To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) is a much-loved, critically-acclaimed, classic trial film. It exhibits a
dramatic tour-de-force of acting, a portrayal of childhood innocence (told from a matured adult
understanding), and a progressive, enlightened 60s message about racial prejudice, violence,
moral tolerance and dignified courage.
The Academy Award winning screenplay was faithfully adapted by screenwriter Horton Foote
from the 1960 novel of the same name by Harper Lee - who had written a semi-autobiographical
account of her small-town Southern life (Monroeville, Alabama), her widower father/attorney
Amasa Lee, and its setting of racial unrest. [This was Lee's first and sole novel - and it won the
Pulitzer Prize in 1960.] The poor Southern town of deteriorating homes was authentically recreated on a Universal Studios' set. Released in the early 60s, the timely film reflected the state
of deep racial problems and social injustice that existed in the South.
The film begins by portraying the innocence and world of play of a tomboyish six year-old girl
named Scout (Mary Badham) and her ten year-old brother Jem (Phillip Alford), and their
perceptions of their widower attorney father Atticus (Gregory Peck). They also fantasize about a
'boogeyman' recluse who inhabits a mysterious house in their neighborhood. They are abruptly
brought out of their insulated and carefree world by their father's unpopular but courageous
defense of a black man named Tom Robinson (Brock Peters) falsely accused of raping a
Southern white woman. Although racism dooms the accused man, a prejudiced adult vengefully
attacks the children on a dark night - they are unexpectedly delivered from real harm in the film's
climax by the reclusive neighbor, "Boo" Radley.
The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture (producer Alan J.
Pakula lost to the epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962)), Best Director (Robert Mulligan), Best
Supporting Actress (Mary Badham, sister of director John Badham, known for Saturday Night
Fever (1977), Stakeout (1987), and other films), Best B/W Cinematography (Russell Harlan), and
Best Music Score - Substantially Original (an evocative score by Elmer Bernstein). It was honored
with three awards - Gregory Peck won a well-deserved Best Actor Award (his first Oscar win and
fifth Oscar nomination) for his solid performance as a courageous Alabama lawyer, Horton Foote
won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar (Foote won a second Oscar for Tender Mercies (1983)),
and the team of Art Directors/Set Decorators also received the top honor. [Although Gregory
Peck's inspirational performance as Atticus Finch turned out to be a perfect highlight to his long
career, Rock Hudson was actually the studio's first choice for the role.]
Relationships formed during filming would last for the remainder of Gregory Peck's life -- he
received the pocketwatch of Harper Lee's father; he became the surrogate father to Mary
Badham; and Brock Peters delivered Peck's eulogy after his death in June of 2003.
The black-and-white film opens with a wonderfully-fashioned credit sequence - beginning with an
overhead point-of-view shot of a young girl opening and looking into a old cigar box of collected
remembrances, valued treasures and trinkets, including:
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crayons (new and used)
a mechanical pencil
two carved soap doll figurines - one male and one female
an old broken pocket watch
a skeleton key
a broken pocket knife
a spelling medal
a few marbles
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jacks
an Indian head and Lincoln head penny
a chalk holder
and other minor objects
As she sings, hums and giggles to herself, she colors over lined paper with a round crayon,
revealing the title of the film in white letters. The camera circles and tracks slowly from left to right
along various collections of carefully-arranged objects in magnified close-up, while nostalgic
music plays (Elmer Bernstein's lyrical score):
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the broken pocket watch on a chain
a large safety pin and a chain
Indian head and Lincoln head pennies
a mechanical pencil
a translucent marble
a jack
a black and white striped marble that rolls and collides with a black marble
a beaten-up crayon
a disembodied pen point
another clear marble
a button
the broken pocket watch on a chain (again)
a harmonica
another multi-colored marble
a silver whistle
After drawing a simple, stick-figured 'mocking-bird', the girl shades in the winged creature and
then tears the paper through the bird, melodramatically foreshadowing the racial tensions and
divisions that will tear apart the innocence of the town and forever alter the child's fragile
memories.
The camera descends on a sleepy view of a small, languid town, Maycomb, Alabama, in the early
1930s at the height of the Depression. The story is poignantly and sentimentally told from the
eyes of a six year old tom-boy - Jean Louise "Scout" Finch (9 year-old Mary Badham in her film
debut). [Her character represents the novel's author. Finch was the middle name of Harper Lee's
father. Also, a mockingbird and a Finch are both songbirds.] Uncredited Kim Stanley narrates the
film in voice-over as an adult version of Scout. She intelligently recalls where she grew up, in a
small Southern town, where "the day was 24 hours long, but it seemed longer":
Maycomb was a tired old town, even in 1932 when I first knew it. Somehow, it was hotter then.
Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon after their three
o'clock naps. And by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frosting from sweating and sweet
talcum. The day was twenty-four hours long, but it seemed longer. There's no hurry, for there's
nowhere to go and nothing to buy...and no money to buy it with. Although Maycomb County had
recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself...That summer, I was six years old.
Early one morning, one of the poor farmers from the countryside hit hard by the Depression,
Walter Cunningham (Crahan Denton) drives through town in a horse-drawn wagon. Ill at ease
and embarrassed, he delivers a crokersack full of hickory nuts to the clapboard Finch residence
as part of his entailment for legal work. The previous week, he had brought "delicious" collards as
payment. Scout, dressed in blue jeans, is swinging on a rope by the side of her house, and then
leaning on a tire swing (hung on another rope). Her father is a widower defense lawyer,
spectacled Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), who is struggling to raise his two children - "Scout" and
ten-year-old son Jem (13 year-old Phillip Alford in his film debut) - after his wife died four years
earlier. Scout inquires about their financial status compared to that of the Cunninghams:
Scout: Is he poor?
