Walker Evans Photographs Two Alabama Stores in 1936

In a previous post on this blog I've examined Birmingham photographs taken by Walker Evans probably in 1936. I'll be examining two more photographs in this post and additional ones in the future. Here's what I wrote about Evans in that previous post. 

Walker Evans [1903-1975] was one of the great documentary photographers of the twentieth century. Evans made three brief trips to Alabama during his career, in March and the summer of 1936 and again in 1973. The images he recorded on the 1936 visits are among the most iconic Great Depression photographs taken in the United States. 

His most famous photos were taken in Hale County that summer. In the previous year Evans had been working for the Farm Security Administration, a New Deal program that was part of recovery efforts during the Great Depression. Evans traveled to various places, including the South, documenting agricultural and industrial life and work. 

In summer 1936 writer James Agee accepted an assignment from Fortune magazine to write about sharecroppers in the Deep South. Agee wanted Evans to accompany him, so the photographer took a leave from the federal agency. The two men spent eight weeks in the Alabama summer living primarily with three sharecropping families. The manuscript Agee delivered to Fortune was much longer than the magazine would publish; it eventually became the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men published in 1941. Agee's singing prose about the daily lives of these desperately poor but proud people, and Evans' images make reading the book an unforgettable experience.    

Evans' third trip to Alabama came in 1973 when he and artist and photographer William Christenberry, an Alabama native, toured Hale County. Some of the color photographs Evans took on that trip appeared with Christenberry's in a museum exhibition "Of Time and Place" as well as the exhibit's catalog. 

These two photographs were taken on one of the trips Evans and Agee made between Birmingham and Greensboro and Hale County. The location of the first one is unknown, the second was taken in downtown Marion. 

Further comments are below. 

Evans' photo of a store between Tuscaloosa & Greensboro #Alabama in 1936. 

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art NYC

This store served as a billboard for all sorts of product advertisements; in fact, those ads may be holding the structure together. Coca Cola is certainly the most recognizable one today, although many will also recognize Clabber Girl, a brand of baking soda, powder and corn starch. Those products are still sold today by Hulman & Company, which also owns the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the sanctioning body of open wheel racing as well as the Rumford line of baking powder. 

The other products may be more mysterious. Hicks Capudine Liquid was a patent medicine manufactured in Raleigh, North Carolina. 666 was a concoction for use against the "discomforts and distress" of colds and made by the Monticello Drug Company of Jacksonville, Florida. 

Grove's Tasteless Chill Tonic was developed by E. W. Grove in the late 1870's. He had a small drug business in Paris, Tennessee, when he came up with a syrup in which he could suspend particles of quinine. That substance was an effective treatment against the chills and fever of malaria, which was common in the U.S. South, and the syrup made taking it more palatable. His product was an instant success, both regionally and around the world. The British army adopted it for all their troops in areas where the disease affected them. Bristol-Myers Company bought Grove's in 1957. 

On the left side of the building under the "666" ad there seems to be one for "Dr. Brown, Chiropractor" and something else I'm unable to make out. I also wonder what those notices on the doors had to offer.

Walker Evans' 1936 photo of Thigpen's grocery & hardware store in Marion

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art NYC 

The store was owned and operated by Handley Gillis Thigpen, Sr. [1888-1948]. He is listed in the 1940 U.S. Census as the proprietor. He was married to Delia and 20-year old son Handley Gillis Thigpen, Jr., was living with them. During World War II he became a major in the U.S. Army Air Corps and died on May 13, 1945. 

Handley Gillis Thigpen, Sr., is buried in the Marion Cemetery. His son is also buried there. Delia died in March 1986.

Source: Find-A-Grave

Movies with Alabama Connections: Faithless

Despite her talents and wide success as an actress in live theater, her outrageous behavior and rapier wit, Alabama native Tallulah Bankhead never made much impact in the movies. She easily conquered stages in New York and London, and also appeared on radio and television before her death in 1968, but Alfred Hitchcock's 1944 film Lifeboat is considered her only real success on the silver screen. 

