By Loretta Gillespie
(The following story is Part 2 of “The Life and Times of William Bradford Huie, Hartselle’s Famous Native Son. It is told by Randy Sparkman, Hartselle historian. The first part of the story was published in the Summer edition of Hartselle Area Magazine.)
In 1927, William Bradford Huie, graduated from Morgan County High School as class valedictorian. He went on to college at the University of Alabama, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1930.
While attending college, he supplemented his college stipend by writing for the somewhat sordid tabloid magazine, True Story. It kept him going until he was noticed by bigger and better publications, like The American Mercury.
Huie later bought the magazine, renaming it The New American Mercury. As publisher he hired a young reporter by the name of William F. Buckley, Jr., who went on to become one of the most famous journalists of his time. Buckley once remarked of Huie, “He was one of the fastest writers I’ve ever seen; he always said that there was nothing more important than a simple declarative sentence.”
Huie married his grammar school sweetheart, Ruth Puckett, in 1934. Their wedding took place in her parents’ home in Hartselle. Huie later immortalized the scene in his largely autobiographical first novel, Mud on the Stars (1942).
He was a shrewd and intuitive man when it came to choosing the subjects for his novels. “Often the publishers of various newspapers and books would sent him into the fray where there was sensational and ground – breaking news being made,” explained Randy Sparkman, local historian.
“He was intrigued by the civil rights movement, and often made the key players of that era his central focus.”
Huie traveled wherever the winds of civil unrest and other news of the day blew him. He was there after the Birmingham bombings and again after the slaying of civil rights leader, Martin Luther King. “The movie, ‘Mississippi Burning’ was taken straight from his book, ‘3 Lives for Mississippi’ “said Sparkman. Huie never received credit for it.
He set the tone for what was to become his trademark style as a novelist when he wrote the novel The Americanization of Emily. He was in England for the filming of the subsequent movie while his house in Hartselle was being built.
Sparkman now lives across the street from that very house, in a smaller version of the Frank Lloyd Wright inspired home that Huie built for his parents. The houses were not the typical Southern antebellum-type houses seen along Hartselle’s tree-lined streets, nor were they the cottage-style homes that were built by his neighbors. They were built in a style that Huie had come to love during his Hollywood days. The home was open and sunny, with wide windows where Huie sat and perused the world as he wrote about things far away and of a distant nature that what was going on in sleepy little Hartselle in the 50s and 60s.
He met and became friends with some of the major players in the movie industry, both on and behind the silver screen. Pictures in Sparkman’s collection include one of Huie with director Eli Kazan on the set of The Americanization of Emily.
He once invited Gregory Peck to his home in Hartselle so that Peck could wonder around the streets, soaking up the culture and honing his Southern accent for his award-winning role as Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird.
Unlike Lee, whose claim to fame was a one-hit wonder, Huie was very prolific. He wrote over 20 books, of which seven were made into major motion pictures. Those films starred the biggest Hollywood actors of the era, like James Garner, Martin Sheen and Julie Andrews.
Montgomery Clift starred in ‘Wild River’ which was the first movie to be adapted from Huie’s work. “It was from his first novel,” said Sparkman. “Later he would write more sensational novels that were concerned with the civil rights movement. Some of his work was considered to ‘racy’ for that era. The local community didn’t exactly embrace Huie at the time, but he sure knew what it took to sell a book! “
Ruth Huie was the first teacher hired at the new Crestline School. She taught first grade. After her death of cancer in 1973, Huie continued to write, but he grieved for her. She was the love of his life. It is said that he frequently brought her lunch to school in a brown paper bag. Inside each day’s offering was a carefully folded linen napkin.
After years of controversy, the city fathers and the community seem to have embraced Huie. He was a man of integrity, who was ahead of his time. A champion of freedom and honesty, Huie stands the test of time as one of the South’s clearest voices.
“The story of one is heard louder than the story of ten thousand,” he once said. And he was right – here we are still talking about him to this day. He would chuckle about that, I’m sure….