Atticus: Yes.
Scout: Are we poor?
Atticus: We are indeed.
Scout: Are we as poor as the Cunninghams?
Atticus: No, not exactly. The Cunninghams are country folks, farmers. The crash hit them the
hardest.
A warm-hearted neighbor woman, Miss Maudie Atkinson (Rosemary Murphy), who is keenly
interested in Atticus and his children, is working in her garden across the street. When Jem
complains to her that his father "is too old for anything," she stoutly defends him:
He can do plenty of things...He can make somebody's will so airtight you can't break it. You count
your blessings and stop complaining, both of you. Thank your stars he has the sense to act his
age.
As Jem looks down from his treehouse into Miss Stephanie Crawford's (Alice Ghostley) collard
patch next door, he spots a crouching boy sitting among the plants. They soon become friends
with Charles Baker "Dill" Harris (John Megna) who is visiting his Aunt for two weeks in the
summertime from Meridian, Mississippi. Dill is a peculiar, eccentric boy wise beyond his years
who boasts he's "goin' on seven" and "I'm little but I'm old." [His character was based upon
Harper Lee's childhood friend and neighbor, Pulitzer prize-winning author Truman Capote.]
The imaginative children expect to enjoy their summer days in a tree-house, playing games,
swinging on a rubber tire, and fantasizing about a neighboring house that harbors the town's
pariah. They are intrigued by the creaky old wooden place, believing the frightful tale that it is
occupied by a hateful man named Mr. Radley (Richard Hale) and his mentally-crazed, terrifying
son - an elusive, mysterious recluse named Arthur "Boo" Radley (Robert Duvall in a stunning film
debut). Jem sees Mr. Radley walk by and quiets his pals, and then they run over and stare at the
Radley house and yard:
Jem: There goes the meanest man that ever took a breath of life.
Dill: Why is he the meanest man?
Jem: Well, for one thing, he has a boy named Boo that he keeps chained to a bed in the house
over yonder...See, he lives over there. Boo only comes out at night when you're asleep and it's
pitch-dark. When you wake up at night, you can hear him. Once I heard him scratchin' on our
screen door, but he was gone by the time Atticus got there.
Dill: (intrigued) I wonder what he does in there? I wonder what he looks like?
Jem: Well, judgin' from his tracks, he's about six and a half feet tall. He eats raw squirrels and all
the cats he can catch. There's a long, jagged scar that runs all the way across his face. His teeth
are yella and rotten. His eyes are popped. And he drools most of the time.
Dill's spinsterish Aunt Stephanie Crawford fills the children's myth-making minds with even more
horrifying images of the fearsome Boo Radley - who hasn't been seen since his family locked him
up years earlier:
There's a maniac lives there and he's dangerous...I was standing in my yard one day when his
Mama come out yelling, 'He's killin' us all.' Turned out that Boo was sitting in the living room
cutting up the paper for his scrapbook, and when his daddy come by, he reached over with his
scissors, stabbed him in his leg, pulled them out, and went right on cutting the paper. They
wanted to send him to an asylum, but his daddy said no Radley was going to any asylum. So they
locked him up in the basement of the courthouse till he nearly died of the damp, and his daddy
brought him back home. There he is to this day, sittin' over there with his scissors...Lord knows
what he's doin' or thinkin'.
When the town clock strikes five, Jem and Scout run down the street to meet Atticus. On the way
to town, Jem spins another cautionary tale about another neighbor - Mrs. Henry Lafayette
Dubose, a peculiar, elderly woman who sits on her porch in a wheelchair and is cared for by a
black woman named Jessie:
Listen, no matter what she says to you, don't answer her back. There's a Confederate pistol in
her lap under her shawl and she'll kill you quick as look at you. Come on.
Although Scout acts slightly disrespectful toward the woman as she passes, a few moments later
her father (on his return from town) calms things by taking an interest in Mrs. Dubose's beautiful
flowers. Jem whispers to Scout that he understands how his father practices courteous
diplomacy:
He gets her interested in something nice, so she forgets to be mean.
Later that evening, the camera intrudes through a gauzy curtain covering the Finch window into
an intimate bedtime scene in Scout's bedroom, where she finishes reading a passage outloud to
her father from Robinson Crusoe. Boo Radley is still on her mind and she asks Atticus about him,
and then inquires about Atticus' watch - economically revealing emotional feelings about the
missing Mrs. Finch:
Scout: Atticus, do you think Boo Radley ever really comes and looks in my window at night? Jem
says he does. This afternoon when we were over by their house...
Atticus (interrupting and admonishing): Scout. I told you and Jem to leave those poor people
alone. I want you to stay away from their house and stop tormentin' them.
Scout: Yes, sir.
Atticus (after checking his pocket watch): Well, I think that's all the reading for tonight, honey. It's
gettin' late.
Scout: What time is it?
Atticus: Eight-thirty.
Scout: May I see your watch? (She delights once more in reading the inscription in the watch.)
'To Atticus, My Beloved Husband.' Atticus, Jem says this watch is gonna belong to him some day.
Atticus: That's right.
Scout: Why?
Atticus: Well, customary for the boy to have his father's watch.
Scout: What are you gonna give me?
Atticus: Well, I don't know that I have much else of value that belongs to me. But there's a pearl
necklace - and there's a ring that belonged to your mother. And I've put them away and they're to
be yours. (Scout stretches out her arms and smiles. He kisses and hugs her goodnight).
