Boaty Boatwright got the job to cast 1962’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” through pure gumption.
The now legendary casting director reportedly walked up to producer Alan J. Pakula at Sardi’s in New York City and told him she should be the one to find him an actress to play Scout, the little girl at the heart of Harper Lee’s seminal 1960 novel. Pakula and director Robert Mulligan had recently secured the rights for the book, which tells the story of Atticus Finch, a white lawyer in Depression-era Alabama who takes up a case defending a Black man against a false rape charge. The story unfolds from Scout’s perspective.
Boatwright had never met Pakula, but she miraculously landed the job, seemingly through confidence alone. Weeks later, however, she called her producer in tears. She had been all over the country and couldn’t find the kid right for the part. The next day, she went to Birmingham, and everything changed.
In Birmingham, Boatwright would find not only Phillip Alford, who would play Scout’s older brother Jem, but Mary Badham, who would go on to play Scout. Over 60 years later, Badham is back and approaching “To Kill a Mockingbird” from a slightly different perspective. She plays Mrs. Dubose in the touring production of Aaron Sorkin’s play adaptation of the novel, which is coming to the Fox Theatre May 7-12.
Badham remembers landing the part of Scout as a “fluke” of sorts. Her father didn’t want her to audition, but her mother convinced him by downplaying the outcome.
“Now, Henry dear – I just thought this would be a fun thing,” Badham remembered her mother saying. “What are the chances the child will get the part anyway?”
Famous last words.
According to Badham, Boatwright wasn’t interested in kids who were trained actors. While other children came in with prepared monologues, she and a friend just went up on stage and started making things up. As Boatwright recalled in a 2021 interview, Badham immediately struck her interest when she told the nine year old that she looked young for her age, and Badham responded with: “If you smoked as many corn silks and drank as much buttermilk as I do, you might be small, too.”
Badham told me the story of getting cast in the film at the Atlanta History Center before she took a tour of the gardens and sat down for a conversation with Joseph Crespino, the Jimmy Carter Professor of History at Emory University and author of “Atticus Finch: The Biography.” She said she was a lot like Scout growing up, more likely to rough house with the boys or muck out a stall than get all gussied up for a party.
“What we see in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is very similar to what I grew up with,” she said.
LIFE ON SET
Badham’s tomboy sensibility came in handy. Badham said she was used to getting along with boys, so she and the other young actors (Alford and John Megna, who played the Finches’ friend Dill) had a blast on set. She told me that according to Alford, they used to get into “knock down, drag out” fights – although Badham doesn’t really remember much of that. She does remember a time that the boys had decided they’d had just about enough of her, and, as kids do, decided to let her know.
There’s a scene in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” one that always struck me as great fun, where Scout gets into a tire and the boys roll her down the street. Badham, who was never really able to go on spinning carnival rides because of a weak stomach, did get to roll in the tire. Up to a point.
“What you don’t see is off to the side, there was a big utility truck. Phillip took that tire and sent it right into the big utility truck,” Badham recalled, laughing. “Then, our director Bob Mulligan called in a stunt double.”
Despite any tire-related shenanigans, Badham recalls her time on set with warmth and delight. She became particularly close with Gregory Peck, who won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus Finch. Badham’s parents both passed away by the time she was in her early 20s. She had quit acting already – at the ripe old age of 14 – but Peck kept in touch, and made it clear to her that she could always pick up the phone and call if she needed.
Badham said Mulligan stressed to the rest of the cast and crew that the set was to be a fun place for the child actors, kept light and cheerful despite the dark subject matter at play. It’s an interesting parallel to the book itself, which operates from a place of childlike innocence and curiosity while dealing with issues of racism, sexual violence, and class. According to Badham, Mulligan did his best to keep the children away from all of that.
“We weren’t exposed to any of the heavy duty stuff,” Badham said. “That was kept away from us. Back in that day, the rules had changed and they were very protective of children.”
A NEW PERSPECTIVE
It wasn’t until much later, after Badham had quit the industry and had a child of her own, that she would actually read Lee’s novel and dig into its complexities. She said for a long while, she was afraid that reading the book would somehow alter the feelings she had toward the film.
