Rural Life and Culture in the Upper Cumberland

16. Lights, Camera, Action!

302 MICHAEL E. BIRDWELL 302 Chapter 16 LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION! The Upper Cumberland in Theater and Film MICHAEL E. BIRDWELL The Upper Cumberland debuted on film during the silent era. Because of early-twentieth-century fascination with the Hatfield-McCoy feud, stories of mountain romance and violence piqued the curiosity of moviegoers . A garish stereotype emerged, featuring hard-drinking, violent, isolated, and ignorant people. Unaware of the fruits of industrialization , these latter-day Luddites were clannish, unkempt, homegrown exotics. These hillbillies prided themselves in their prowess with weapons and their ability to produce and consume moonshine. As a result, a number of films were set in the Upper Cumberland region of Kentucky and Tennessee.1 Perhaps the first film set in the region was produced and directed by Kentucky native David Wark (D. W.) Griffith. Fascinated by the Civil War and the myth of the Lost Cause, Griffith made a number of movies about the conflict, with Birth of a Nation (1915) being his most famous and controversial. One of Griffith’s lesser known examinations of the subject, The Fugitive (1910), took place in the border region of the Upper Cumberland. The film, though fictional, graphically portrayed how divided the region truly was. The principal characters, good neighbors at the film’s inception, became bitter enemies as the war progressed— one choosing the Union and the other the Confederacy. The Civil War served as the inspiration for other films, including The Guerrilla Menace (1913, Bison). It featured a young man joining the Confederacy, leaving his sweetheart at the mercy of a malicious tavern owner. The barkeeper encourages Union guerrillas to harass southern sympathizers along the Kentucky-Tennessee border. Guerrillas menace Lights, Camera, Action! 303 the girl, threatening to rape her. The young Rebel discovers what is happening and returns home. He chokes the sadistic tavern owner to death, restoring order to his community while preserving the chastity of his girlfriend. Several films focused on the relationship between indigenous people of the Cumberland and outsiders. Moonshine and Love (1910, Powers Picture Plays), A Mountain Maid (1910, Edison), and The Grip of Love (1917, Universal) featured northern interlopers who came into the region . In Moonshine and Love, a new teacher moves to the area. He accidentally stumbles on an illicit moonshine still and is held hostage by menacing mountain rustics. A moonshiner’s daughter falls in love with the captive and helps him flee. The Grip of Love featured another schoolteacher -moonshiner encounter. This time the teacher was a female intent on educating the public about the evils of moonshine. She represented all that was good and virtuous, while the mountain moonshiner represented all that was evil and vile. In A Mountain Maid, a traveling theater troupe visits the region to observe local color for a play it is rehearsing. The two lead actors go separately into the hills and unwittingly act out the plot of the play they are preparing. The feud motif recurred in a number of films in the silent era, merging the Hatfield-McCoy conflict with other sources of inspiration. A Tennessee Love Story (1911, Selig) flagrantly plagiarizedWilliam Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, using the moonshine and family feuds as glue to hold the plot together. An accidental killing is blamed on Romeo, who marries Juliet in spite of the danger. She gives birth to a child in the final reel, and the feuding families agree to put their muzzle loaders away and end the feud. Blatantly capitalizing on the Hatfield-McCoy story, The Feud at Beaver Creek (1914, Kay-Bee) featured the Hatfields at war with the Coles. The film was set along the Kentucky-Tennessee border, with plenty of violence and caricatured mountaineers. Moonshine featured prominently in these early films in a number of guises. In Madge of the Mountains (1911), the bored son of a rich New Yorker decides to “go slumming” in the Cumberland Mountains with a team of revenuers. He enjoys destroying stills of poor mountaineers and jeers at their plight, regarding them as unworthy. During one raid, the New Yorker kills Madge’s father and is wounded in the gun battle. Madge, the Christian daughter, puts her animosity aside and nurses the New Yorker back to health. Impressed with her resolve and her ability to forgive, the New Yorker asks for Madge’s hand in marriage. At the 304 MICHAEL E. BIRDWELL film’s end, she is living happily in...