, but from the onset, Peckinpah was convinced that William Holden was the perfect choice for the role, stating that Pike Bishop was what "Holden is today, fifty, wrinkled, no longer the glamor boy."

"Throughout the fifties," according to Paul Seydor, author of Peckinpah The Western Films: A Reconsideration (1999), "in films like ‘The Horse Soldiers,’ ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai,’ ‘Picnic,’ ‘Sunset Boulevard,’ and ‘Stalag 17’ (the last two directed by Billy Wilder, another director Peckinpah admired), Holden played characters who are loners, outsiders, cynics, skeptics, misfits, compromised and compromising men who turn out at the very end of their lives to be reluctant, sometimes accidental idealists, men who often wind up dying for that residue of integrity they are surprised to discover they still possess."

In his 1994 biography of Sam Peckinpah, If They Move…Kill ‘Em (the first spoken line of dialogue in "The Wild Bunch"), author David Weddle commented on Holden, "Now fifty years old, the postwar ‘Golden Boy’ star of ‘Sunset Boulevard,’ ‘Born Yesterday’ and ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’ had seen better days. His most recent films…had flopped at the box office. Years of heavy drinking had thickened his Adonis-like physique, curved the weary shoulders inward and fractured the finely chiseled face. He still had a frayed-at-the-cuffs charisma, but the self-possessed cynicism of his early films had given way to a tired melancholy."


Weddle noted, "As shooting progressed, Holden began, more and more, to resemble Peckinpah. It wasn’t just the thin mustache that Sam had insisted he wear," mirroring the director’s onetime whiskers. During production, film editor Lou Lombardo pulled Holden aside to tell him, "I got you figured, you’re doing Sam." According to Lombardo, Holden (above, with Peckinpah) was running the onscreen Bunch just like Peckinpah was running the movie. "His gestures," Lombardo recalled, "his tone of voice, it was Sam." Weddle wrote, "Holden had begun to take on the vocal qualities and mannerisms of his director…Sam’s children got chills when they first saw some of the completed sequences."

Dubbing it a masterpiece, Roger Ebert commented in 2002, "I felt then and now that ‘The Wild Bunch’ is one of the great defining moments of modern movies." The New York Times’ Vincent Canby described "The Wild Bunch" as "very beautiful and the first truly interesting American-made western in years." He pointed out, "The ideals of masculine comradeship are exaggerated and transformed into neuroses."

"We’ve got to start thinking beyond our guns," Holden’s Pike Bishop utters early on, "those days are closing fast." Beside a trail campfire, he tells his steadfast pal Dutch (a remarkably understated performance by Ernest Borgnine), "I’d like to make one good score and back off," in response to which Dutch incredulously says, "Back off to what?"

The Moment: In his penultimate scene in "The Wild Bunch," in a dusty room with a very young prostitute (the sole female roles of note in this film are whores), whose infant lies whimpering in a nearby cradle, Holden empties a bottle, and his expression tightens as "an intolerable realization takes hold," according to Peckinpah biographer David Weddle, "the spiritual bankruptcy of his existence, all the failures, the love that might have been but now will never be. The realization that this is the end of the road, that there is no place else to go…except back for Angel."

"In that squalid room where a strange woman and her baby mock by their very existence every excuse and deceit by which he has tried to evade or justify his past," writer Paul Seydor noted, "Pike makes a discovery that he is quite unprepared for and that comes too late for payment by any price less dear than his life…" Pike’s decision to reclaim the captured Angel, according to Seydor, "represents his decision to become a human being…"

After tossing the empty bottle aside, Pike Bishop makes way to an adjoining room where fellow outlaws the notorious Gorch brothers Lyle (Warren Oates) and Tector (Ben Johnson) lull in the drunken doldrums with a shared whore. As best he can, bleary-eyed Lyle wavers in front of Pike.


"Let’s go," Pike utters. Lyle (above) squints back thickly, then, in a flash of clearheaded realization, his face visibly emerging from the fog of booze, simply says, "Why not?" Outside, seated on the ground, whittling a stick of wood while the Federales torture Angel, Dutch (Borgnine) needs only to meet Pike’s steely gaze and, with a knowing, gap-toothed grin and laugh, rises to join his comrades.

