The Wikipedia page for Adamsville, TN, features this pic of local boy Buford Pusser’s house.
It’s been so long since Buford Pusser was a household name that this didn’t make all that much of a splash, near as I could tell (maybe it was bigger on TV, which I don’t see). Fifty years ago, it would have been as big nationally as Alex Murdaugh’s crimes — maybe bigger.
Certainly bigger. Alex Murdaugh was a prominent small-town Southern lawyer who murdered his wife and son, among a host of less-shocking crimes. Pusser was a rural Southern sheriff who impressively wielded a big stick in fighting rampant crime in his county, to the point that the bad guys ambushed him and murdered his wife, and Hollywood made him a hero — several times, if you count the two sequels and the made-for-TV movie. Apparently, a TV series as well.
Pauline Mullins Pusser
And now, the authorities say Buford himself killed his wife. This at least has made The New York Times take notice. One wonders how Hollywood will react to the news.
Pauline Mullins Pusser was killed in 1967, and her husband died seven years later. There will be no killer to prosecute, but authorities are pursuing an indictment in the cause of “giving dignity and closure to Pauline and her family and ensuring that the truth is not buried with time.” A good call, I’d say. Called for in this case, if not in others.
“Walking Tall” was something of a national hit in 1973. The NYT cites Variety in saying that it “was made for about $500,000 and earned more than $40 million worldwide.” Not one of the top-grossing films of the year, but impressive nevertheless, given the tiny investment. It reminds me in that regard of “Billy Jack” a couple of years earlier.
It’s hard for me to recall accurately how big a hit is was nationally, because I was living at the time in small-town West Tennessee, where it was a sensation. Of course, my small town was nothing like McNairy County. Millington was just a few miles north of Memphis, and was the home of NAS Memphis (now known as Naval Support Activity Mid-South). I lived on the base. I was a sophomore at Memphis State, but I knew some of the high school kids on base, who attended the local public school. And they were absolutely nuts about “Walking Tall.” Kind of the way kids my age had been about “Billy Jack” in 1971.
This one girl who lived around the corner from us on the base was certainly impressed. I didn’t really know her and don’t recall her name, but I did fall into conversation with her one day in front of her house. I say “conversation,” but I think it was mostly her talking about how wonderful the movie was. So I asked her if she’d like to see it again. She said yes, and I took her to the Millington drive-in that night.
You can forget any sordid imaginings that may conjur — the college kid taking the high school girl to a drive-in. It just seemed a natural thing to do since she was so enthusiastic about the film, and the drive-in was where it was showing.
I sat on my side of the car and she sat way over on hers, with her eyes glued on the screen, rapt. I had felt a bit awkward thinking she might be nervous about this older (like two years, I guess) guy she hardly knew taking her to the drive-in, but that didn’t seem to be a problem. I was not in her thoughts. She was just digging Joe Don Baker up there and all the awesome things he was doing. I’m trying to remember whether her lips moved along with the dialog as she saw it, because it certainly seems likely given she was so fascinated and had seen it before.
I don’t remember interacting with her in any way after that night. There didn’t seem any ground for the establishment of even a platonic friendship. She was only interested in one thing, and it did not lie within my universe of interests.
No matter. I met my wife a couple of months later. The night we met we had a long talk about Jack Kerouac and On The Road. This was a good start, and things got better from there. Did I tell y’all about our big 50th-anniversary celebration with our children and grandchildren last year?
I wonder, though, whether that girl has heard this latest news. I hope she’s not too shaken by it.
Above, I sort of wondered idly how Hollywood would react. Of course, if there is ever a new movie, it won’t be in the same vein at all. It won’t inspire folks across the nation to idolize the ex-professional wrestler who becomes sheriff in a corrupt corner of the countryside and lets no one stop him while he addresses crime by whupping bad guys with his big stick. Or to idolize anyone else.
It will instead be painfully sad. I don’t think I want to see that flick, either…
Joe Don Baker as Pusser in ‘Walking Tall.’
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It’s funny, you mentioning “Billy Jack”. I was literally listening to “One Tin Soldier” about an hour ago. Price loved Billy Jack, me not so much. But I do like anything that was on the radio from my childhood.
I also like the non-movie version by a band called Coven. Wonder what that was about?
I don’t know!
Hey, I’m a real student, because I’ve actually seen the movie to which “Billy Jack” was the sequel — “Born Losers” from 1967. It was not as popular as the sequel. It was just a run-of-the-mill C movie that exploited widespread fear of biker gangs in the late 60s. Here’s the trailer…
It was, alas, cheesier than Billy Jack and Walking Tall put together.
Make no mistake, I enjoyed Billy Jack when I was 17, but I don’t think I had any illusions that it was a cinematic triumph…
Working with you as I did at the Jackson Sun, I remember the stories Delo and others had about what a piece of trash Pusser was. Apparently everyone had a story about him engaging in, ahem, relationships with other men’s wives on dusty backroads. Not much of a real man at all. Walked short, not tall. Ah, Hollywood.
Hey, Richard! Long time! I hope you’re still pickin’ and grinnin’ regularly.
Folks, Richard is, as I’ve said before on this blog, “is my oldest newspaper friend.” Not in years — although he’s even older than I am — but because we first collaborated in college. One of his first published editorial cartoons illustrated a column I wrote for the editorial page of the journalism department lab paper at Memphis State. After that, we worked together at the paper in Jackson, TN. Then I talked him into coming out to Wichita, and he stayed there after I came back to South Carolina.
Robert’s also easily the best Bluegrass musician I’ve ever known. If it’s got strings, he can play it.
I shared one of his cartoons with y’all back on the previous post, but here it is again:
By the way, the “Delo” Richard refers to was the late Delores Ballard, one of our best friends in Jackson, and my predecessor as News Editor there. She could turn anything into a story.
My favorite such story: One day, we really needed something light for the mix on the front page and had nothing, so Delo went walking around downtown, and found an abandoned shoe on the sidewallk. She wrote a really entertaining feature speculating about how it got there, and what might have led to it.
I’m trying to remember… I think one of the photogs actually went out and got a picture of the shoe lying there, so it wasn’t just a fun feature; it had art!