Mary Badham, famous for playing “Scout” in To Kill a Mockingbird
(1962), is currently on tour with the stage version and has grown into playing
the role of Mrs. Dubose.
The play recently came to my neck of the woods at the
Bushnell in Hartford, Connecticut, but unfortunately, I was not able to
attend. If you google the tour dates you
might find it coming to “a theater near you.”
Richard Thomas, who famously played John-Boy Walton and,
like Miss Badham, knows something about a fictional role in youth following an
actor forever, plays Atticus Finch. In a
recent interview of Mary Badham by Cori Urban for The (Springfield,
Massachusetts) Sunday Republican, Badham praises Mr. Thomas in the role
and as a cheerful castmate with “a great sense of humor.”
She is new to theater, and really hadn’t done much film work
since her role as Jean Louise “Scout” Finch in the 1962 movie. For that role, at the age of ten, she earned
a Best Supporting Actress nomination.
She lost to Patty Duke, who at the ripe old age of 16, won for playing
Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker.
The year 1962 was a great year for movies. Consider the other nominees for just the
category of Best Supporting Actress:
Shirley Knight for Sweet Bird of Youth, Angela Lansbury for The
Manchurian Candidate, and Thelma Ritter for Birdman of Alcatraz. You couldn’t go wrong with any of them.
I’ve never covered To Kill a Mockingbird in an essay
on this blog yet, but I hope to remedy that someday. For now, let’s consider the interesting
prospect of the evolution of a young actress playing a spirited, inquisitive tomboy
whose widowed lawyer father takes on the town bullies to defend an innocent man
to playing, in her senior years, an elderly woman who is one of those bullies.
Mrs. Dubose would be called a minor character, but only in
the sense she has less time on screen/stage and less lines. Her being there is an important element to
the story. She is rude, bigoted, says
nasty things at passersby from the exalted realm of her front porch. (Scout
calls her “the meanest old woman who ever lived.”) But she is granted leeway, if not respect, because
of her age, and because she is ill. The novel, as novels will, gives us a little more.
When she turns her venom on Atticus for defending a Black
man, Scout’s brother Jem is so enraged, he destroys her garden. But Atticus, wanting to teach his children to
turn the other cheek, makes Jem read to the old lady as punishment and to make
amends.
We find out that the old lady suffers greatly and is taking
morphine for her pain but is weaning herself off the morphine in a streak of
righteous independence, but it costs her, making her suffer more. She and Atticus are not unlike in this
respect: his taking a stance for decency is costing him and his family.
We see the world of this small Southern town and its
pleasures and pain, its guilt and its decency through the eyes of young
Scout. Mary Badham’s performance in the
movie was indelible, natural, and heartfelt, like a kid who was just feeling, skipping
along, forgetting stuff, remembering stuff, and not acting at all. She and Gregory Peck, who played her father,
Atticus, in the movie remained lifelong friends and she always called him
Atticus when she saw him, and he always called her Scout.
Her connection with the film is like belonging to an honored
society. She attended a screening of To
Kill a Mockingbird to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the film
in 2012 as a guest of President Barak Obama at the White House.
(Photo from National Tour by Julieta Cervantes)
How must it feel to her to relinquish the identify of Scout
for Mrs. Dubose? It must be fascinating
to play the role of a character so unlike herself. A stretch like that calls for real
acting. Regarding bigotry, in her
article Ms. Urban quoted Mary Badham, “It’s really sad that there are some people
who still feel that way. I think in this
day and time we need to lift each other up, take care of each other, love each
other and not put each other down. That
divisiveness is so wrong.”
Doesn’t sound like “the meanest old woman who ever lived.” Atticus, and eventually Jem and Scout, came
to acknowledge Mrs. Dubose’s courage in facing the monster of addiction and the
enemy of ill health.
If you are able to see this national tour of To Kill a
Mockingbird in your neck of the woods over the remainder of 2023 and 2024,
let me know your impressions. I’d love
to hear them.
Here’s a link to a montage of the current the touring play’s scenes - https://youtu.be/Xjn31EdXt0I
Sources:
Cori Urban, "'To Kill a Mockingbird' takes stage at Bushnell" The Springfield Sunday Republican, June 25, 2023 p. D7.
Photo of Mary Badham as Mrs. Dubose by Julieta Cervantes, National Tour - To Kill a Mockingbird
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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism. Her latest book is Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.