Reeling Backward: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Looking back on one of the finest adaptations of one of the best books ever written, which also marked the film debut of the late -- and truly great -- Robert Duvall.

What better way to mark the ending of one of the greatest acting careers in cinematic history than with its beginning: Robert Duvall’s first film appearance as Arthur “Boo” Radley in the adaptation of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Duvall had already been a veteran of the theater for a decade and made a number of television appearances — including “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” in an episode ironically titled “Bad Actor” — before being tapped to play Boo at the suggestion of screenwriter Horton Foote, who’d noticed him in a stage production.

Though he only has a few minutes of screen time, the appearance of Boo marks the movie’s narrative crescendo, after being spoken about but not seen for nearly two hours. To play the mentally disturbed recluse, Duvall avoided the sun for six weeks and dyed his already wispy hair blond.

He has no lines of dialogue, and indeed is an almost inert presence on the screen. But in meeting the film’s central character and narrator, Miss Jean Louise “Scout” Finch (Mary Badham), Duvall attains cinematic immortality in a single moment, as Boo’s pained, withdrawn expression ever so slowly melts into a gentle smile of recognition.

It occurred to me watching “Mockingbird” after news of Duvall’s passing at 95 that he wouldn’t have even been eligible to get his SAG card based on this job, since his character never passes any words.

But oh, how he speaks…

I’d been pestering my boys for the last few months to watch “Mockingbird,” and the death of Duvall finally gave the prompt needed for the 15-year-old to agree. (The 12-year-old was down with the flu and still recalcitrant.) He loved it, though now I need to get him to read the book.

Narratively, it’s a neat trick by Lee to turn Boo into a sort of literary MacGuffin — a figure with no real importance to the tale until the very end, but somehow the locus of all the storytelling. Over the course of a couple of summers and fall in Deep South Maycomb, Ala., during the Great Depression, Scout and her older brother, Jem (Phillip Alford), plus summertime neighbor Dill Harris (John Megna) spend much of their attention focused on the chilling legend of Boo.

Shut up in the ramshackle house two doors down from the Finches, Boo supposedly was locked in the county jail basement for weeks until he nearly died after some youthful indiscretions, and was then chained up at home by his Bible-thumping uncle. He is rumored to come out only at night, and Scout and the rest are both terrified at the prospect of meeting him, and yearn for it.

They make dares about who will come closest to touching the Radleys’ front porch, and Jem is nearly caught and shot when they sneak through the barbed wire fence one night. Their first clue Boo may not be the violent freak they’ve heard about is when Jem finds his overalls, abandoned in the frantic escape, untangled and neatly folded when he returns to retrieve them.

Later, Boo will start leaving little presents in the knothole of the old tree in front of his house for the children to find — marbles, a pocket knife, a broken pocket watch, and eventually two soap carvings of Jem and Scout themselves. Their curiosity only deepens.

You may have noticed that in this summary, I haven’t yet touched on the main story of “Mockingbird.” Of course, as one of the most legendary works of fiction ever made, it’s well known. Scout and Jem’s father, the kindly town lawyer Atticus, is tapped to defend Tom Robinson (Brock Peterson), a Negro (the parlance of the time) accused of raping and beating a white teen girl, Mayella Ewell (Collin Wilcox).

Atticus knows from the start that Tom, despite incontrovertible evidence of innocence, will never get a fair trial in Maycomb. But he at least wants to prevent him from being lynched by Ewell’s father, the loathsome Bob (James Anderson), and his fellows, as well as set themselves up for a more promising appeal.

It’s a story of innocence lost, of racism and other forms of hatred, of lost mothers and tragically noble fathers.

Played by Gregory Peck in his most iconic role, Atticus is a model of perseverance and quiet strength. Around town he’s seen as an ineffectual egghead but part of the community, and Ewell and the others can’t believe he would actually take sides with a Black man. Atticus sees it as simply his duty to give any man the right to a robust defense.

Peck won the Academy Award, beating out Peter O’Toole, though “Lawrence of Arabia” took the prize for Best Picture. “Mockingbird” also nabbed Oscars for Foote’s screenplay adaptation and best art direction. Other nominations included ones for Badham and for director Robert Mulligan, his only nod from the Academy.

It’s funny — thought the movie came out in 1962 and is set 30 years earlier, I always marveled at how the childhood setting in “Mockingbird” was not so very different from my own in 1970s Florida. Our streets were paved, not dirt, but the way kids were given free rein to roam the neighborhood barefoot, get into scrapes and concoct mythology about their neighbors strongly resonated with me.

Watching it again, I thought of the weight Duvall must have felt in trying to embody this whispered-about apparition who acts almost as the deus ex machina to the narrative. And he does it with nary a word to say.

A few other things I noticed in this viewing: the character of Miss Maudie, the seemingly single woman living across the street played by Rosemary Murphy. She seems to be of an age and similar situation as Atticus, so why no hint of romance? Maybe just because it would be the most obvious thing to do.

I was also struck by the insouciant presence of William Windom as Horace Gilmer, the prosecuting attorney who knows he has a winning case simply by the color of the defendant’s skin. He sucks on a pencil eraser and even slings his leg over the arm of his chair in a way that seems insultingly carefree.

The movie commits the obvious move to make it Atticus’ story, seen through the eyes of Scout. The climax of his character arc is when he sullenly leaves the courtroom after losing Tom’s case, and all the Black folk consigned to watching from the balcony stand at attention to show their respect for his valiant, but doomed, effort.

“Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passing,” urges the kindly Reverend Sykes (an uncredited William “Bill” Walker).

But really, I think it’s Scout, Jem and the mystery of Boo Radley that forms the true heart of the movie. In the courtroom they learned that justice is not always blind; but it was in their own homestead where they learned the true meaning of loving thy neighbor.

Thanks, Robert.