Previously on this blog I've written about that appearance in the Hitchcock film, which also included a performance by another Alabama native, Mary Anderson. I've also discussed Talluah's appearances with Lucille Ball--one as herself and another as interpreted by Lucy. I recently watched Bankhead in the 1932 pre-Code movie, Faithless. I enjoyed it very much and thought I would discuss it here. 

The years from 1929 until mid-1934 are known as the "pre-Code" era in Hollywood. In 1930 the studios agreed to adopt the Motion Picture Production Code  that outlined topics forbidden in their films. The subjects ranged from drug use, prostitution and homosexuality to adultery and excessive violence. Strict enforcement did not begin until mid-1934, so many early sound films made during that brief period cover behaviors that would largely disappear from most American studio films until the Code was abandoned in 1968. Faithless includes such uncomfortable topics for the prudish as wild parties among the wealthy and the widespread deprivations of the Great Depression that lead Tallulah's character into promiscuity and then prostitution. And things end happily for Tallulah, which the Code did not toperate.

Bankhead's co-star is Robert Montgomery, a very successful actor and the father of actress Elizabeth Montgomery, who also had a long career in film and television. More comments are below.  

Faithless was released on October 15, 1932, by MGM; running time is a brisk 77 minutes. Beaumont directed a number of films between 1915 and 1948, including some with other stars such as John Barrymore and Joan Crawford. This film is based on Mildred Cram's story "Tinfoil".

Tallulah plays Carol Morgan, a rich New York socialite in love with advertising executive Bill Wade [Montgomery]. The film opens with Carol on the phone talking to Bill as they plan their evening. Clever repartee follows. 

Carol is very good at lounging around until late morning.

Bill Wade is an advertising executive pulling down $20,000 a year, which was a fabulous amount in 1932 America. We never do learn how these lovebirds met.

Being a spoiled socialite, Carol knows how to pout when needed, even if it is over the telephone.

Carol and Bill return from their date to her upscale apartment  

This film is worth watching just for the fabulous furniture, lighting and costumes filling the screen in the first half.

Bill and Carol seem headed for marriage. Based on their exchange here, they will do well in the conversation department:

Carol: I've nice feet, haven't I? Hmmm?

Bill: Can't expect a man to write poetry about feet at five o'clock in the morning.

You can find other great quotes from the film here. Especially hilarious is the long case Carol makes to Bill concerning her suitability as a wife.  

Bill and Carol make plans to marry, even launching the announcement at a large party of her friends. But roadblocks quickly pop up. Bill wants to live off his salary, not her inheritance. Carol, who seems to be very wealthy, is not impressed with his job or his income. The two break up.

Carol continues to party and blow through her inheritance until one day her bankers tell her she's broke. As in she-doesn't-have-one-thin-dime broke. 

How could this have happened? she wants to know. You spent all your money, they say.

Carol goes to see Bill and confesses her newly-acquired poverty. Problem is, Bill has lost his job that very day and is headed to Chicago to see what kind of job he can find. Carol doesn't want to do that and their possible reconciliation doesn't happen. Bill's younger brother Tony is on hand to offer his negative opinion of Carol. Before all this happens, though, Carol and Tony have the kind of barely veiled sex talk that must have driven the prudish in the audience right out of the theater. 

Now broke, Carol makes the rounds of friends she can bunk with and borrow money from until her welcome wears out. A wealthy cad finds her at the gaming tables of Monte Carlo [where Carol had suggested she and Bill go on their honeymoon] and makes her his mistress.

Bill tracks down a very drunken Carol at her benefactor's apartment, and after he leaves Carol is so humiliated she leaves her lover.

Now Carol is near rock bottom, waiting in a breadline. Naturally they run out of bread just as she reaches the window. She is forced to give her landlady her shoes to pay something toward rent.

Carol scrapes together enough money to buy a bowl of soup and runs into Bill in the restaurant. He has a job as a truck driver and asks her to marry him, saying the past is past. 

Bill loses that job, and is injured on his new one as a truck driving strikebreaker or scab. He  needs medicine that neither of them can afford. 

