Alabama History & Culture News: December 25 edition

 

Here's the latest batch of links to just-published Alabama history and culture articles. Most of these items are from newspapers, with others from magazines and TV and radio station websites. Enjoy!

Lowndes County, Alabama, Memorializes Victim of Racial Terror Lynching at Courthouse Equal Justice Initiative The coalition had planned a historical marker dedication ceremony for April 26 that had to be canceled due to the Covid-19 global pandemic. Watch the ...

Alabama NewsCenter: Mobile's 'Hidden Treasure' a Blessing for Visitors, Community

alabamawx.com

... and Academy of the Visitation, commonly known as Visitation Monastery, is a historic complex of Roman Catholic buildings and a small cemetery.

New book focuses on 'America's Amazon,' Mobile River basin  Greeneville Sun Acclaimed biologist and Alabama native E.O. Wilson wrote a foreword for the book.

Farrell: 'Alabama Story' is the show we need right now Current in Carmel It's a true story about Indiana's own Emily Wheelock Reed, who, as the Alabama state librarian in 1959, defended a book called “The Rabbits' ...

Mobile's 'hidden treasure' a blessing for visitors, community Alabama NewsCenter ... is a historic complex of Roman Catholic buildings and a small cemetery. ... a blessing for visitors, community from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.

Randolph County Historical Museum temporarily closed Randolph Leader The grant from the Alabama Historical Commission in the amount of $14,948 will also be used to conduct important tests for asbestos and lead-based ...

Birmingham Historical Society: Alabama's 100-Year-Old Holiday Cake Patch.com Birmingham Historical Society: Alabama's 100-Year-Old Holiday Cake. In the South, recipes are filled with history, and often shared with memories, ...

Added to the National Register of Historic Places Bham Now According to the Alabama Historical Commission, the AT&T City Center is historically significant, “as a symbol of Birmingham's rebirth as an urban ...

15 things you never knew about our city—just in time for Birmingham Day

Bham Now

Birmingham, Alabama got its name from the English city, but we have even more than our name in ... Mary Anderson is buried in Elmwood Cemetery.

It's Christmastime at Cherokee County Historical Museum Gadsden Times Originally the Jeff D. Jordan “Big Store,” it now is on the Alabama Register of Historic Places. The museum's board of directors had wanted to celebrate ...

How a simple story about a road trip became a kids' classic Borneo Bulletin Online The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963, his first book, was originally a ... their home in Flint, Michigan, to Grandma's house in Birmingham, Alabama, ...

Book Recounts Story of Auburn Nursing During COVID-19 U.S. News & World Report Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Tags: Alabama, ...

Judson College needs $1.5 million or will be forced to close in January Baptist News Global The school has been affiliated with the Alabama Baptist Convention throughout its history and currently receives $1 million annually from the ...

Alabama art exhibit connects American history to Civil Rights, present-day struggles Alabama NewsCenter Jacob Lawrence studied American history at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library, gathering years of research before putting brush ...

Alabama mom's business featured in 'Drew Barrymore Show' gift guide

al.com

Drew Barrymore's “Little Book of Small Businesses Gift Guide” is an offshoot of “The Drew Barrymore Show,” a talk show syndicated by CBS.

Alabama was home to world's first electric trolley system al.com Alabama was home to world's first electric trolley system ... The cars could move 6 mph, author Mary Ann Neeley said in her book “Montgomery: ...

Alabama town is ready for its HGTV 'Home Town Takeover' spotlight Alabama NewsCenter ... Ben and Erin Napier shine a spotlight on Wetumpka, chronicling a makeover focused on its downtown and historic district in “Home Town Takeover ...

The Many Faces of Cathy O'Donnell

I've done a blog post on Siluria native Cathy O'Donnell [born Ann M. Steely] in my series on film actresses from Alabama whose careers began before 1960. You can read that post for details on her life and work in both film and television. She had roles in a number of major films including The Best Years of Our Lives, Detective Story, The Man from Laramie and Ben Hur. Many film noir fans [and we are legion] have long admired her performance alongside Farley Granger in the classic They Live by Night. 

Among her television roles was one appearance on Perry Mason, in "The Case of the Fickle Fortune." I happened to watch it recently and took some screen shots as the episode progressed. O'Donnell plays county employee Norma Brooks in love with a con man who has used her once, and returns to do it again.

