Harper Lee: Hey, Boo illuminates the phenomenon behind Lee’s first and only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, and the 1962 film version, celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Offering an unprecedented look into Lee’s mysterious life, Emmy®-winning filmmaker Mary McDonagh Murphy (author of Scout, Atticus & Boo: A Celebration of To Kill a Mockingbird) interviews Lee’s friends and family, including her centenarian sister Alice, who share intimate recollections, anecdotes and biographical details for the first time: her rise from small-town Alabama girl to famous author, her tumultuous friendship with Truman Capote, and the origin of her most memorable characters: Atticus Finch, his daughter Scout, her friend Dill, and Boo Radley. The documentary also explores the context and history of the novel’s Deep South setting and the social changes it inspired after publication and through the film starring Gregory Peck. Tom Brokaw, Rosanne Cash, Anna Quindlen, Scott Turow, Oprah Winfrey, and others reflect on the novel’s power, influence, popularity, and the ways it has shaped their lives. Lee gave her last interview in 1964 and receded from the limelight.

Margaret Mitchell: American Rebel engages leading historians, biographers and personal friends to reveal a complex woman who experienced profound identity shifts during her life and struggled with the two great issues of her day: the changing role of women and the liberation of African Americans. A charismatic force until a tragic accident lead to her death at age 48, Mitchell rebelled against the stifling social restrictions placed on women: as an unconventional tomboy, a defiant debutante, a brazen flapper, one of Georgia’s first female newspaper reporters, and, later, as a philanthropist who risked her life to fund African American education. Emmy®-winning executive producer/writer Pamela Roberts uses reenactments based on Mitchell’s personal letters and journals to show how her upbringing and romantic relationships influenced the creation of Gone With the Wind. The film also explores Scarlett and Rhett’s place as two of the world’s greatest lovers and the public’s initial reception to the book and David O. Selznick’s 1939 epic film – from racial lightning rod to model for survival. 2012 marks the 75th anniversary of Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize win for the only book published during her lifetime and Gone With the Wind’s lasting popularity seems permanently etched in the American cultural landscape.

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But who was the creator behind two of the world’s greatest lovers – Scarlett and Rhett – and the tumultuous romance that left book readers and film viewers wondering about their final fate together in one of storytelling’s most talked about cliffhangers? She was certainly no ordinary woman either.

Margaret Mitchell: American Rebel, a GPB production in association with THIRTEEN’s American Masters for WNET, explores the author’s extraordinary life.

Born in Atlanta in 1900, Margaret Mitchell was a force to be reckoned with until a tragic accident lead to her untimely death in 1949 – a debutante who challenged society with a brazen dance; a reporter who roamed town when tradition called for women to stay at home; and a philanthropist who risked her life in the name of generosity.

“Margaret Mitchell was always a writer and always a rebel,” says Emmy^®-winning executive producer/writer Pamela Roberts. “She was captivating and complex. She took chances every day of her life, and she changed the world with her one book, Gone With the Wind. Only Margaret Mitchell could have created Scarlett O’Hara.”

As a debutante from Atlanta’s upper crust, Mitchell challenged the stifling social restrictions placed on women at the time. She was one of Georgia’s first female newspaper reporters and used the money she made from Gone With the Wind to fund many causes, including the education of the South’s first African-American medical doctors.

Mitchell had a charismatic personality and a great sense of humor, but she also dealt with depression and illness. Setbacks in her early life included the loss of her mother and her fiancé as a teenager. A failed first marriage followed, but in spite of all that, she found her soul mate in her second husband, John Marsh, and with his support she wrote Gone With the Wind.

Margaret Mitchell: American Rebel engages leading authors, historians, biographers and people with personal connections to Mitchell to reveal a complex and mysterious woman who experienced profound identity shifts in her life and who struggled with the two great issues of her day: the changing role of women and the liberation of African Americans. Interviewees include friend Sara Mitchell Parsons, Carolyn Equen Miller (daughter of Mitchell’s lifelong arch rival Anne Hart Equen), Pat Conroy (The Prince of Tides), Pearl Cleage (What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day), Molly Haskell (Frankly My Dear: Gone With the Wind Revisited), Darden Asbury Pyron (Southern Daughter/The Life of Margaret Mitchell and the Making of Gone With the Wind), and John Wiley (Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind).

Roberts shot extensive reenactments for the film based on Mitchell’s personal letters, which trace Mitchell throughout her life, starting at age three, that show how Mitchell’s upbringing influenced Gone With the Wind. Margaret Mitchell: American Rebel also examines Gone With the Wind’s cultural impact. For some the work was a racial lightning rod, while for others it proved a model for survival.

Interviewees (in alphabetical order):

Ann Boutwell – docent, Margaret Mitchell House Museum; Atlanta historian
Kathleen Clark – University of Georgia historian writing a book on Margaret Mitchell
Pearl Cleage – novelist, poet, playwright
Pat Conroy – novelist; wrote introduction to 75^th anniversary edition of Gone With the Wind and his book My Reading Life (2010) devotes a chapter to Gone With the Wind
Robert Franklin – president, Morehouse College (Atlanta, GA)
Debra Freer – editor, Lost Laysen (Mitchell’s 1916 novella,first published in 1996)
Molly Haskell – author, Frankly My Dear: Gone With the Wind Revisited; film historian
Ira Joe Johnson – author, Benjamin E. Mays and Margaret Mitchell: A Unique Legacy in Medicine
Clifford Kuhn – Georgia State University historian
Carolyn Miller – daughter of Mitchell’s lifelong arch rival Anne Hart Equen
Sara Mitchell Parsons – friend of Mitchell in Atlanta (no relation)
Darden Asbury Pyron – author, Southern Daughter/The Life of Margaret Mitchell and the Making of Gone With the Wind
Marianne Walker – author, Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh: The Love Story Behind Gone With the Wind
Elizabeth West – Georgia State University English professor specializing in Africa-American literature and studies
John Wiley – author, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind; editor, The Scarlett Letter

Margaret Mitchell: American Rebel is a GPB production in association with THIRTEEN’s American Masters for WNET. Pamela Roberts is executive producer and writer. Kathy White is director of reenactments. Charlene Fisk is co-producer and editor. Kevan Ward is director of photography.