Sitting motionless and silent on the porch swing after both his children have gone to bed, Atticus
overhears his children's conversation about the mother they can barely remember or picture in
their minds. In the sensitively-executed scene, the younger Scout asks her older brother (offcamera) about their late mother who died when she was too young to remember:
Scout: How old was I when Mama died?
Jem: Two.
Scout: How old were you?
Jem: Six.
Scout: Old as I am now.
Jem: Uh huh.
Scout: Was Mama pretty?
Jem: Uh, huh.
Scout: Was Mama nice?
Jem: Uh, huh.
Scout: Did you love her?
Jem: Yes.
Scout: Did I love her?
Jem: Yes.
Scout: Do you miss her?
Jem: Uh, huh.
They are trying to come to terms with the ambiguities and uncertainties of their lives, and justice
(and injustice) in the world. At six years of age, Scout's innocent reflections help her to
contemplate and understand her circumstances.
Seventy-five year old local judge, Judge Taylor (Paul Fix) drops by and informs Atticus that the
grand jury will charge accused black man Tom Robinson (Brock Peters) the following day.
Although the children and his practice take much of his time, the deeply-principled man reflects
thoughtfully and then agrees to "take the case", defend the accused man, and represent him in
the court.
The next morning, Dill dares Jem (with a bet of a Grey Ghost against two Tom Swifts) to go
"farther than Boo Radley's gate." Even though Jem asserts: "I ain't scared. I go past Boo Radley's
house nearly every day of my life," he doesn't take the challenge as they go out into the street to
play. Scout is placed in a rubber tire, given a big shove, and is accidentally rolled into the
Radley's front yard. She is stunned and dizzy when the tire hits the steps of the Radley's front
porch. To assist his frozen-with-fear, helpless sister, Jem takes off toward her and drags her
away from danger. And then he decides to prove he's not scared and take Dill's bet. He runs up
the steps to the front door, touches it, comes running down, and then races out of the yard and
back home yelling: "Run for your life, Scout. Come on, Dill." When they are out of danger, they
are exhausted and Jem boasts: "Now who's a coward? You tell them about this back in Meridian
County, Mr. Dill Harris."
Respectful of his pal, Dill suggests that they venture downtown where there are more
"instruments of torture" to experience in the town's courthouse:
Let's go down to the courthouse and see the room that they locked Boo up in. My aunt says it's
bat-infested, and he nearly died from the mildew. Come on. I bet they got chains and instruments
of torture down there.
Paralleling the imaginative dreamworld of the children is another contradictory and volatile adult
world of social issues. Scout and Jem reluctantly follow Dill into the courthouse hall and up to the
second floor to find Atticus. [The interior of the courtroom in the film is an almost-identical copy of
the Monroe County Courthouse that existed in author Harper Lee's hometown of Monroeville,
Alabama.]
With their assistance by making a "saddle" with their arms, Dill is hoisted up to peer in the glass
window high in the tall courtroom doors. He vividly describes the scene of supposed justice
during the grand jury hearing for Tom Robinson, from his own boy-hood point of view:
Not much is happening. The judge looks like he's asleep. I see your daddy and a colored man.
The colored man looks to me like he's crying. I wonder what he's done to cry about?...There's a
whole lot of men sitting together on one side and one man is pointing at the colored man and
yelling. They're taking the colored man away.
Atticus, dressed in a three-piece white linen suit, is appalled that his children are there and sends
them back home immediately. The respected, incorruptible Atticus quickly becomes embroiled in
a hostile world of hatred and prejudice. Poor 'white trash' redneck Robert E. Lee (Bob) Ewell
(James Anderson), the father of the alleged rape victim Mayella Violet Ewell (Collin Wilcox),
blocks Atticus' way and questions his decision to take the case and vigorously defend a black
man:
I'm real sorry they picked you to defend that nigger that raped my Mayella. I don't know why I
didn't kill him myself instead of goin' to the sheriff. That would have saved you and the sheriff and
the taxpayers lots of trouble...
Ewell even threatens Atticus' children: "What kind of a man are you? You got chillun of your own."
That evening, Dill and Jem decide to sneak up to the Radley house where the porch swing creaks
- with a scared and nervous Scout following behind them - to "look in the window of the Radley
house and see if we can get a look at Boo Radley." The three crawl and squeeze under a high
wire fence at the rear of the Radley property and cautiously approach the house. At the
ramshackle back porch, Jem creeps up the noisy steps toward one of the windows and tries to
peer in. Suddenly, a large shadow of a man appears, moves across the porch and looms over
him - crossing over his body. A menacing hand reaches out. All of them cover their eyes and
cower in sheer fright, but then the image retreats just as mysteriously. They leap off the porch
and back under the fence, but Jem's overalls get snagged in the wire mesh - he discards his
pants (with Scout's and Dill's assistance) to get untangled and free and then runs toward home in
his underwear.
To avoid being whipped by his father for not having his pants, Jem disappears through the fence
to go back and retrieve his abandoned overalls - it is a tense few moments as Scout slowly
counts to fourteen, hoping that her brother (off-screen) will return. Her counting is interrupted by
the sound of a shotgun blast. Jem bursts through the hole in the fence, just as Mr. Radley
appears with his shotgun on the street, telling Atticus and Aunt Stephanie that he "shot at a
prowler out in his collard patch."
