Tennessee's starring role in Elia Kazan's "Wild River"

In Tennessee today, it is not unusual to see film crews around the state, whether filming a TV show like ABC’s “Nashville” or making movies like “The Green Mile,” “The Firm,” or “Walk the Line.” In 1959, however, the filming of an entire major Hollywood movie in Tennessee was a momentous occasion, especially in a small town. That year, director Elia Kazan and actors Montgomery Clift and Lee Remick were among the stars that descended on Bradley County to make “Wild River.” Most of the filming took place in the Tennessee towns of Charleston and Cleveland and on Coon Denton Island in the Hiwassee River. More than 40 local residents had speaking parts, and dozens more served as extras.

In a scene from "Wild River," Miss Ella (Jo Van Fleet) attempts to illustrate her determination to keep her land by pretending to force field hand Sam Johnson (Robert Earl Jones) to sell his beloved hunting dog "Old Blue." Sam offered to give her the dog, if she was going to stay on the island.
Department of Conservation Photograph Collection
Image online: http://tnsos.org/tsla/imagesearch/citation.php?ImageID=24121

The film dramatized the plight of rural landowners who lost their homes and farms when the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) built dams that flooded their land. Assistant State Archivist Dr. Wayne Moore notes, "In one of the largest uses of eminent domain power in American history, tens of thousands of Southerners had their property taken from them by the Federal government in order to build these dams and create the lakes.”

The Garth Island field hands leave the farm as the lake begins to rise.
Department of Conservation Photograph Collection
Image online: http://tnsos.org/tsla/imagesearch/citation.php?ImageID=24120

If you are interested in learning more about the people who lost their lands to the lakes created by TVA dams, TSLA has many resources to explore. Borden Deal's novel Dunbar's Cove (1957) was one of two novels on which the "Wild River" screenplay was based. Two academic studies of the subject are TVA Population Removal : Attitudes and Expectations of the Dispossessed at the Norris and Cherokee Dam Sites (1995) by Michael Rogers, and TVA and the Dispossessed : the Resettlement of Population in the Norris Dam Area (1982) by Michael J. McDonald.

TVA's trouble shooter, Chuck Glover (Montgomery Clift), and eminently worth-the-trouble Carol Garth Baldwin (Lee Remick) find romance amidst the drama in "Wild River." In the end, they have to join hands with the law.
Department of Conservation Photograph Collection
Image online: http://tnsos.org/tsla/imagesearch/citation.php?ImageID=24123

To see more images from the Department of Conservation Photographs Collection related to the movie, search "Wild River" in the TSLA Photograph Database: http://tnsos.org/tsla/imagesearch/index.php.

The movie set used as the "Garth family homestead," in the motion picture "Wild River," 1959.
Department of Conservation Photograph Collection
Image online: http://tnsos.org/tsla/imagesearch/citation.php?ImageID=24134

More about “Wild River”

The Library of Congress selected "Wild River" for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry in 2002. http://www.loc.gov/film/essays.html

Allison Inman directed a documentary, “Mud on the Stars: Stories from Elia Kazan’s Wild River“ (2011) about how the making of “Wild River” affected people in Bradley County. View a trailer for the documentary here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2LIssesvQw.

These notes from the Turner Classic Movie website are informative: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/95886/Wild-River/notes.html

At right, "Garth Island," reached by a current-pushed ferry. This location, at Coon Denton Island, a few miles up the Hiwassee River from Calhoun and Charleston, Tennessee, was chosen as typical of bottomland before the TVA dam was closed.
Department of Conservation Photograph Collection
Image online: http://tnsos.org/tsla/imagesearch/citation.php?ImageID=24117

The State Library and Archives is a division of the Tennessee Department of State and Tre Hargett, Secretary of State.