Sometime in 1966 word reached me that Hollywood legend Otto Preminger was coming to Baton Rouge to make a film and I immediately tried to get access to him and a story about the film being made. What better way for me to indulge in the fantasy world that is Hollywood than to do a story of the big Austrian director’s next project, Hurry Sundown, a story of a biracial friendship in the South.
Preminger came to town and made sure everybody knew it was him, speaking to the state legislature. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but you can imagine it was thanking everyone for letting him make his film in Louisiana and he would help them make money, just by being close to him.
The movie was being made in Baton Rouge and St Gabriel Women’s prison south of Baton Rouge, because it could pass for Georgia. It was at the women’s prison land where I first met Preminger and he proceeded to take me on a tour of what Hollywood had constructed in the name of make-believe reality.
The sight I remember the most was an old run-down poor people’s shack, the other side of the tracks-type we’ve all seen, with weathered wood that had stood for 150 years in south Louisiana, the climate turning it a gray-brown.
It was a two-room shack with the steps up to the porch worn away from so many comings and goings. Inside the main room they continued with the gray-brown decor, accented by similar colored wooden table and chairs.
I was led by Preminger in a pith helmet and John Phillip Law, an actor.
They took me backstage to room number two. It had a different decor, because you could see the wood was all new and there was a huge six-foot fan used to push the air-conditioned air into the poor people’s house when they were not filming.
Preminger and Law looked pleased with my reactions and resulting questions, or maybe it was just my hayseed look.
They tried more Hollywood flash on me, taking me to lunch under a big tent – one of those full catered affairs – during which time Preminger poured on the syrup heavy for his production with never-ending plates of fried chicken, BBQ ribs and greens.
Somewhere, in the bowels of WAFB-TV, in rusty film cans that were not used as ashtrays, is my take on Hurry Sundown pretty much the way Preminger wanted it. He even gave me a copy of the book which he signed in front of me. I was too much in awe of the man or the setting to question why he would sign a book he had not written. But then I wasn’t the first to fall victim to Hollywood glamour.
Looking at it now, why didn’t I get the bigger story – the story that I later learned had to be farmed, grown and questioned until it was a story worth telling. I suppose I practiced an early version of celebrity journalism, but without the Miley Cyrus or Kardashian Kult – believing everything that is fed to you, questioning nothing and coming back for more.
Naive.
Blinded by the light – of Hollywood.
Lazy.
The better journalistic story passed me by. Only later did I find out Louisiana State Troopers had to be called out to protect the cast and crew from bad intentions by the locals.
Word had it a burning cross was lit on one of the sets late at night, Other locals (meaning those mouthbreathers who couldn’t afford a KKK costume) called in death threats, directed sniper fire at vehicles and slashed tires.
The hotel where the cast and crew were staying came up with a ‘no coloreds allowed’ in the white only swimming pools, until Preminger threatened to leave without paying the bill. Then, only then, was a ‘mixed’ pool made available.
The moviemakers even had problems in New Orleans, that oasis of multi-culture, when they could not get a table in the famous Brennan’s restaurant in the French Quarter because some were black.
The actor Robert Hooks is quoted as saying: “All of us were convinced that we were surrounded by some of the dumbest and meanest people on the face of the earth, to say nothing of being the most cowardly.”
I’m sorry to say I missed those stories so I could gallivant around with Hollywood types. But a lot of media people missed the story as well as this apprentice TV reporter.
Most of the behind the scenes horrors I’ve mentioned on the Hurry Sundown set were reported as history, rather the breaking news of the day. It was missed by more than just the local newspaper; add to that the Associated Press, United Press International (UPI) and regional offices of major media organizations as well as the national press.
To this day I never have seen Hurry Sundown – just some fleeting glimpses of the film while it appeared in the mortuary of all films, the Saturday filler on television years after it was released. I never even read my signed copy of the book.
The film never did much at the box office. It was panned by critics for its “out-of-date racial stereotyping and tasteless attitude towards sexuality.”
Time magazine said: “Obviously, Hurry Sundown was intended as a paean to racial justice, but Producer-Director Otto Preminger chooses strange ways to display his big brotherhood. One sequence shows Negro sharecroppers singing a white-eyed hallelujah number reminiscent of those ’40s films that pretended to liberalize, but patently patronized. Two hours of such cinematic clichés make the viewer intolerant of everyone in the film, regardless of race, creed or color.”