With summer ending and Dill returning to his home, school begins. Tomboy Scout must give up
her overalls for a dress. She awkwardly pokes and tugs at it on her first day of school: "I still don't
see why I have to wear a darn old dress." In the schoolyard, her natural outspokenness, honesty
and candor get her into a tussle with Walter Cunningham Jr., (Steve Condit), the seven year-old
son of the farmer from Old Sarum. She rubs his nose in the dirt. Scout explains to Jem, as he
restrains her with all his might, why she took out her frustration at the teacher on the poor boy:
He made me start off on the wrong foot. I was trying to explain to that darn lady teacher why he
didn't have no money for his lunch, and she got sore at me.
Jem promises that his "crazy" sister won't fight with him any more and then invites young Walter
over to the Finch household for a dinner of roast beef (corn bread, turnips and rice) rather than
his usual fare of "squirrels and rabbits." During the meal, Atticus explains the responsibility his
father taught him in using his first gun when he was thirteen or fourteen - and how it is 'a sin to kill
a mockingbird' - a songbird that harmlessly exists only to give pleasure:
I remember when my daddy gave me that gun. He told me that I should never point it at anything
in the house. And that he'd rather I'd shoot at tin cans in the backyard, but he said that sooner or
later he supposed the temptation to go after birds would be too much, and that I could shoot all
the blue jays I wanted, if I could hit 'em, but to remember it was a sin to kill a mockingbird...Well, I
reckon because mockingbirds don't do anything but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat
people's gardens, don't nest in the corncribs, they don't do one thing but just sing their hearts out
for us.
Scout watches Walter as he liberally pours thick syrup all over his meal. Appalled and disgusted,
she hurts his feelings: "He's gone and drown-ded his dinner in syrup and then he's pourin' it all
over." In the kitchen, the black housekeeper Calpurnia (Estelle Evans) gives Scout a lesson
about manners and tolerance:
That boy is your company. And if he wants to eat up that tablecloth, you let him, you hear? And if
you can't act fit to eat like folks, you can just set here and eat in the kitchen.
Scout is sent back to the table with a smack on her rear. With a caring understanding of the
mysteries of childhood, Atticus finds Scout on the slatted porch swing hanging on a rusty chain
and sits next to her. He listens to her share her feelings about the crisis on her first day of school,
and her criticisms of her teacher. Without talking down to her, he eloquently, simply, and tenderly
presents her with an invaluable lesson on how to accept the differences between one human
being and another:
If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never
really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...Until you climb inside
of his skin and walk around in it.
With paternal wisdom, he also tells her about the meaning and value of compromising:
Atticus: Do you know what a compromise is?
Scout: Bendin' the law?
Atticus: Uh, no. It's an agreement reached by mutual consent. Now, here's the way it works. You
concede the necessity of goin' to school, we'll keep right on readin' the same every night, just as
we always have. Is that a bargain?
As the scene continues, the adult Jean-Louise - in voice-over - praises her father:
There just didn't seem to be anyone or anything Atticus couldn't explain. Though it wasn't a talent
that would arouse the admiration of any of our friends, Jem and I had to admit he was very good
at that, but that was all he was good at, we thought.
In the next memorable sequence, Atticus proves his Lincoln-esque stature to his children.
Although Scout is disbelieving and yells out "He can't shoot" when Sheriff Heck Tate (Frank
Overton) hands his rifle to her father, Atticus takes aim with a rifle at a rabid dog moving
erratically down the street outside their home. He raises up his glasses a few times on his
forehead to see better, and then removes them altogether by dropping them on the street. Jem
and Scout are both dumbfounded and stunned when the rifle cracks and the dog flops over dead.
The Sheriff tells Jem about the hidden abilities of his modest father who hasn't shot a gun in
twenty years: "Didn't you know your daddy's the best shot in this county?"
That night, Jem and Scout join their father as he rides into the country to compassionately talk to
his client's family - twenty-nine year-old Helen Robinson (Kim Hamilton), the wife of the man he is
defending. While Atticus is in the Robinson house, an unshaven and drunken Bob Ewell staggers
toward the car, holds onto it to steady himself, and stares at the two children. Atticus appears and
after they face off, Ewell hatefully snarls at him: "You nigger lover." Jem's understanding of the
world is altered and he needs reassurance: "No need to be afraid of him, son. He's all bluff." As
they drive away, the camera takes Jem's point-of-view as he watches the prejudiced, gesturing
and threatening figure standing in the middle of the road. When they return home, Atticus adds:
"There's a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep 'em all away from you. That's
never possible."
While Atticus drives Calpurnia home, Jem sits on the porch in the rocking chair. He is spooked
and terrorized by rustling trees, moving shadows, and the calls of a nightbird. He starts to run
toward the Radley place in the direction of his father's car, calling out: "Atticus, Atticus." Realizing
it is futile to try to catch up to the car, he stops and turns toward home at the edge of the Radley
property, noticing something shiny and reflective in the moonlight - in the hollow knothole of an
old oak tree. He sticks his hand in, takes the object out, notices it is a shiny medal, and quickly
pockets it before running home.
While Scout argues and fights at school with another boy, this time Cecil Jacobs (Kim Hector),
the adult voice of Jean-Louise remembers the incident that provoked her:
Atticus had promised me he would wear me out if he ever heard of me fightin' any more. I was far
too old and too big for such childish things, and the sooner I learned to hold in, the better off
everybody would be. I soon forgot...Cecil Jacobs made me forget.
Later that afternoon on the Finch front porch, Scout sits with her head buried in her arms. She
reveals to Atticus the 'fightin'' words that caused her to beat up another neighborhood boy to
defend her father's work:
Scout: Atticus, do you defend niggers?
Atticus: Don't say 'nigger,' Scout.
Scout: I didn't say it...Cecil Jacobs did. That's why I had to fight him.
Atticus (sternly): Scout, I don't want you fightin'!
