‘Mockingbird’ actress recalls experiences

For my four cents, there is no more compelling movie than “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the 1962 black-and-white classic that dealt with black and white relations in the South of the 1930s.

There is no more compelling character than Scout, the 9-year-old girl who narrates the film. If you have seen the movie, you will never forget her.

Certainly Mary Badham, 53, has not. She was the child chosen from thousands of Southern girls to play Scout, the daughter of Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), the hero of the Harper Lee tale. The Finch character jeopardizes his law practice and his family by defending a black man unjustly accused of raping a white woman. The American Film Institute has named Atticus Finch the greatest movie hero of the 20th century.

An art restorer, Badham still works to present the play around the country and in England. She still calls Peck “Atticus” 40 years after the movie was produced and three years after his death.

Badham was part of the annual Lee County Reading Festival on Saturday. Since the Red Sox did not play a spring training game that day, several New England fans attended the (indoor, air-conditioned) appearance.

“It was and is an honor to be associated with the film. It is a film of hope. Unfortunately, there is still hate and bigotry today,” she told about 200 tanned audience members Saturday.

“It is not simply a black-and-white film of the 1930s. It is still applicable today. Bigotry is not going away. The world is becoming a much smaller place, and the answer, as always, is education. The movie had so many wonderful things to say,” she said.

She admitted that she never read the book until decades after she appeared in the movie. It wasn’t until the College of William and Mary asked her to appear before a literature class to discuss the book that she decided it was time to read it. She has read and reread the book constantly since then. Scores of audience members admitted the same.

The film remains so popular today that Badham appears at least once a month around the country to discuss it.

Badham was encouraged by her mother to audition for the movie when the film company came to Birmingham, Ala. Her mother was a leading lady in the local stage company, but her father was adamantly against allowing his 9-year-old daughter to associate with the Hollywood visitors and ruled against any audition.

“What are the chances they will choose her?” the mother asked the father. The child went to the audition and got the part.

“I didn’t understand the importance when the movie was made. We were from Birmingham where the women knew their place, where children were seen but not heard, and the black servants were not seen at all and were forced to ride in the back of the bus,” she said.

She said the film producers chose children of the South because they didn’t have to explain racial conditions there. During the months of production in California, she grew closer to the cast members, especially Peck, than to her own family, she said. Working with the patient leading man was the highlight of the production, she said.

She admitted that she had stunt doubles for the scene when Scout is attacked while wearing a ham suit and in a tire swing scene.

When she got back to Alabama, she was ostracized by her jealous friends. “That was hard to take. I felt neither tainted nor wonderful because of the movie, and I just wanted to go home and ride my horse with my friends.”

The ostracism caused some problems all through high school, she said.

Badham was nominated for an Academy Award for her role, but didn’t win. “But I got to sit on Danny Thomas’ knee and ate lunch with Sebastian Cabot,” she said.

Her brother John Badham is a highly successful film director with credits from “Saturday Night Fever” to “War Games.”

As much as she loved working with Gregory Peck, she never wanted a Hollywood career. Badham appeared in another movie, “This Property is Condemned,” with Natalie Wood. “Natalie was in crisis and disappeared with some prince or someone in the middle of filming. That was enough for me,” she said.

But she still watches “Mockingbird” whenever she can to see “my Atticus” one more time.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.