Film Actresses from Alabama Before 1960 (4): Mary Anderson

Back in January of this year I did a post in the "Movies with Alabama Connections" series on Lifeboat, a 1944 Alfred Hitchcock film that starred two state natives, Tallulah Bankhead and Mary Anderson. Now I'd like to do a post in this series on Mary Anderson.

She was born in Birmingham on April 3, 1918 or perhaps 1920. She attended Howard College [now Samford University] and started acting in the theater department there. Her BhamWiki entry says she was runner-up in the Miss Birmingham contest. 

The 1930 U.S. Census shows 12-year old Mary living with her parents James O. and Mary E. Anderson, younger brother James and her 72-year old grandfather. The family lived at 533 McMillan Avenue in southwest Birmingham. By the 1940 census she is living at 5757 Franklin Avenue in Los Angeles. Mother Mary and brother James are also shown living with her. The record notes she had finished two years of college. 

Those census records do not settle the question of her birth year. The 1920 and 1930 census both estimate her birth year at 1918; the 1940 census estimates 1921. 

Whatever Anderson's age, she was in Hollywood in 1939 and auditioned for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. She and hundreds of other actresses did not get that role, but she was tapped for the supporting role of Maybelle Merriwhether. In that same year she also had a small uncredited part in another high profile movie, The Women. Another Birmingham native, Dorothy Sebastian, also had a tiny role in the film. 

Anderson appeared in several other films in addition to Lifeboat. She had a significant role in 1943's The Song of Bernadette alongside Jennifer Jones, who played the title character. You can find all her acting credits here. 

In addition to the film roles, Anderson performed on a number of television shows in the 1950's and 1960's. The programs ranged from Target and Mike Hammer to Perry Mason, My Three Sons and Peyton Place. In her appearance on the 1958 episode "The Case of the Rolling Bones" on Perry Mason, she might have had a chance to trade Birmingham stories with Gail Patrick, another actress born in the city who by that time was producing the show. Anderson's final appearance was an uncredited "Old Lady in Music Store" in the 1980 film Cheech and Chong's Next Movie. 

Younger brother James [1921-1969] also became an actor; he played Bob Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird. His credits include appearances in several Westerns and other films as well. They acted together in one movie, the 1951 noir thriller Hunt the Man Down. 

Anderson died in April 2014 in Burbank, California. Her first husband was writer Leonard M. Behrens; married in 1940, they divorced in 1950. In 1953 she married cinematographer Leon Shamroy; he won 4 Academy Awards and was nominated 14 additional times. One of those wins was for the 1944 film Wilson in which Mary Anderson played Eleanor, the youngest daughter of President Wilson. She had one child by Shamroy.

As noted below, Anderson returned to Birmingham in November 1947 for the world premier of her film Whispering City and a public appearance at Pizitz. The film premier benefited the Crippled Children's Clinic and was held at the Empire Theater on Third Avenue North.

You can find a number of photographs of Anderson, including glamour shots, at this Pinterest board. 

Anderson with actor Charles Russell in Behind Green Lights (1946)

Source: Wikipedia

Source: Listal

Source: The Film Daily 1946

Source: Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections

Source: Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections

Source: Wikipedia

This November 1947 newspaper ad announces the opening of new escalators for the first four floors of the Birmingham Pizitz store. The dark photograph in the upper left corner notes that actress Mary (Bebe) Anderson will be on hand to untie the ribbon. Others present for what was treated as a major event on November 24 were Mayor Cooper Green and representatives from Westinghouse, the company that made the escalator. That day's Birmingham News covered the addition in an article, "Pizitz store installs moving stairways."

Source: Tim Hollis and his book Pizitz: Your Store [History Press, 2010]

Anderson starred in two of the films, Henry Aldrich for President (1941) and Henry and Dizzy (1942). 

Source: Birmingham Rewound

Alabama Book Covers (10): Augusta Evans Wilson

Back in April 2015 I posted an item about the films based on Augusta Evans Wilson's 1867 novel--and massive bestseller--St. Elmo. Now I'd like to include her in this ongoing blog series, "Alabama Book Covers."

In that earlier post, I included this background on Wilson:

"She's one of Mobile's legendary residents; although born in Columbus, Georgia, she spent most of her life in the city. She published nine novels before her death in 1909, and some of them such as St. Elmo and Beulah made her one of the bestselling American novelists of her day. 