Scout: I had to, Atticus, he...
Atticus (interrupting): I don't care what the reasons are. I forbid you to fight.
Atticus patiently explains his reasons for making the unpopular decision to defend a Negro - a
most-hated and despised person in society, regardless of the consequences:
Atticus: There are some things that you're not old enough to understand just yet. There's been
some high talk around town to the effect that I shouldn't do much about defending this man.
Scout: If you shouldn't be defending him, then why are you doing it?
Atticus: For a number of reasons. The main one is that if I didn't, I couldn't hold my head up in
town. I couldn't even tell you or Jem not to do somethin' again. (He puts his arm around her.)
You're gonna hear some ugly talk about this in school. But I want you to promise me one
thing...that you won't get into fights over it, no matter what they say to you.
In the knothole, both Jem and Scout find two carved soap figurines - one the figure of a boy and
the other a girl with a crude cloth dress. They realize that the playthings have a resemblance to
themselves: "Look, the boy has hair in front of his eyebrows like you do...Yeah - and the girl
wears bangs like you - these are us!" Suddenly, Mr. Radley comes from behind the tree and
starts filling the knothole with cement from a trowel.
That night, Jem shows Scout the contents of a cigar box after forcing her to promise "never to tell
anybody." In it is the growing collection of items that he has found in the knothole - including a
crayon, marbles, a whistle, a spelling medal, an old pocket watch, and a pocketknife. And he
reveals another secret - when he went back to fetch his tangled britches, they were neatly "folded
across the fence - sorta like they was expectin' me."
An adult Jean-Louise comments about the mystery:
It was to be a long time before Jem and I talked about Boo again.
When school finally ends, summer and Dill arrive again. The trial of Tom Robinson is scheduled
for the following day, and the defendant is brought back into town from the Abbottsville jail where
he was held for safe-keeping. That night, Atticus decides to stand guard outside the town jail
because of rumoured agitation from "that bunch out at Old Sarum." Later that night, the three
children run from the Finch house toward the jail through deserted and dark streets. From behind
bushes in the town's square, they notice a solitary light burning in the distance. While reading a
law book under a lamp shade he has brought from home, Atticus is seated in a chair propped up
in front of the jail's front door where Tom Robinson is being held. Jem is satisfied: "I just wanted
to see where he was and what he was up to. He's all right. Let's go back home."
In one of the most compelling scenes in the film, as the children begin taking a shortcut home,
four cars noisily converge on the jail from the Meridian Highway. The children hide and watch
from the cover of the bushes. The armed men get out of their cars and surround Atticus - they are
a self-appointed lynch mob that has gathered to take justice into its own hands after diverting
Sheriff Tate. To get a closer look, the three kids run over to the cars. Scout, in particular, who is
oblivious to the danger, pushes her way through the crowd to glimpse her stern-faced father - he
immediately fears for their safety. While Jem stands by his father and stubbornly refuses to leave
after his father's command, a stalwart Scout faces down the crowd and sees someone she
recognizes. She conducts an innocent, uninhibited exchange with Walter Cunningham Sr., and
engages him in a disarming, candid, yet humanized conversation. Scout makes him
uncomfortable in front of the mob:
I said, 'Hey,' Mr. Cunningham. How's your entailment getting along? (He turns and looks away.)
Don't you remember me, Mr. Cunningham? I'm Jean Louise Finch. You brought us some hickory
nuts one early morning, remember? We had a talk. I went and got my daddy to come out and
thank you. I go to school with your boy. I go to school with Walter. He's a nice boy. Tell him 'hey'
for me, won't you? You know something, Mr. Cunningham, entailments are bad.
Entailments...(She suddenly becomes self-conscious) Atticus, I was just saying to Mr.
Cunningham that entailments were bad but not to worry. Takes a long time sometimes...(To the
men who are staring up at her) What's the matter? I sure meant no harm, Mr. Cunningham.
Scout's words cause him to break up the potential lynching. The embarrassed crowd disbands.
The next day, the explosive trial brings scores of country people to town to watch the case
unfolding in the rural Southern courthouse. Although the children have been ordered to say
home, Jem can't resist being there with them: "I'm not gonna miss the most excitin' thing that ever
happened in this town!" The courthouse square is empty, but the courthouse is filled with
spectators. Because the downstairs is "packed solid," elderly black Baptist minister Rev. Sykes
(Bill Walker) lets the children join the blacks that are consigned to the 'colored' balcony on three
sides of the courtroom. They peer over the balcony railing onto the scene below. The jury, seated
to the left under long windows, is composed nearly entirely of farm folk who haven't been able to
avoid jury duty.
The courtroom sequences are dramatically-filmed. In the opening testimony by Sheriff Tate to the
circuit solicitor Mr. Gilmer (William Windom), it is learned that on the night of August 21st, Bob
Ewell reported the beating and rape (she was "taken advantage of") of his girl, Mayella Violet
Ewell (Collin Wilcox). It is simply the word of two white people against the word of a black man.
During cross-examination by Atticus, Tate reveals that nobody called a doctor: "she was beaten
around the head. There were bruises already comin' on her arms. She had a black eye startin'
an'... - it was her left." But then after some clarification, he corrects himself:
It was her right eye, Mr. Finch. Now I remember. She was beat up on that side of her face...She
had bruises on her arms and she showed me her neck. There were definite finger marks on her
gullet...I'd say they were all around.