As usual, this Perry Mason case is deliciously complicated. I'll let a commentator on the IMDB page for the episode set the stage: 

"County tax man Ralph Duncan inventories a house after the owner died intestate. While there a woman stops by to question him about some items saying she had been the owner's maid. He finds a cache of old greenbacks, "shin plasters," worth $153,000. When he arrives home to show his wife Helen and cousin, Charlie Nickles, the surprising find, the money is gone. Unknown to Duncan, Nickles has the money and fences it to Lloyd Farrell, an import/export merchant. Farrell turns to another county employee, Norma Brooks, to find elderly, infirm Josiah Ames, who is near death. Farrell plants $148,000 of the money in Ames' effects, which are bequeathed to his accountant, Albert Keller. Upon seeing the story in the newspaper, Duncan consults Perry Mason, who speaks with Keller. After a woman calls Duncan he visits Farrell who he finds dead. Duncan is leaving the house as the police arrive so Duncan is arrested."

Got that? 

Farrell cons poor Norma into planting the big bucks at Ames' house and convincing the old man to write the will naming his accountant as beneficiary. 

More comments are below. If you are so inclined, you can read a lot of minutiae about this episode here. 

This particular episode was original to the series and not based on one of the many Perry Mason novels by Earle Stanley Gardner. 

When Farrell contacts Norma again after so long, she is cool at first. 

However, her defenses soon crumble, and once again she is putty in Farrell's hands, thus setting her up to help with his money laundering scheme.

 

Mason [Raymond Burr] shows up at Norma's office as he begins to investigate the situation for Duncan.  

Mason's questioning gets around to Farrell, and Norma confesses her past relationship to him. 

Naturally, Norma can't understand how Farrell could be involved in anything illegal. 

Norma, Mason and private detective Paul Drake [William Hopper] make a visit to Farrell's residence. Surprise, surprise, they find his dead body!

As the trial begins, Norma waits in the audience for her turn in the witness chair.

First, she has to face questioning by District Attorney Hamilton Burger [played by William Talman]

Now it's Perry Mason's turn. Norma does not wither under questioning by either Mason or Burger. 

Later, during another witness's testimony, Norma loses her cool. She leaps up from her seat at one point and confesses before God and everyone in the courtroom that she didn't kill Farrell. That turns out to be true, but I wonder what price she had to pay for her role in Farrell's scheme. 

The role featured another good performance by the Alabama native O'Donnell. A blog post on some of her film work can be found here.

Several veteran actors also appeared in this episode. Vaughn Taylor, who played Mason's client Ralph Duncan, had a long career from the 1930's into the 1970's. He was a familiar face on television in the 1950's and 1960's. Also familiar was the actress who played Helen Duncan, Virginia Christine. She appeared in roles from the 1940s until 1979, often on television. She is probably best remembered as Mrs. Olson in a long running series of commercials for Folger's Coffee. 

The Boston Globe profiled O'Donnell early in her career in a December 17, 1946 issue

Source: Newspapers.com 

The Birmingham News profiled O'Donnell in a Sunday feature for the February 27, 1955, issue 

Source: Newspapers.com 

Alabama's Female College Football Players

Recently Sarah Fuller made college football history by kicking an extra point in the December 12 game between her Vanderbilt Commodores and the Tennessee Volunteers. She had also kicked off in the November 28 game against the Missouri Tigers. She thus became the first woman to play and score points in a Power Five game. However, she was not the first female college athlete to play and score in football games in the U.S. In fact, two women playing for Alabama teams also have significant records in that sport.

The article linked above notes these female milestones in college football:

"Fuller joins Katie Hnida and April Goss as the only women to play in an FBS game. Hnida kicked two extra points for New Mexico against Texas State in 2003. She transferred to New Mexico from Colorado, where she did dress out but did not play in a game for the Buffaloes. Goss, who played at Kent State, kicked an extra point against Delaware State in 2015.

Four other women -- Willamette's Liz Heaston, Jacksonville State's Ashley Martin, West Alabama's Tonya Butler and Lebanon Valley's Brittany Ryan -- have also kicked in college football games at various levels ranging from NAIA to FCS. Heaton became the first woman to score in a college football game in 1997."

Let's look at the specifics for those two Alabama players.

On August 30, 2001, Ashley Martin kicked three extra points for Jacksonville State as they defeated Cumberland University 72-10. In doing so she became the first woman to score points in an NCAA football game. At the time Jacksonville played in Division 1-AA [now the Football Championship Subdivision.] The only previous woman to score in an American football game was Liz Heaston who played for Willamette University in 1997. Willamette played in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. 

Martin played soccer at Jacksonville and joined the Gamecocks football team as a backup place kicker. She had previously played for her high school football team in Sharpsburg,, Georgia. Martin was also homecoming queen at the school, and accepted her crown wearing her football uniform.

Tonya Butler had an outstanding career as a placekicker for her high school team in Fayetteville, Georgia, where she joined the team as a tenth grader. Butler played football at Middle Georgia College, where she received the first football scholarship for a female at a state school. After getting an associate degree there, she played soccer at Georgia Southern and graduated in 2003. 