Like many female authors of that time, she began writing to supplement her family's income. St. Elmo sold over a million copies and made her the wealthiest female writer in America before Edith Wharton. Only Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Lew Wallace's Ben-Hur sold better among American novels in the nineteenth century.

There is a town in Mobile County named after the novel. Several of her works, including St. Elmo, can be found via Project Gutenberg. A recent book about Evans is The Life and Works of Augusta Jane Evans Wilson, 1835–1909 by Brenda Ayres [Ashgate, 2012]."

I've included comments on some of the individual illustrations below. 

Augusta Evans Wilson [1835-1909]

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama

Inez, the first of Wilson's nine novels, appeared in 1855 and was not a success. She began writing the book when she was fifteen.  

Beulah was Wilson's second novel and a big seller. The story describes a young woman's crisis of faith, much like Wilson's own, and is set in an Alabama city much like Mobile. 

In addition to being a bestselling book, St. Elmo was filmed three times by 1923. Three other Wilson novels were also filmed. 

Wilson's third novel, published in 1864, was a pro-Confederacy story and was issued by different publishers in the North and South.

Wilson was going blind as she wrote her last novel, published in 1907. She dictated it to a niece. 

This novel was Wilson's first after the Civil War, published a year after her 1868 marriage to a successful Mobile businessman.

Her next to last novel appeared in 1902. 

This collection of Wilson's letters was published in 2002.

April Fool's at Auburn University in 1962

I discuss all sorts of historical matters on this blog, but never one as serious as the subject of this particular posting. Here's what those crazy college kids at my Alma mater were up to eight years before I arrived. 

Below are some selections from the April Fool's Day issue of the Auburn Plainsman in 1962. You can see the entire issue here. 

Enjoy!

Crestwood Medical Center in Huntsville

Back in February my mother, artist Carolyn Shores Wright, had a brief stay at Crestwood Medical Center in Huntsville. My brother and I made several trips to the free coffee stand outside the cafeteria while she was there, and we passed this plaque each time. 

Dr. Bernie Moore is honored here, perhaps because he served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees for two decades. He was actually one of three physicians who founded the hospital. The other two were Drs. Ellis Sparks and James Earl Robertson. According to the Wikipedia stub on Crestwood, businessman Archie Hill was also involved. The facility opened as a nursing home in 1964, and became a hospital the following year. 

That Wikipedia piece says the hospital was named after the "district" of Huntsville in which it's located; I have yet to find any more information on the claim. My mother has lived in Huntsville since the early 1950's, and she's told me she doesn't remember Crestwood as a neighborhood or area of the city.

Oddly, the hospital's web site linked above has no historical background that I could find. You never know when a little history will pop up somewhere, though.

Augustus Thomas' 1891 Play "Alabama"

Today he is known only to theatrical historians, but in his lifetime Augustus Thomas was one of America's most successful playwrights. He's also considered among the first dramatists whose work addressed American topics and themes. In the late 19th century American theater was dominated by British and European drama. And his first great success was a play called "Alabama."

Thomas was born in St. Louis and after several other jobs he became a journalist in Kansas City. He had long had an interest in theater and wrote several plays as a teenager. Thomas was soon hired as an assistant at a theater in St. Louis and then produced "The Burglar", an adaptation of a short story by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The play toured successfully, and Thomas went to work at the Madison Square Theatre in New York City adapting foreign plays.

Six years after the Alabama visit described below, Thomas wrote a one-act play called "Talladega." He was then working for the A.M. Palmer Company, and Palmer urged him to expand the work to include parts for all the stars of the troupe. Thomas did so, and the four-act play opened at the Madison Square on April 1, 1891, to great acclaim. Over the next few years the company toured the country, including stops in Mobile, Montgomery and Birmingham.

William Stanley Hoole discusses Thomas, the play and its early U.S. tours in his article, "'Alabama': Drama of Reconciliation" Alabama Review 19(2): 83-108, April 1966. He describes the play's importance as not only one featuring an American theme, but also an attempt to reunite the nation less than thirty years after the Civil War.  

"Alabama's" story includes a widow and her son threatened by another relative desiring their property, the coming of the railroad, hidden identities, a challenge to a duel, and a happy ending that features three weddings. As Hoole writes, "...the railroad land sale benefits the true owners, and Southerners and Northerners alike rejoice."