The next witness is Mayella's father Bob Ewell, who testifies that when he came home that night,
he heard his daughter screaming and found Robinson on top of her before chasing him from the
house: "I seen him with my Mayella...po' Mayella was layin' on the floor squallin'." During crossexamination, Atticus hands paper and pencil to Ewell and has him write his name to discover that
he is left-handed. The children watch everything very intently from the balcony ledge. Ewell
angrily complains to the judge: "That Atticus Finch is tryin' to take advantage of me. You gotta
watch lawyers like Atticus Finch."
Mayella, a "white trash" woman accustomed to strenuous labor, takes the stand next and testifies
that she invited Tom inside her yard to do chores. That was when he attacked her in the house:
I was sittin' on the porch, and he come along. Uh, there's this old chifforobe in the yard,
and I-I said, 'You come in here, boy, and bust up this chifforobe, and I'll give you a
nickel.' So he-he come on in the yard and I go in the house to get him the nickel and I
turn around, and 'fore I know it, he's on me, and I fought and hollered, but he had me
around the neck, and he hit me again and again, and the next thing I knew, Papa was in
the room, a-standin' over me, hollerin', 'Who done it, who done it?'
During cross-examination, she reveals that her father is usually "tol'able" ("good" or "easy to get
along with") except when he's drinking. Although she asserts that her father "never touched a hair
o' my head in my life," he could beat her when "he's riled" - drinking. Evasively, she is uncertain
whether the critical day was the first time she had ever asked him to come inside the fence. And
she can't recollect "if he hit me" but then changes her mind. When Miss Mayella identifies the
attacker as the defendant Tom Robinson, Atticus asks him to catch a water glass tossed at him he does so with his right hand. Tom explains that his left arm is useless:
I can't use my left hand at all. I got it caught in a cotton gin when I was twelve years old. All my
muscles were tore loose.
Mayella's testimony is disjointed, confusing, and forced, and leaves no doubt that she is lying.
Cornered when Atticus asks: "Do you want to tell us what really happened?", she loses her
composure. The naive, beleaguered woman grimly shouts toward the accused black man and the
jury, and then runs from the witness stand to elicit sympathy:
I got somethin' to say. And then I ain't gonna say no more. He took advantage of me. An' if you
fine, fancy gentlemen ain't gonna do nothin' about it, then you're just a bunch of lousy, yella,
stinkin' cowards, the - the whole bunch of ya, and your fancy airs don't come to nothin'. Your
Ma'am'in' and your Miss Mayellarin' - it don't come to nothin', Mr. Finch, not...no.
Tom Robinson takes the stand to testify and states that he had to pass the Ewell place going to
and from the field every day. For over a year, Mayella had often invited him inside the fence to do
chores, but he never charged her: "Seemed like every time I passed by yonder, she'd have some
little somethin' for me to do, choppin' kindlin', and totin' water for her." On the night of the alleged
beating and rape, Mayella invited Tom inside the house to fix a door that didn't need fixing - it was
uncharacteristically quiet with all seven children in town getting ice cream with seven nickels she
had saved to treat them ("She said it took her a slap year to save seb'm nickels...").
Uncomfortable with the next bit of testimony, Tom's nostrils flare and his forehead breaks out into
a nervous sweat:
Well, I said I best be goin', I couldn't do nothin' for her, an' she said, oh, yes I could. An' I asked
her what, and she said to jus' step on the chair yonder an' git that box down from on top of the
chifforobe. So I done like she told me, and I was reachin' when the next thing I know
she...grabbed me aroun' the legs. (A murmur erupts in the courthouse) She scared me so bad I
hopped down an' turned the chair over. That was the only thing, only furniture 'sturbed in the
room, Mr. Finch, I swear, when I left it....Mr. Finch, I got down off the chair, and I turned around
an' she sorta jumped on me. She hugged me aroun' the waist. She reached up an' kissed me on
the face. She said she'd never kissed a grown man before an' she might as well kiss me. She
says for me to kiss her back. (Tom shakes his head, re-living the ordeal with his eyes half-closed)
And I said, Miss Mayella, let me outta here, an' I tried to run. Mr. Ewell cussed at her from the
window and said he's gonna kill her.
Although Tom unequivocally denies raping or harming Mayella Ewell in any way, Gilmer
establishes that the defendant was "strong enough" to hurt the woman. The prosecutor also
insinuates some ulterior motive on Tom's part: "How come you're so all-fired anxious to do that
woman's chores?" Tom reveals that he performed the chores for free - and foolishly admits that
he felt sorry for the white woman:
Tom: Looks like she didn't have nobody to help her. Like I said...
Gilmer: With Mr. Ewell and seven children on the place? You did all this choppin' and work out of
sheer goodness, boy? Ha, ha. You're a mighty good fella, it seems. Did all that for not one penny.
Tom: Yes, sir. I felt right sorry for her. She seemed...
Gilmer: You felt sorry for her? A white woman? You felt sorry for her?
Later that day, Atticus bravely proves the innocence of his client in a final, low-keyed defense
summation to the emotionless jury. He begins by stating that the case never should have been
brought to trial: "The State has not produced one iota of medical evidence that the crime Tom
Robinson is charged with ever took place." He asserts that the testimony of Mayella was "called
into serious question" and was "flatly contradicted by the defendant."
Atticus uses the testimony about Tom's useless left hand to illustrate that the white girl Mayella
("the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance") couldn't have been struck by Tom Robinson. She
was savagely struck, beaten, and raped by someone who was left-handed [Mayella was clearly
injured from a beating by her father]. He vigorously and powerfully argues that Mayella lied
because she broke a code that prohibits a white woman from becoming sexually attracted to a
black man - an unspeakable offense:
...in an effort to get rid of her own guilt. Now I say guilt, gentlemen, because it was guilt that
motivated her. She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored
code of our society. A code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to
live with. She must destroy the evidence of her offense. But what was the evidence of her
offense? Tom Robinson - a human being. She must put Tom Robinson away from her. (He
gestures, pushing away with his hands.) Tom Robinson was to her, a daily reminder of what she
did. Now what did she do? She tempted a Negro. She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She
did something that in our society is unspeakable. She kissed a black man. Not an old uncle, but a
strong, young Negro man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing
down on her afterwards.