According to The Guinness Book of Movie Facts & Feats (1988), "The most hackneyed line in movie scripts is, "Let’s get out of here," a phrase which reportedly popped up in 84 percent of American films between 1938 and 1974. In "The Wild Bunch," the phrase, "Let’s go!" is elevated to something like a mantra for the gang of outlaws. As Pike Bishop, William Holden noticeably repeats the command five times, while his counterpart, Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), the former Bunch member leading the pursuing posse, utters the same order at least three times.



When Pike says that final "Let’s go," "everybody knows what he means," Roger Ebert noted, "and they walk out and begin the suicidal showdown…" Vincent Canby commented, "A feeling of genuine compassion prompts the climactic massacre that some…are calling, not without reason, ‘the blood ballet.’"

With the exception of the remarkable, and equally controversial "Straw Dogs" (the 1971 original starring Dustin Hoffman), everything Sam Peckinpah did after "The Wild Bunch" was disappointing, occasionally displaying flashes of his former genius but more often than not, self-indulgent tedium.

Peckinpah once described "The Wild Bunch" as a simple adventure story "about men who walk together, but in desperation." William Holden continued to corner the market on seen-it-all world-weariness, from his Oscar-nominated role in "Network" to dialing-it-in hack work in the Irwin Allen disaster flicks "The Towering Inferno" and "When Time Ran Out," to his final performance as a cynical Hollywood director in director Blake Edwards’ dark comedy "S.O.B."


In November 1981, Holden, alone and intoxicated in his Santa Monica apartment, slipped on an area rug, gashed his forehead on a bedside table and bled to death. He was 63. Director Billy Wilder later remarked, "If someone had said to me, ‘William Holden’s dead,’ I would have assumed that he had been gored by a water buffalo in Kenya, that he had died in a plane crash while approaching Hong Kong, that a crazed woman had shot him and he drowned in a swimming pool. But to be killed by a bottle of vodka and a night table - what a lousy fadeout for a great guy."

After leaving fledgling actor Kevin Costner on the cutting-room floor in 1983’s "The Big Chill" (as the suicide victim whose funeral precipitates an eventful reunion of a clutch of self-important yuppies), writer-director Lawrence Kasdan, whether as an apology or not, provided Costner with a breakout, scene-stealing role as the reckless outlaw-wannabe Jake in 1985’s "Silverado," Kasdan’s affectionate, star-studded, thunderous homage to Hollywood westerns. In 1987, Costner’s status as a bona fide movie star was solidified with back-to-back leading roles in "The Untouchables" and "No Way Out," followed the next year by an acclaimed performance as onetime high school shortstop Crash Davis in "Bull Durham."

"Field of Dreams," a big-screen hit in 1989, "firmly fixed Kevin Costner’s position in the Hollywood firmament," according to James Monaco’s The Movie Guide. Costner’s crowd-pleasing role as Ray Kinsella, a hard-pressed Iowa farmer who plows over a corner of his precious cornfield to construct a baseball diamond in the wistful hope of redemption for the ghosts of onetime baseball great Shoeless Joe Jackson and the rest of the Chicago White Sox team disgraced for their part in a conspiracy to intentionally lose the 1919 World Series, conjured comparisons to Hollywood’s beloved Everyman, James Stewart. Misty-eyed movie-lovers likened Costner’s presence to Stewart’s performances in director Frank Capra’s "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and "It’s a Wonderful Life."

At one time, Costner himself named Stewart as a major influence on his work and mentioned a particular fondness for the five westerns Stewart made with director Anthony Mann in the 1950s, including "Winchester ‘73" and "Bend of the River." Unfortunately, in the wake of "Field’s" popularity, Costner’s illusion of self-importance led to the self-destructive hubris of "Dances With Wolves," "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," "JFK," "Wyatt Earp," "Waterworld" and "The Postman."

The Moment: OK, if there was ever a guy version of a chick flick, "Field of Dreams" earns singular merit for its ability to wring audible sobs from unashamed male viewers, especially in the evocative moment when Ray Kinsella finally reconciles with his long-departed father by reluctantly calling out, "Hey…Dad?…" With a choke in his throat that speaks volumes, Kevin Costner continues, "You wanna have a catch?" One heart-wrenching moment later, Ray’s father quietly utters, "I’d like that," and every son of a father in the audience subtly searches for a popcorn napkin to use as a handkerchief.