UPDATE 14 September 2021:

 A 1959 book, Historic Tales of Talladega by E. Grace Jemison has a chapter on the play on pp 198-202. Included are descriptions of the original and subsequent productions in New York, and the one in Birmingham which appeared in the city on Wednesday, October 28, 1891. The performance was held at O'Brien's Opera House on the corner of First Avenue and 19th Street North, and was extensively reviewed in the next day's Birmingham Age-Herald. 

Augustus Thomas [1857-1934]

Source: Wikipedia

Just over three weeks after the New York premier of "Alabama", this note appeared in the Philadelphia Record. The reprint was found in the April 25, 1891, issue of the Pullman Herald, published in the Washington Territory. Thomas' success had already spanned the country. 

On page 187 of his 1922 memoir The Print of My Remembrance, Thomas gives this account of the 1885 genesis of the play. As you can see in the Cast of Characters listed below, the town is spelled "Taladega" in the final version of the play--unless that's a printing error. On pages 328 and 329 of his autobiography Thomas describes the dream he had of that gateway in 1891.

I'm not sure why this "Cast of Characters" from the 1900 publication lists the opening year of the play as 1890; it was 1891.

Frontispiece to the 1900 publication of "Alabama". The book has several other photographs, all presumably from the original production in April 1890.

Maurice Barrymore in a production of "Alabama" in Chicago. Barrymore began the acting family dynasty; his children were John, Lionel and Ethel. He was the grandfather of John Drew Barrymore and the great-grandfather of Drew Barrymore. 

Source: New York Public Library Digital Collections

Scene with Ed M. Bell and Agnes Miller from a New York production of "Alabama" by the A.M. Palmer Company.

Source: New York Public Library Digital Collections

Another photo of Maurice Barrymore in an 1891 production of "Alabama" by the A.M. Palmer Company at the Madison Square Theatre in NYC

Source: New York Public Library Digital Collections 

Scene from a production of Alabama

Source: New York Public Library Digital Collections

Scene from a production of Alabama at the Haymarket Theatre in Chicago, apparently in the 1895-6 season. 

Source: New York Public Library Digital Collections 

Scene from a production of Alabama

Source: New York Public Library Digital Collections 

This advertisement for a local production of "Alabama" appeared in a June 1905 issue of a Honolulu newspaper. 

The ad above appeared in an issue of a Salt Lake City, Utah, newspaper on June 2 1906. The commentary below appeared on the same page.

"Alabama" was produced at the O'Brien Opera House in downtown Birmingham in 1891.

Source: BhamWiki

Thomas wrote many more successful plays after "Alabama." Many of those dramas ran on Broadway and were adapted for the movies. 

Source: U.S. Library of Congress Digital Collections

Cabin in the Woods

Well, sort of. 

On a recent Sunday Dianne and I were making one of our usual trips to Jemison for lunch at the Smokey Hollow Restaurant followed by a visit to the Petals from the Past nursery. We also did a bit of driving around on some back roads and came upon the former domicile below at the intersection of Chilton County highways 42 and 1070. I wonder when this structure was built? It seems to be surviving nicely as a ruin indicative of days long past in rural Alabama.

With apologies to Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon and their hilarious 2012 film of the same name as this blog post.

Old Alabama Stuff (11): Education from 1890 to 1921

The full title of this 1922 pamphlet of 60 pages is A Statistical Study of Education in Alabama from 1890 to 1921. The item was issued by the Alabama Department of Education and "authorized" by the State Board of Education. You can find the document at the Internet Archive. 

This publication brings together a mass of material related to education in Alabama, noting that improvements in the 1918 to 1921 period surpass those between 1890 and the end of World War I. The paragraph below the title page highlights legislative and other actions responsible for such changes in just a few years.

Of course, this report also highlights many problems, from attendance issues to the difference in training for city and rural teachers. The table included below lists the measures Alabama must take to reach national averages. Note the differences in numbers 2 and 3 especially.

Many issues don't seem to have changed much in Alabama education in the past century: funding, teacher training, student participation, etc. The tone of this report is upbeat, but it makes for depressing reading. 

An article on public education in the early 20th century in the state is available at the Encyclopedia of Alabama site. Articles on public education in other periods are linked from that one. 

The "Ayres' index" mentioned in the paragraph above refers to a method of comparing state school systems devised by Col. Leonard P. Ayres and published in 1920.