Atticus asserts that the Ewell witnesses thought, with "cynical confidence," that they could get
away with their false testimony and trusted that the jury would agree with them. His argument is
convincing - Mayella failed in seducing Tom Robinson, and then falsely accused him of rape after
being beaten by her father for making sexual advances toward a black man. Atticus looks into the
eyes of the jury with quiet authority, patience, fair-mindedness, and a strong sense of right and
wrong, arguing further that it should not be assumed that all whites tell the truth and all black
people lie:
The witnesses for the State, with the exception of the Sheriff of Maycomb County, have
presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their
testimony would not be doubted. Confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the
assumption, the evil assumption, that all Negros lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral
beings, all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women. An assumption that one
associates with minds of their caliber, and which is in itself, gentlemen, a lie, which I do not need
to point out to you. And so, a quiet, humble, respectable Negro, who has had the unmitigated
temerity to feel sorry for a white woman, has had to put his word against two white peoples. The
defendant is NOT GUILTY, but somebody in this courtroom is.
His final appeal to the jury to acquit the defendant and show moral courage is presented with
dignity and eloquence:
Now gentlemen, in this country, our courts are the great levelers. In our courts, all men are
created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system.
That's no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality. Now I am confident that you gentlemen will
review - without passion - the evidence that you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this
man to his family. In the name of God, do your duty. In the name of God, believe Tom Robinson.
Several hours later, the jury returns to the courtroom. Despite a convincing defense, the case is
hopeless from the start - the accused black man is convicted by the prejudiced white jury. Atticus
tells Tom as he is handcuffed and led from the court that he plans to appeal: "I'll go to see Helen
first thing in the morning. I told her not to be disappointed, we'd probably lose this time." After the
courtroom clears, Atticus gathers his papers and walks down the middle aisle in defeat. The
blacks in the balcony stand to show dignified respect as he passes out the courtroom door. Rev.
Sykes alerts Scout to stand in his honor:
Miss Jean Louise, stand up, your father's passin'.
Although Atticus' defense has caused him to suffer many injustices, his compassionate defense
has won him the respect and admiration of his two motherless children and the black community.
Later that night, neighbor Maudie Atkinson commiserates with Atticus' loss and summarizes for a
disappointed Jem the thankless work that his father does in a world of human irrationality: "There
are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of
them." After hearing from Sheriff Tate, Atticus explains that Tom fled from the authorities and was
shot to death while supposedly trying to escape:
Tom Robinson's dead. They were taking him to Abbottsville for safekeeping. Tom broke loose
and ran. The deputy called out to him to stop. Tom didn't stop. He shot at him to wound him and
missed his aim. Killed him. The deputy says Tom just ran like a crazy man. The last thing I told
him was not to lose heart, that we'd ask for an appeal. We had such a good chance. We had
more than a good chance.
At the Robinson home where Atticus goes to deliver the bad news to the family (to Helen and
Spence, Tom's father), Helen collapses when she senses that Tom is dead. A hate-filled,
disgraced Bob Ewell confronts Atticus in the yard and after glaring spits into his face. With spit
rolling down his cheek, Atticus defiantly steps forward, glares back, wipes the spit from his face
with a handkerchief, and climbs into the car.
By the next fall, the memories of the trial have faded, as adult Jean Louise remembers in voiceover:
By October, things had settled down again. I still looked for Boo every time I went by the Radley
place. This night my mind was filled with Halloween. There was to be a pageant representing our
county's agricultural products. I was to be a ham. Jem said he would escort me to the school
auditorium. Thus began our longest journey together.
Jem escorts Scout to the school building to attend the Saturday night pageant. Scout carries a
giant ham costume that she will wear for Halloween. When it's almost ten o'clock and time to
return home, Scout has to wear her ham costume because she has lost her dress and shoes: "I'll
feel like a fool walking home like this." In a moving camera shot through the dark wooded area
between the school and their home, the trees rustle around them. Stopping and starting, Jem
repeatedly believes he hears heavy footsteps walking behind them in the eerie, Southern gothic
sequence. To confront their ghost, Scout yells out an echoing retort: "I'll bet it's just old Cecil
Jacobs tryin' to scare us. (Yelling) Cecil Jacobs is a big wet hen." Jem guides his sister with a
hand on her costume while looking back and hearing distinct footsteps.
A shadowy form attacks Jem and hurls him to the ground. As she struggles to get out of her
awkward, cumbersome ham costume, Scout is thrown down and rolls around inside the
protective outfit. She hears scuffling, grunting, kicking, and pounding sounds as Jem wrestles
against his attacker and shouts "Run, Scout!" He is seriously injured and rendered unconscious.
When the assailant [a disgraced Bob Ewell] turns toward Scout, a second pair of hands intervene
from an unseen man - they wrestle with her attacker and come to her defense. Through the viewhole of the ham, Scout watches in wide-eyed horror as the scuffling sounds of a second struggle
die down and there is silence. From her point of view, she watches a pair of legs cross her path
and under a street light, she sees Jem's limp body being carried home by a mysterious person.
After removing her costume, Scout follows closely behind and sees her brother being carried into
the Finch yard.