Carol is briefly forced into prostitution to buy the medicine. A policeman confronts her, but instead of arresting Carol he gets her a job at the very cafe where she had tried and failed earlier to get work.  

Bill finally recovers, and they get married and hopefully, after all their ups and downs, live happily ever after.

This film's story is hardly original, and cliches abound, but the two stars and the supporting actors make it work. In its review the New York Times declared Faithless to be a "lumbering species of drama" but did acknowledge the "capable portrayals" of the leads. 

The first half is full of crisp, often funny dialog, great sets and costumes. The second half pours on the pathos but manages to keep it from being too cloying. Bankhead's legendary theatrical performances were not preserved on film, but we get some idea of her range here in a role that displays her talents for both  wit and drama. 

The Many Versions of "The Bad Seed"

The Bad Seed was Alabama author William March's final novel, published about two months before his death on May 15, 1954, in New Orleans. Thus this prolific novelist and short story writer never saw any of the long, strange afterlife of his book. The Lifetime cable network debuted a new version of the novel on September 9, so let's take a look at March and his last work. 

He was born William Edward Campbell into a poor family in Mobile in September 1893. He left school at 14 to work in a lumber mill office in Covington County, then at 16 moved to a law office in Mobile. March managed to obtain a high school diploma and then spent a year studying law at the University of Alabama. By 1916 he was clerking for a law office in New York City.

March enlisted in the Marine Corps in June 1917 and arrived in France in February 1918. He saw intense action in several battles, suffering wounds and received the French Croix de Guerre and the Distinguished Service Cross and Navy Cross for his bravery. Discharged in August 1919, March returned to Mobile and found employment with a new steamship company. He soon ascended to the post of vice-president with assignments in Memphis, New York, Hamburg and London. 

He began writing fiction in the late 1920's and his first published work, a short story, appeared under the pseudonym he would use for all his fiction. His first novel, Company K, came out in 1933 and drew on his wartime experiences. Many of his subsequent novels and short stories are set in Alabama. March spent many years living in New York, but by the late 1940's his physical and mental health had declined to the point where friends persuaded him to return to Mobile. Literary success had not overcome the traumas March suffered from his military service. In 1950 he moved to New Orleans and lived there until his death. 

A much fuller examination of March's life and work can be found in his entry in the Encyclopedia of Alabama and Roy Simmonds' 1984 biography The Two Worlds of William March. 

Much of March's fiction is based on his personal experiences, either in World War I or growing up and living in Alabama. The Bad Seed is something else. The book works the nature versus nurture approach--are killers born or made? The story follows Rhoda, a blonde and precocious child who happens to be a killer. And she has a grandmother who was a serial killer and executed in the electric chair. Her parents simply can't accept her daughter is capable of such acts.

The character is now a common trope in popular culture--the evil child. When March wrote the novel, the very idea was shocking. You can read a detailed summary of the story at the Wikipedia entry. More comments are below.

The Bad Seed was first published in March 1954 and remains in print today. This paperback edition appeared in 2015. Several other paperback editions have been published over the years. 

The edition I own is this one from Dell, a paperback published in February 1972. 

The first edition of the hardback that appeared in 1954 was published by Rinehart and Company. You can currently find a used copy described as "acceptable" for $895 and one as "very good" for $1142 on Amazon. But that's crazy; several copies can be found via Bookfinder.com for $100 or so. 

This edition appeared in Dell Publishing's Great Mystery Library series. Based on the price, I'd guess it was published in the 1960's. 

This 2005 paperback edition was published by Harper Perennial. 

March's novel appeared in March 1954, and on December 8 the play opened at the 46th Street Theatre on Broadway. The novel was adapted for the stage by Maxwell Anderson, a prolific dramatist. The combination of March and Anderson's reputations and the subject matter drew interest; Life magazine covered the play in its issue published a week before opening. The play ran for 334 performances until September 27, 1955.

Nancy Kelly won a Tony Award as Best Actress for her performance as the mother. Patty McCormack starred as Rhoda her daughter. Eileen Heckert and Henry Jones also acted in the play. All four repeated their roles in the film.  