The original director of the 1960 thinking man’s sword-and-sandal epic, "Spartacus," was Anthony Mann, a filmmaker who made the curious transition from a series of adult westerns in the 1950s starring James Stewart ("Winchester ’73," "Bend of the River," "The Naked Spur," "The Far Country," "The Man from Laramie") to all-star widescreen epics in the ‘60’s ("El Cid," with Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren, and "The Fall of the Roman Empire," featuring Loren, Alec Guinness, James Mason, Christopher Plummer and Omar Sharif).

Early on, Kirk Douglas, the star and producer of "Sparacus," fired Mann and hired 30-year-old Stanley Kubrick, who had previously directed Douglas in "Paths of Glory" (1957), a starkly pessimistic antiwar film set during World War I. Douglas, in fact, initiated the development for "Spartacus" in the wake of his disappointment over losing the starring role in 1959’s "Ben-Hur" to Charlton Heston.

Historically, Spartacus was, according to novelist-historian George MacDonald Fraser in The Hollywood History of the World (1988), "an enslaved Thracian bandit who led a revolt of gladiators at Capua (north of Naples), raised a slave army, and held Rome at defiance (some 70 years before the birth of Christ) for two years…"

Some modern interpretations perceive Spartacus as an early symbol of the Left, a personification of popular revolt against authority. Fraser stated that Spartacus, far removed from being a political theorist or an opponent of institutional slavery, "was an illiterate peasant" whose "fight for freedom was personal and natural." Fraser, who deemed him "one of the great battlefield generals," conceded that Spartacus could have, conceivably, conquered the city of Rome itself, but "his chief aim was to get himself and his followers out of Italy…a rebel he was, but not a revolutionary." Fraser noted, "The film makes the point that Sparatacus as an idea was even more dangerous than the man himself."

Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo was still blacklisted as one of the Hollywood Ten when Kirk Douglas publicly announced that Trumbo would be credited with the script. At the time, President John F. Kennedy purposely crossed union picket lines to see the movie, helping to end the blacklist. In his 1990 autobiography, The Ragman’s Son, Douglas recalled Trumbo, who had been jailed for supposed Communist ties in the 1950s, telling him, "Thanks, Kirk, for giving me back my name."

Stanley Kubrick had recently been fired as director of the western "One-Eyed Jacks" by star Marlon Brando, who took over the directing reins himself. The production of "Spartacus" was rife with conflicts between Kubrick and Trumbo. Kubrick complained that the character of Spartacus, as portrayed by Douglas, lacked faults or foibles. He was frustrated over surrendering creative control to Douglas. He didn’t have a hand in the script, any say in the casting, nor a call in the final cut.

Although the critical and commercial success of "Spartacus" established Kubrick as a major league director (the film garnered four Academy Awards, including a Best Supporting Actor nod for Peter Ustinov, the only actor to win an Oscar in a Stanley Kubrick film), he virtually disowned the film and destroyed his friendship with Douglas. Years later, Douglas referred to the director as "a talented shit."

The Moment: Following the final battle in "Spartacus," when the ragtag army of runaway gladiators and fugitive slaves are ultimately trapped between three Roman armies, the defeated rebels are asked to identify their leader, Spartacus, in exchange for leniency. Just as Kirk Douglas rises to declare his name, each slave, starting with costar Tony Curtis, as Spartacus’ closest friend Antoninus, stands and proclaims, "I am Spartacus!" As man after man exclaims, "I am Spartacus," Douglas’ stoic visage is streaked by a solitary tear.



(By all accounts, Spartacus was killed in the battle in a valley in the Campania region of Italy, and his followers were subsequently crucified by the thousands.)

A documentary on Dalton Trumbo suggested that the particular scene was an allegory of the solidarity of those filmmakers who had been accused of being Communist sympathizers during the McCarthy Era who refused to implicate others and found themselves, like Trumbo, blacklisted.

The momentous scene was mercilessly skewered in the 1979 comedy "Monty Python’s Life of Brian" when an entire hillside of crucified prisoners claim to be the pardoned title character ("I’m Brian and so’s my wife!"). Six years after Kubrick’s death, a 2005 TV commercial, containing licensed footage from the original film, featured a Roman centurion offering a brown-bag lunch with a Pepsi to "a Spartacus," followed by the sequence of men claiming to be Spartacus.

Faithfully and affectionately mirroring the 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee upon which it was based, the 1962 film "To Kill a Mockingbird" is a part-nostalgic, part-bittersweet recollection of childhood and racism in the South of the 1930s, but, above all, an unabashed valentine to a father of towering presence.

