The Golden Age of Southern Movies

 1938-1946 - The “Golden Age” of Positive, Southern-themed Movies

If you enjoy old movies and would like to see the Antebellum South presented in a positive light, there are five movies you may want to see.

The Toy Wife - 1938

Set in antebellum Cajun Louisiana and lavishly produced by MGM, the film heralded the studio’s newest starlet, German actress Luise Rainer. In some ways it was MGM’s answer to Warner Brothers’ hit, “Jezebel” (1938), starring Bette Davis. Rainer is the lead female character, Gilberte “Frou Frou” Brigard, who has returned from strict convent school in France to her father’s immense plantation in Louisiana. Just as in “Gone with the Wind,” released a year later, Frou Frou is flighty and has a “devil may care” attitude towards practical things, including a possible future husband. While infatuated with the debonair and undisciplined Andre Vallaire (Robert Young), she ends up in a loveless marriage with the far more practical and worldly George Sartoris (Melvyn Douglas). Parallels with “Gone with the Wind” abound in this movie.

Maryland - 1940

The film “Maryland” was a big-budget Twentieth Century-Fox color production, with deluxe casting of Walter Brennan, John Payne, Fay Bainter, Charlie Ruggles, and Hattie McDaniel, who had already established herself as a major player in “Gone with the Wind”. In contemporary America we are too apt to think of Maryland as one big suburb of Washington, DC. But Maryland was traditionally a Southern state, and this film reflects the long and honorable Southern tradition of fox hunting and racing champion horses.

The Vanishing Virginian - 1942

Stars Frank Morgan (the Wizard in “The Wizard of Oz”), Spring Byington, and North Carolinian Kathryn Grayson, whose exquisite soprano voice in heard during the movie. Beginning in pre-World War I times, “The Vanishing Virginian” traces the history of the Yancey family and its head, Robert, who was prominent in Virginia politics for several decades. But it is also the recounting of how Southern and Virginia traditions survived and met the headwinds of the twentieth century, including women’s suffrage.

Colonel Effingham’s Raid -1946

A Twentieth Century-Fox production, this is a relatively short, black and white film, of 70 minutes, but a true gem just the same. It stars Charles Coburn as Colonel Will Seaborn Effingham, who returns home to Fredericksville, Georgia, after years in the US Army, there to be received by his young second cousin Albert Marbury (William Eythe) and by his older cousin Emma (the versatile actress Elizabeth Patterson). He stumbles upon the plans of the town fathers, who are mostly Yankee transplants only concerned about the almighty dollar. They intend to tear down the historic courthouse which dates from the antebellum period and perhaps remove the giant Confederate monument commemorating Fredericksville’s honored dead. Effingham launches his final “raid,” organizing the citizens and the UDC in a campaign to save the historic courthouse. Effingham finally convinces the town officials that the courthouse should remain and be appropriately repaired, not torn down. In the final scene, we see Effingham in his military uniform reviewing members of the Georgia National Guard as they march off to muster (the film is set in 1940). As they pass in review, the band strikes up the sound of “Dixie” to an enthusiastic crowd.

Virginia - 1941

This film is perhaps the best, and certainly the most openly pro-Southern. It is a lavishly-produced, Technicolor Paramount feature, in a sense that studio’s answer to the major films from Fox and MGM celebrating the South. And what a film! Starring a young Fred MacMurray, Madeleine Carroll, Sterling Hayden, and Louise Beavers, the movie recounts the return of Charlotte Dunterry (Carroll), heiress to the old Dunterry family plantation in northern Virginia. The plantation house, reportedly designed by Thomas Jefferson, has fallen into disrepair, and Charlotte who has spent much of her life in New York, intends to sell. MacMurray, whose name in the film is Stonewall after the great general, is a neighbor and fierce defender of Southern heritage and tradition. He tries to convince Charlotte to stay on, not to sell. The return of an ancient black servant, Ezechiel, home to Dunterry house to die persuades Charlotte that she, too, should stay faithful to her family and her traditions. And she orders that the giant portrait of her Confederate officer grandfather be hung once again in the central hall. One rewarding scene occurs when Charlotte suggests that Southerners should just get over the war which was, she asserts, about slavery. Stonewall, or Stony as his friends call him, quickly corrects her and explains that Yankee overreach and aggression were responsible for the war, and, indeed, for much of the resulting poverty that has afflicted the Southland. “Virginia” is worth searching out and is recommended to any Southerner interested in a favorable view of our traditions and heritage.

This information was provided by Prattville Dragoons compatriot Tyrone Crowley and extracted from “Gone But Not Forgotten” by Boyd Cathey on the Abbeville Institute blog, 1 September 2023.  See https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/gone-but-not-forgotten/