An Al Hirschfeld drawing of the Broadway play, The Bad Seed, adapted from the William March novel of the same name for the stage by Maxwell Anderson in 1954.

Courtesy of the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library, The University of Alabama Libraries

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama

Filming was done at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, California, from May until July 1955. The film was released on September 12, 1956. As noted above, the four main actors in the play appeared in the film. Hollywood veteran Mervin LeRoy served as director. In the novel and play, Rhoda lives to kill another day. In the 1956 film she is struck by lightning and dies. 

Patty McCormack as Rhoda and Henry Jones as the caretaker in the 1956 film

This 1985 television movie was written by George Eckstein and directed by another veteran, Paul Wendkos. The cast included Blair Brown, Lynne Redgrave, David Carradine, Richard Kiley and David Ogden Stiers. Carrie Wells played Rachel (Rhoda). The novel's ending was kept, but other changes were made, including character names. I watched this version when first broadcast on February 7, 1985, on ABC but remember little about it.    

The 2018 version changes names and characters. Now we have Emma (Rhoda) and her widowed father who slowly begins to suspect the worst about his daughter. Rob Lowe plays the father, and also directs, which may account for the changes. Patty McCormack--the original Rhoda in the play and film--plays Emma's psychiatrist Dr. March. 

"Stranded in Downtown Birmingham"

Who invented rock and roll, you ask? Well, there are various candidates with passionate advocates, and Chuck Berry is certainly one of them. His musical career extended from the early 1950's until just before his death in 2017. He had many hits over the years, but three of them have been enshrined among the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's list of "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll": "Johnny B. Goode," "Maybellene" and "Rock and Roll Music." The two Voyager spacecrafts, launched in 1977 and now deep in space beyond our solar system, carry a "Golden Record" of many sounds of human culture. Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" was the only rock and roll song selected.  

I've written a number of posts on this blog about songs related to Alabama [and more are in the pipeline!], including one about some of the songs related to Birmingham. "The Promised Land" by Berry would fit that group.

The song first appeared on Berry's 1964 album St. Louis to Liverpool. He used the melody to the folk song "Wabash Cannonball" to go with his lyrics, which you can read below. The singer is headed from Virginia to California when the Greyhound bus breaks down in Birmingham. Luckily he catches a "midnight flyer" train to New Orleans and continues his journey. 

The song has been recorded by numerous other artists, including Elvis Presley, the Grateful Dead, Johnny Rivers, the Band, Meatloaf, Harry Dean Stanton, James Taylor and Jerry Lee Lewis. A version in French by the great Johnny Hallyday was released in 1975. 

Many versions can be found on YouTube. 

The Promised Land

written by Chuck Berry

                                  

I left my home in Norfolk Virginia                   

California on my mind                             

I straddled that Greyhound and                                              

Rode him into Raleigh and on across Caroline 

We had motor trouble it turned into a struggle

Half way across Alabam                                          

And that 'Hound broke down and left us all stranded 

In downtown Birmingham

                                               

Right away I bought me a through train ticket 

Riding across Mississippi clean                                          

And I was on that midnight flyer out of Birmingham      

Smoking into New Orleans

Somebody help me get out of Louisiana 

Just help me get to Houston town 

There are people there who care a little about me

And they won't let a poor boy down 

Sure as you're born they bought me a silk suit 

They put luggage in my hands 

And I woke up high over Albuquerque 

On a jet to the promised land

We stopped at Charlotte we by passed Rock Hill 

We never was a minute late

We was ninety miles out of Atlanta by sundown

Rolling out of Georgia state 

                           

Working on a T-bone steak 

I had a party flying over to the golden state 

When the pilot told us that in thirteen minutes 

He would get us to the terminal gate 

Swing Low Chariot come down easy 

Taxi to the terminal door

Cut your engines and cool you wings 

And let me make it to the telephone 

Los Angeles give me Norfolk Virginia 

Tidewater 4-10-0-9 

Tell the folks back home this is the promised land 

Calling and the boy's on the line

The Birmingham Greyhound station, built in 1950, as it appeared in 2010

Source: BhamWiki