In the role of his lifetime, Gregory Peck starred as widower Atticus Finch, a moralistic lawyer and devoted father of two children (son Jem and tomboyish daughter "Scout") who defends a black man accused of raping a white girl.

As portrayed by Peck, the character of Atticus Finch was voted the top screen hero of the last 100 years by the American Film Institute. Author Harper Lee was a guest on the set when Peck performed his first scene. Noting tears in the writer’s eyes, the actor asked, "Why are you crying?" She told him it was because he reminded her so much of her father, right down to his little, round pot belly. "That’s not a pot belly," Peck responded with mock gravity, "that’s great acting."

Gregory Peck proclaimed, "I can honestly say that in twenty years of making movies, I never had a part that came close to being the real me until Atticus Finch," Harper Lee bestowed upon Peck her father’s pocket watch, which he used in the film. Peck’s grandson, Harper Peck Voll, was named after the author.

(To Kill a Mockingbird remains the only published novel by Harper Lee. She assisted her childhood friend, Truman Capote, in his research for his 1966 book In Cold Blood. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Capote was fictionalized as "Dill" Harris, depicted in the film by actor John Megna, who later quit acting to teach high school English and died from AIDS-related complications in 1995 at the age of 42.)

The evocative drama of childhood mystery and mischief, and of the family coming to terms with their own prejudices and fears is played out against the haunting backdrop of the children’s obsession with a forbidden neighborhood house, where the unseen Arthur "Boo" Radley resides, supposedly chained to a bed by his father.

The Moment: On a dark night, when Atticus’ children are attacked by the drunken, bigoted father of the girl who was allegedly raped, a mysterious figure comes to their rescue. Afterwards, in the Finch home, a timely movement of a bedroom door reveals the rescuer to be none other than the reclusive Boo Radley, played by a pale-skinned, shock-haired Robert Duvall in his motion picture debut.

In a moment of sublime honesty, Scout greets him with a simple, "Hey, Boo." The sudden blossoming of a knowing recognition and an unaffected smile on each other’s face that brightens the screen is nothing short of magical. Director Robert Mulligan would recall, "That’s what close-ups were made for," while producer Alan J. Pakula noted, "That ‘Hey, Boo’ moment was, to me, the reason for me to make this film." After Scout and Boo contentedly share the front porch swing, Atticus says, "Thank you, Arthur," humbly shaking the odd young man’s hand, "thank you for my children."

Wordless and onscreen for only a few minutes, Robert Duvall relied on the subtlest of facial quirks and body language to create the unforgettable presence of the childlike Boo Radley. Playwright Horton Foote, who had been hired to adapt the novel for the screen (and subsequently won an Oscar for his script), originally recommended Duvall for the role of Boo, recalling the actor’s performance in a 1957 production of Foote’s play, "The Midnight Caller" at New York City’s Neighborhood Playhouse. Pakula said the hiring of Duvall was "arguably one of the best pieces of casting in the history of American film, for my money."

(Horton Foote, incidentally, was a distant cousin of Shelby Foote, the historian who became a media celebrity after his appearances in Ken Burns’ documentary series "The Civil War." Their great-grandfathers were brothers. Horton Foote was the voice of Jefferson Davis on Burns’ series.)

Horton Foote and Robert Duvall became lifelong friends. Duvall would appear in three more films scripted by Foote, 1972’s "Tomorrow" (based on a short story by William Faulkner), 1991’s "Convicts" (costarring James Earl Jones) and 1983’s "Tender Mercies," for which both actor and screenwriter garnered Academy Awards. Foote once praised Duvall as "our number one actor."


Ten-year-old Mary Badham became the youngest actress Oscar-nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her ingenuous performance as Scout. (Patty Duke, only six years her senior, won for her role as teenaged Helen Keller in "The Miracle Worker.") The kid sister of director John Badham ("Saturday Night Fever"), Mary retired from professional acting at the age of 14 in 1966. She, like so many others involved with the production, remained in touch with Gregory Peck throughout his life. She always called him "Atticus."

In a televised 1999 interview, Mary Badham reflected, "There’s a lot of hope in this film. The people behind the scenes who made this were very caring people…they care about injustice, they care about the right for people to be who they are and who they need to be." She said, "Everyone was so loving about the whole thing and realized that it’s an important picture…The love behind the camera shows."