Just For Laughs
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| by Norman Rockwell |
BTW: check out my companion blog, Union Suit Fans in the Limelight; soon to be adding my Part II posting of some magnificant men in their flying machines.
Parsing Intruder
A couple of days ago, I received an email from a professor at a junior college not far from Oxford, Mississippi, a place I believed to be the hometown of author, William Faulkner. If you have been viewing my blog over the years, you know how much I appreciate blog readers' comments and participation in Union Suit Fan.
Here's another Guest Contributor I am pleased to include (it was I, rather than the professor, who added photographs to his comments)...
Chris: My name is Tomas Washington. I am a black professor of American Literature at a junior college near Oxford, Mississippi. A student of mine brought me your recent blog posting, "Intruder," regarding two very significant southern books and films. I teach from both of these important literary classics. I appreciate your bringing forth "To Kill A Mockingbird" and "Intruder In The Dust" to your readers. I should mention that I wear union suits myself during the winter as it does get chilly here in the south, although nothing like you contend with farther north.
After reading your posting and perusing your blog, I thanked my student and told him of my wearing winter underwear, the kind you feature in your blog, to his great amusement. Although I'm not sure he was at first familiar with the term "union suit," he indicated he knew of "onesies," that which he and others of his generation apparently call one-piece long underwear.
My purpose in writing is to parse, I suppose, a couple of items mentioned in your recent posting and hope you will forgive me for doing so. May I point out that William Faulkner, author of "Intruder In The Dust," was actually born in New Albany, Mississippi in 1897. Later, as a young boy, his family did move to Oxford.
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Chick pulls back on his recently dried long, wool underwear |
Also, a minor but possibly important point, the teenage boy, Chick Mallison, did indeed wear a union suit in Mr. Faulkner's novel as the author wrote when the boy changed out of his wet clothes and underwear, before being wrapped in a blanket to prevent hypothermia.
In the film version, however, the young teenager wore two-piece long gray underwear, probably wool. For some reason, the screenwriter and director decided to change Chick's underwear from the original union suit to two-piece woolen long johns.
Your readers might be interested to learn that "union suit" was mentioned in Chapter Two of "To Kill A Mockingbird." Jean Louise "Scout " Finch matter-of-factly states, "...reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around,..."
She and her older brother Jem, four years her senior, most assuredly wore union suits in cooler weather in their home of Maycomb, Alabama in the early 1930's. However, except for the aforementioned, within the book and in the film, Scout wore a type of shift under her dress and Jem wore white boxer shorts under his overalls.
In Chapter Six, Jem, Scout and their friend, Dill, run from Boo Radley's house late at night, having sneaked up to his front porch, almost getting caught...
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Rather than be caught, Jem struggles out of his pants with the help of his sister and their friend. He leaves the pants in the fencing, gets to his feet, and runs away in his boxers.
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Chris, may I mentioned one other significant book, a classic, later made into a film? It is, "The Learning Tree" by Gordon Parks which takes place in 1929 Kansas. In this coming of age autobiographical work, Newt's nemises, Marcus is chased out of his house in a storm at one point by his abusive father who happens to be wearing a red union suit. Another example of a southerner wearing one-piece long underwear..
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From one union suit fan to another,
Sincerely,
Dr. Tomas Washington.
Thanks, Professor. I do appreciate your insight concerning these remarkable, southern classics and your introducing my readers and me to "The Learning Tree." I'll look for this book and film. Feel free to check in with me anytime.
In the meantime, I encourage anyone interested in these classic films to find them streaming on many formats... Chris
Intruder
Twelve years before my favorite book, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, was published in 1960 and the subsequent 1962 unforgettable film starring my favorite actor, Gregory Peck, was released in theaters everywhere, a book by William Faulkner was published, dealing with a similar theme. Intruder In The Dust was published in 1948. A 1949 MGM movie was subsequently filmed based on this book as well. Like Mockingbird, Intruder was about a Mississippi black man, in this case a farmer, who was accused of a crime he did not commit. In Faulkner's book and movie, two teenage boys, one white and one black, a small town spinster, and a white country lawyer were shown assisting the quiet and compassionate Lucas Beauchamp in this thought-provoking crime drama wherein he was thought by most white folks as having a killed a white man. Faulkner was paid $50,000 for the film rights. The movie was shot in Faulkner's home town of Oxford, Mississippi.
The book opens with the white boy, Chick Mallison. later played by Claude Jarman, Jr. in the film, racing across the winter landscape, rabbit hunting. Misfortune follows Chick as he trips and falls into a partially frozen creek where he nearly freezes to death. His black friend helps him stumble to the closest shelter possible which happens to be the modest home of Lucas and Molly Beauchamp. Hoping to warm the thoroughly drenched boy before he succumbs to the bitter cold, Chick is saved by being undressed down to his union suit and sat before a warm fire while his clothes dry. Eventually, Molly coaxes Chick out of his wet woolen long underwear too, wraps him in a blanket and hangs up the long johns with his other clothes. Thus begins the saga of working to save the proud, kindhearted Lucas from a conviction of something he did not do.
Like much of William Faulkner's works, I found his book version hard to follow but certainly worth reading. The movie was very well filmed (in black and white), well acted and easier to follow. While not receiving the acclaim of the Harper Lee book and film, Intruder In The Dust made a significant impact on society, the plight of blacks in America before the civil rights movement, and for raising the consciousness of the African American dire straits and white attitudes of the 1940's and 50's.