“You know how you read a book and then you see the film, or vice versa, and it just changes your whole feeling about it?” she said. “I didn’t want that messed with.”
But reading the novel did not diminish Badham’s experience of the story, but rather opened it up. She suddenly had a whole new appreciation for characters the movie didn’t have the space to fully explore.
“It’s such an incredible book,” she said. “It’s a little tiny book, it’s a one-night read. But it’s got all of life’s lessons in it, that we still haven’t learned.”
One of the characters Badham gained insight into was Mrs. Dubose, the Finches’ nasty next door neighbor. Mrs. Dubose is in the film, but most of her scenes were left on the cutting room floor. That insight has only grown now that Badham is playing Mrs. Dubose on stage. When she initially went to see “To Kill a Mockingbird” on Broadway in 2018, she had no inkling that she would one day be invited to be a part of the cast. Now, having made her stage debut and been on the road for so long, she’s fallen in love with theater.
“I think the thing I love about it the most is that we’ve got such a wonderful cast and crew,” she said. “It just makes it fun every night, because these people put their heart and soul into it every night. Sometimes twice a day!”
She did, however, feel challenged in playing Mrs. Dubose. In the book and film, Scout is the protagonist, the charming little tomboy who is so easy to fall in love with. Mrs. Dubose is the opposite – a mean, angry old woman who holds racist beliefs and has a slew of other demons, including a terrible morphine addiction she’s desperate to kick. Badham had her reservations, but she ultimately decided it was worth it to take the chance.
“I’ve just tried to keep in mind that this story is so important to put out there, and I want people to realize what it is to live in a male-dominated, patriarchal Southern society,” she said. “Because there are a lot of people that want to take us back to there.”
Sorkin’s take on the source material is a bit different from the movie. Atticus looms large in both the book and the film, but the play centers his perspective and ramps up others. According to Badham, Tom, the man falsely accused of rape, and Calpurnia, the Finches’ Black housekeeper, both get more of a voice and more agency in this version of the story..
“I think what Aaron is trying to do is look at it with modern eyes and to give a more full look at all the different personalities,” she said. “To develop the characters more, which I think is very helpful.”
ON ATTICUS FINCH
The similarities between her own life and Scout’s were evident from the get-go, Badham said. However, she didn’t necessarily explore just how deeply those similarities ran until much later, around the time “Go Set a Watchman” came out in 2015.
It’s hard to consider “To Kill a Mockingbird” from a present-day perspective without considering “Go Set a Watchman,” even if that might be a little unfair to the original text. “Watchman” takes place after “To Kill a Mockingbird” and caused a stir of controversy for its depiction of an older, more bigoted Atticus Finch, until then a moral hero for so many. Badham (who calls Harper Lee “Miss Nelle”) has her own reservations about the book, mostly surrounding its publication in the first place. Lee wrote the manuscript, a rough draft, prior to “To Kill a Mockingbird,” but her editor was more interested in Scout’s perspective as a young girl, thus bringing us the book we all know.
Badham said she doesn’t know if Lee ever really wanted “Go Set a Watchman” published in the first place, and mostly considers it a fascinating look into a writer’s process. But the book did make her consider the similarities between Atticus and her own father. Badham’s father was a businessman in Alabama and, according to his daughter, often dealt with members of the KKK and other people he didn’t agree with in his professional life, worried his family might be at stake if he didn’t.
“I think we get to see more of what the South was like back then, and what it was to grow up as a white male lawyer during that period. You had to walk the chalk socially … you either fell in line, or bad things happened,” Badham said. “It didn’t matter what your heart told you, what you believed in, what you believed in at home. You had to deal with these people, because you had to live there and you had to work there, and you had to have your family there.”
All of these things – the challenge of playing Mrs. Dubose, the similarities between Atticus and her own father, the fact that racial inequality and violence continue as prevalent issues today – make “To Kill a Mockingbird” still such an important story to Badham, and one that still needs to be told.
“We are all on the same page about why we are doing this play,” she said of herself and the cast. “We really believe in the subject matter. We believe in the teaching tool that it is.”
Tickets for “To Kill a Mockingbird” at the Fox Theatre May 7-12 can be purchased online.