Movies News Talk
Though To Kill A Mockingbird was not filmed near the actual state, Alabama seemed as though a camera was right there. Movie-Locations reports that the picture was shot on a Universal Studios backlot in Hollywood, California. Director Robert Mulligan and his staff knew that Monroeville, Alabama had changed too much by the time the 1962 picture was ready to be shot, so production would have to start the town from nothing and send filming back to Hollywood.
At the 35th presentation, Art Director Henry Bumstead took home an Academy Award for masterful retelling of the 1930s tiny Southern town look and feel. Though it might not be the real Maycomb/Monroeville, the backlot film set does an amazing job of portraying the village from Lee's book.
Via The Studio Tour, "Mockingbird Square" was the name of the square on the Universal Studios property where various additional To Kill A Mockingbird structures were constructed in addition to painstakingly replicated from the courthouse in Monroeville. The site was known as "Courthouse Square" following the Back to the Future films shot there, starting in 1985 (via The Studio Tour), but it was the term used when the Universal tour initially started in 1964.
Gregory Peck's actual outfit from the film was discovered in an unidentified box in a Universal Studios storeroom in 2005. Universal bought one of the other buildings on the set of To Kill a Mockingbird for $1 each from Dodgers Stadium developers in 1961; only one still stands: Boo Radley's house on Elm Street. As was Courthouse Square, the Boo Radley mansion was renovated and painted for CBS's The Ghost Whisperer. Over the years, the square has starred a lot of movies and TV shows including Bruce Almighty, Gremlins, and Magnum P.I.
Given how crucial the racial attitudes of the community are to narrating the story, the backdrop of To Kill a Mockingbird is a crucial component of the legacy of both the novel and the movie. This has some 1962 movie buffs wondering, "Where was To Kill a Mockingbird filmed?" Not only among the best films of the 1960s, many view Kill a Mockingbird as a classic of movies; the novel it is based on is a critical work of American literature. Classic courtroom genre characters are Atticus Finch, Boo Radley, Scout, Jem, and Tom Robinson.
Set in early 1930s Maycomb, Alabama, racial tensions there were as severe as anywhere in the United States of America at the time. Based on author Harper Lee's hometown of Monroeville (via SmithsonianMag), the dripping hot fictional town of Maycomb generates an oppressive atmosphere in the courtroom scenes of the movie, with how uncomfortable and irritating a swelteringly humid day inside would be, and creates an endless, mirage-like environment outside, where the Southern Gothic imagery is pronounced. Viewers might be shocked to find, nevertheless, where To Kill a Mockingbird was really shot.
The great casting and how faithfully the book's themes were adapted to the film help to explain the success of this masterpiece. Many readers of the book so view the adaptation as a first-rate translocation. Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, and Brock Peters lead Atticus Finch, Scout, and Tom Robinson correspondingly out of the three flawlessly cast members.
The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, finally winning three—Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Art Direction—after it became a big success and instant classic.
Still today, the narrative of To Kill a Mockingbird is significant since it investigates racial injustice and the need of empathy in society. The narrative of a little town in the South during the Jim Crow era reminds us constantly of the need of standing up for what is right, even if its themes are as pertinent as they ever are.
With the people in the film still unforgettable today as models of how to stand up for what's right, regardless of the situation, the film is both a potent drama and a lovely coming-of- age narrative.