Tea at Trianon: Filming Truman Capote’s ‘A Christmas Memory’ in Alabama in 1966

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, December 14, 2024

Filming Truman Capote’s ‘A Christmas Memory’ in Alabama in 1966

I have been reading Gerald Clarke's biography of Capote so found this article to be of interest. From Al.com:

The film locale was chosen for its resemblance to Monroeville, which Perry said had become too modernized to fit the Depression-era timeline. The farmhouse was supposed to be a stand-in for the one owned by Capote’s Faulk cousins but the rambling house with dilapidated back steps was not like the Faulk home. The Faulks were not poor and lived well even during the Depression. Jenny Faulk, the main breadwinner of the family, was a merchant and the family never lacked for money, although Sook and young Truman would not have had money of their own and it is possible they scrimped for pennies and for ingredients, as in the story, to make Sook’s famous fruitcakes.
The film shows the duo gathering pecans for cakes, a scene filmed in a pecan grove in the community of Ramer, according to the article in The Montgomery Advertiser.
The character of “Buddy” was played by child actor Donnie Melvin. The film was narrated by Capote.
According to The Alabama Journal, a Montgomery woman who acted locally was chosen to portray one of the Faulk cousins in the movie. “Lavinia Cassels will make her nationwide debut on TV. The only Montgomerian in the cast, Lavinia plays on of the old maid aunts,” the article said. Although she is identified in the cast only as “aunt,” she is clearly portraying Capote’s elderly cousin, Jenny Faulk. (Read more.)