Atticus runs down the steps of his house and picks Scout up in his arms, asking: "What
happened?" He alerts Calpurnia to get the doctor and then phones Sheriff Tate to report:
"Someone's been after my children." Jem has been found unconscious, bruised, and lying on his
bed inside his room. Dr. Reynolds (Hugh Sanders) diagnoses a badly-fractured arm: "...like
somebody tried to wring his arm off." The Sheriff arrives with Scout's ham costume and reveals a
disturbing find in the woods to a shocked Atticus:
Bob Ewell's lyin' on the ground under that tree down yonder with a kitchen knife stuck up under
his ribs. He's dead, Mr. Finch....He's not gonna bother these children any more.
As Scout relates what happened, she notices a man in the corner of the bedroom behind the door
- she identifies him as the one who grabbed Mr. Ewell and carried Jem home:
Why, there he is, Mr. Tate. He can tell you his name...
The Sheriff moves the bedroom door, revealing in the light a terrified, gentle man with a pale face,
thin blonde hair, white skin, and dark shaded eyes - a brain-damaged, ghostly Boo Radley
(Robert Duvall finally makes his crucial appearance in a non-speaking role, his first film role), who
appears to have spent much of his life locked in a sun-deprived environment (a cellar?). As he
returns a protective, loving look, Scout gazes at him with wonder in her eyes and then a timid
smile breaks out on her face. Now a flesh and blood character who turned out to be her guardian
angel, she no longer fears him as the horrible ghost of her fantasies:
Scout: Hey Boo.
Atticus: Miss Jean Louise, Mr. Arthur Radley. I believe he already knows you.
Scout goes to him, takes his hand and leads Arthur over to Jem's bed to say goodnight. Jem is
asleep - his left arm in a cast. She encourages him to tenderly touch Jem: "You can pet him, Mr.
Arthur. He's asleep. Couldn't if he was awake, though. He wouldn't let you. Go ahead." She leads
"Boo" out to the front porch where they sit quietly on the rocking swing.
At first, Atticus believes that Jem had killed Ewell and that there must be a defense established:
"It'll have to come before the County Court. Of course, it's a clear-cut case of self-defense."
Sheriff Tate enlightens Atticus:
Mr. Finch, do you think Jem killed Bob Ewell? Is that what you think? Your boy never stabbed
him.
They look up toward Boo and Scout who sit peacefully on the swing. Boo would have to be
defended in court, but would never be able to survive the notoriety of a trial. To atone for his
errors in judgment in the Robinson/Ewell case and for the death of an innocent man, the Sheriff
proposes a cover-up to protect the harmless, innocent Boo from "the limelight" of public
prosecution. He fabricates a story, asserting that Ewell drunkenly fell and was killed on his own
knife. Ignoring the prospect of Atticus' defense of Boo, the Sheriff speculates that Atticus may not
want to participate in the cover-up of the truth:
Bob Ewell fell on his knife. He killed himself. There's a black man dead for no reason, and now
the man responsible for it is dead. Let the dead bury the dead this time, Mr. Finch. I never heard
tell it was against the law for any citizen to do his utmost to prevent a crime from being
committed, which is exactly what he did. But maybe you'll tell me it's my duty to tell the town all
about it, not to hush it up...To my way of thinkin', takin' one man who's done you and this town a
big service, and draggin' him, with his shy ways, into the limelight, to me, that's a sin. It's a sin,
and I'm not about to have it on my head. I may not be much, Mr. Finch, but I'm still Sheriff of
Maycomb County, and Bob Ewell fell on his knife.
Scout rises from the swing and walks over to her father - he puts her up at eye-level on a chair.
Scout affirms Sheriff Tate's wisdom, revealing her own grown-up understanding that it would be
inhumane to subject Boo to a defense trial even if it could be proven that he killed Ewell to protect
them - it would be an egregious sin to "kill a mockingbird":
Scout: Mr. Tate was right.
Atticus: What do you mean?
Scout: Well, it would be sort of like shooting a mockingbird, wouldn't it? (They hug each other
closely)
Boo rises and walks over to peer in Jem's window. Atticus walks over to Boo and shakes his
hand in gratitude, concurring with the Sheriff's decision to hush-up the killing:
Thank you, Arthur. Thank you for my children.
The conclusion of the film is moving and melodramatic, especially with Elmer Bernstein's
poignant closing score. In a backwards moving shot, Scout walks the timid Boo Radley (with his
hand in hers) to the Radley gate and up their front walk. Jean Louise, in her adult voice-over,
narrates the remainder of the film's dialogue:
Neighbors bring food with death, and flowers with sickness, and little things in between. Boo was
our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a knife, and our lives.
Boo opens the door to his own house and goes inside. Scout lingers for a few moments on the
front porch and at the front gate before slowly returning home. She views the world from a new
angle - from Boo's perspective. In her awakening intelligence and perception of the nature of
good and evil, and right and wrong, she senses what Atticus had earlier told her about never
really understanding a person "until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb
inside of his skin and walk around in it":
One time Atticus said you never really knew a man until you stood in his shoes and walked
around in them. Just standin' on the Radley porch was enough. The summer that had begun so
long ago had ended, and another summer had taken its place, and a fall, and Boo Radley had
come out.
The film concludes with memories of her childhood: her brother, her friends, justice, and her
father. The camera pulls out of the window in Jem's room, where Scout is cradled in her father's
arms, to a long shot of the Finch house:
I was to think of these days many times. Of Jem and Dill and Boo Radley, and Tom Robinson and Atticus. He would be in Jem's room all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in
the morning.