Butler had two years of football eligibility remaining, and Randy Pippin, her coach at Middle Georgia, offered her a scholarship to play for his new team, the University of West Alabama. Butler enrolled in graduate school and made the 2003 squad. In the first game of the season against Stillman Butler kicked a 27-yard field goal and became the first female to achieve that feat in an NCAA football game. 

Butler played the entire 2003 and 2004 seasons for the Tigers and was voted special teams captain both years. She finished her master's degree at the school in 2005. 

Wikipedia has a running list of females who have played American football at various levels and on various types of teams. I noted at least one middle school and one high school player from Alabama on these lists. 

Ashley Martin kicking for Jacksonville State

Tonya Butler at the University of West Alabama 

Alabama History & Culture News: December 17 edition

 

Here's the latest batch of links to just-published Alabama history and culture articles. Most of these items are from newspapers, with others from magazines and TV and radio station websites. Enjoy!

Historical society on a mission to save two 19th century cabins Wetumpka Herald In May, the Alabama Historical Commission, through the efforts of the Elmore County Historical Society, added both structures to the Alabama Register of ...

Alabama music legend Randy Owen named honorary co-chair of World Games 2022 Birmingham Alabama NewsCenter One of the most successful country music groups in history, Alabama released 21 gold, platinum and multiplatinum albums, had 43 No. 1 singles, sold ...

Alabama-born stars of baseball's segregated era receive Major League status al.com “We are now grateful to count the players of the Negro Leagues where they belong -- as Major Leaguers within the official historical record.” Manfred's ...

Four Alabama sites added to the National Register of Historic Places al.com Four Alabama buildings have been added to the National Register of Historic Places, a list of culturally and historically significant sites worthy of ...

Retired Alabama Supreme Court Justice Hugh Maddox has died alreporter.com Maddox served longer on the Alabama Supreme Court than any associate justice in Alabama history. Maddox wrote numerous opinions while on the ...

Late Medal of Honor recipient, Alabama native to receive hero's send-off WTVM His burial service will be held on Wednesday. The Lee County Sheriff's Office will be supervising the escort, working with other Alabama and Georgia ...

Vanderbilt kicker Sarah Fuller makes history again as first woman to score points in Power Five game CBSSports.com Four other women -- Willamette's Liz Heaston, Jacksonville State's Ashley Martin, West Alabama's Tonya Butler and Lebanon Valley's Brittany Ryan -- ...

HBO filmmakers talk wild new 'Alabama Snake' documentary al.com Bryan Storkel: A friend gave me a book. There's a couple of books on this story but I started by reading “Salvation on Sand Mountain,” which was a New ...

New Book Focuses on 'America's Amazon,' Mobile River Basin U.S. News & World Report Acclaimed biologist and Alabama native E.O. Wilson wrote a foreword for the book. Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This ...

Bradley descendants prosper in Conecuh and surrounding Counties Andalusia Star-News Nancy Jane was buried in the Methodist Church Cemetery in Belleville as Samuel would be later at his death in 1889. After Nancy Jane's death, Samuel was married in 1878 to Mary Alabama “Bama” Robbins, daughter of James ...

Is It Too Late to Save 'America's Amazon' in Alabama? EcoWatch By Tara Lohan. When longtime environmental journalist Ben Raines started writing a book about the biodiversity in Alabama, the state had 354 fish ...

New Book chronicles Pioneering 'Lower Alabama' family

Union Springs Herald

When ex-slave Henry Nance left Tennessee, he pursued his destiny in a thicketed corner of Coffee County, Alabama. The life he created for himself ...

HBO film 'Alabama Snake' tells story of Scottsboro snake-handling pastor's attempt to kill wife

WAAY

“Alabama Snake” is about Glenn Summerford, who remains imprisoned after ... crime was reported in the otherwise sleepy town of Scottsboro, Alabama. ... who knew Summerford best, speaking to his history of violence and spiritual ...

Hobson City has historic distinction as Alabama's first official Black town Alabama NewsCenter Hobson City in Calhoun County isn't much different from many Alabama small towns. But its founding and history make it unique. The state's first ...

Independent book shop owners list their favorite books with Alabama ties al.com The complete history of Alabama prior to statehood up to the present. Includes politics, race and football! Alabama Books. (Amazon.com).

What We Are Reading Today: Waste by Catherine Coleman Flowers Arab News This is an eye-opening book on how the intersection of poverty and racism result in terrible living conditions in Alabama, US. “This book is fascinating ...

DON NOBLE: Book contains timely assessment of Confederate monuments' history Tuscaloosa News Connor O'Neill, a recent graduate of the University of Alabama's master of fine arts program, may be known to Alabamians for his work on the podcast ...

On A Tour Of 'America's Amazon,' Flora, Fauna And Glimpses Of Alabama's Past NPR In his new book, Saving America's Amazon: The Threat to Our Nation's Most Biodiverse River System, Raines explores the remarkable array of flora ...

Alabama Author: Gwen Bristow

Several states can claim Gwen Bristow including South Carolina, Louisiana, Connecticut, Mississippi, California and Alabama. Let's investigate.

She was born in Marion, South Carolina, on September 16, 1903. Her writing efforts seem to have begun with her reporting of junior high school events to a local newspaper. Since her father Louis Jordan Bristow was a Baptist minister, she began college at Anderson Bible College in that South Carolina town. After a year she transferred to Judson College, a very strict Baptist women's college in Marion, Alabama. Despite her dislike of the rules,, Bristow continued her artistic development. She directed and played men's roles in two plays, and in 1923 was voted "Most Original" by her junior class peers. 

Upon graduating the following year, Bristow began working odd jobs so she could study journalism at Columbia University in New York City. She only spent a year in the Big Apple, however. Bristow worked a summer job at the New Orleans Times-Picayune and when the paper offered her a permanent post; she took it. At first she lived with her parents on the grounds of Southern Baptist Hospital, where her father had become Superintendent. 

Bristow spent much of the 1920's covering a range of events for the newspaper, including crimes and the great flood of 1927. She also wrote obituaries of prominent people and interviewed actors visiting the city. She also wrote poetry during this period and in 1926 published a small collection, The Alien and Other Poems. 

While covering a murder trial Bristow met fellow journalist Bruce Manning, and they eloped on January 14, 1929, to avoid objections from her Baptist family to Manning's Catholicism. They moved into an apartment on 627 Ursuline Street in the French Quarter. 

The couple soon collaborated on a novel, The Invisible Host, published by the Mystery League in 1930. From 1930 until 1933 the League published 30 hardcover mysteries that were inexpensive but featured striking Art Deco covers. The early titles--The Invisible Host was sixth in the series--sold for a quarter. I presume that because of the Great Depression the publisher folded after issuing only one title in 1933. 

The plot of the book will be familiar to anyone who's read Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None or seen any of the film versions. Eight people known to each other receive anonymous invitations to attend dinner at a New Orleans penthouse. As the unseen host informs them over radio, the place is booby-trapped, and they will all die before morning. Complications ensue. 

The Invisible Host was soon adapted into a Broadway play called The Ninth Guest by prolific playwright Owen Davis. A 1934 film adaptation used the same title as the play. Christie is presumed not to have read or seen these materials before writing her famous novel, which was published in November 1939.

For the next two years Bristow and Manning continued writing together and produced three more books: The Gutenberg Murders (1931), The Mardi Gras Murders (1932) and Two and Two Make Twenty-Two (1932). After these four collaborations their writing careers diverged when they moved to Hollywood in 1934.

Manning published one novel, Party Wire, in 1935, and then began working as a screenwriter, director and producer until 1957. He died in 1965. Bristow also wrote some novels on her own, couldn't find a publisher and destroyed the manuscripts. Then she began writing the first of what became three popular Louisiana plantation novels: Deep Summer (1937), The Handsome Road (1938), and This Side of Glory (1940). These works follow two families over several generations. 

Bristow published several more novels before her death in 1980. She also published two memoirs, Gwen Bristow, A Self-Portrait (1941) and From Pigtails to Wedding Bells (1977). I wonder if she covers any of her time at Judson in either of those books. 

Source: Wikipedia

Book jacket for the 1930 first edition as reproduced at Facsimile Dust Jackets LLC

Author Gwen Bristow, author of "Celia Garth." Shown here with Melvin Shortess at her book signing. This photo was probably taken at the Shortess Book Store in New Orleans in 1955. Melvin H. (1909-1975) & Helen T. (1910-1979) Shortess were proprietors of the Shortess Book Store.

Source: Louisiana Digital Library

This novel was first published in 1959. That probably means the caption above has "1955" in error. 

This novel, which appeared in 1937, was the first volume of Bristow's Plantation Trilogy. This paperback edition was published in 1947. 

This 1950 novel was a bestseller, and a film version, with screenplay by Bruce Manning, was released in 1954.

Source: Fantastic Fiction

Some Further Reading, etc. 

Bristow, Gwen. Papers. South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia.

Dean, Lauren. “Gwen Bristow: Best Selling Author 1903-1980,” New Orleans Historical, accessed July 31, 2020, https://neworleanshistorical.org/items/show/558

Lowry, Julia B. “Carolina’s Gwen Bristow Finds She’s Obliged to Write!” Columbia State Magazine, November 5, 1950, pp. 6–7.

MacNebb, Betty L. “Gwen Bristow: Carolina’s Best Seller.” South Carolina Magazine 12 (July 1949): 8, 10.

Theriot, Billie J. “Gwen Bristow: A Biography with Criticism of Her Plantation Trilogy.” Ph.D. diss., Louisiana State University, 1994.