American Masters is made possible by the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding for American Masters is provided by Rosalind P. Walter, The Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation, Rolf and Elizabeth Rosenthal, Cheryl and Philip Milstein Family, Jack Rudin, Vital Projects Fund, The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation, Michael & Helen Schaffer Foundation, and public television viewers.

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More than 50 years after its publication, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than 40 languages worldwide, still sells nearly one million copies each year and is required reading in most American classrooms, making it quite possibly the most influential American novel of the 20th century. The 1962 film version, starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, won a trio of Academy Awards.

Harper Lee: Hey, Boo chronicles how this beloved novel came to be written, provides the context and history of the Deep South where it is set, and documents the many ways the novel has changed minds and shaped history. For teachers, students or fans of the classic, Hey, Boo enhances the experience of reading To Kill a Mockingbird.

Containing never-before-seen photos and letters, Hey, Boo features insightful interviews with friends and an exclusive interview with Lee’s sister, Alice Finch Lee (age 99 at filming), who share intimate recollections, anecdotes and biographical details for the first time, offering new insight into the life and mind of Harper Lee, including why she never published again. Oprah Winfrey; Tom Brokaw; Pulitzer Prize-winners Rick Bragg, Anna Quindlen, Richard Russo, Jon Meacham, and Diane McWhorter; and civil rights leader Andrew Young address the novel’s power, influence, and popularity, and the many ways it has shaped their lives.

Interviewees (in alphabetical order):

Mary Badham – actress, played Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Boaty Boatwright – casting director, To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Rick Bragg – author
Tom Brokaw – news anchor, journalist and author
Joy Brown – Lee’s friend
Michael Brown – Lee’s friend
Reverend Thomas Lane Butts – Pastor Emeritus of Lee’s church
Rosanne Cash – musician and author
Mark Childress – author
Jane Ellen Clark – former director, The Monroe County Heritage Museum
Allan Gurganus – author
David Kipen – former director of literature, National Endowment for the Arts
Wally Lamb – author
Alice Finch Lee – Lee’s sister
James McBride – author and musician
Diane McWhorter – historian
Jon Meacham – historian
James Patterson – author
Anna Quindlen – author
Richard Russo – author
Lizzie Skurnick – author
Lee Smith – author
Adriana Trigiani – author
Mary Tucker – educator and Monroeville, Alabama resident
Scott Turow – author
Oprah Winfrey – TV and film producer, founder of O, The Oprah magazine, radio programmer, actress, philanthropist, and chairman of Harpo Inc.
Andrew Young – civil rights leader

Harper Lee: Hey, Boo is a production of Mary Murphy & Company, LLC. Mary McDonagh Murphy is producer, writer and director. Rich White is director of photography. Christopher Seward is editor and producer. Susan Lacy is the series creator and executive producer of American Masters.

American Masters is made possible by the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding for American Masters is provided by Rosalind P. Walter, The Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation, Rolf and Elizabeth Rosenthal, Cheryl and Philip Milstein Family, Jack Rudin, Vital Projects Fund, The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation, Michael & Helen Schaffer Foundation, and public television viewers.

Among our major living writers, Norman Mailer is perhaps the most well-known, both in the United States and internationally. No career in our literature has been at once so brilliant, varied, controversial, public, prolific and misunderstood. Few American writers have had their careers on the anvil of public inspection for such a lengthy period; none (excepting Edgar Allan Poe) has been so regularly and simultaneously celebrated and reviled.

Mailer has not only published 39 books (including 11 novels), he has written plays (and staged them), screenplays (and directed and acted in them),poems (in THE NEW YORKER and underground journals), and attempted every sort of narrative form, including some he invented. No record of “new journalism” is complete without mention of his 1960s ESQUIRE columns, essays and political reportage. He has reported on six sets of political conventions (1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1992, 1996), participated in scores of symposia, appeared and debated hundreds of times on college campuses, boxed (and fought) in several venues and led a vigorous public life in New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts, his current home. His passions, feuds, imbroglios, litigations and loyalities are numerous, notorious and complex. Happily married for nearly a quarter of a century to Norris Church, he was wed five times previously and has nine children all told. A stalwart on radio and television talk shows, he may have been interviewed more times than any writer who has ever lived. Without being paid for his pains, he has given advice to several presidents, has run for office himself (mayor of New York),served as president of the American chapter of the writers organization, P.E.N., and won most of the major literary awards, but for the Nobel. Co-founder of THE VILLAGE VOICE, he also named it, and has been the equivalent of a decathalon athlete in the effort to break down barriers between popular, elite and underground publications. He has written for at least 75 different magazines and journals.

Born in Long Branch, New Jersey in 1923, but raised in Brooklyn, Mailer graduated from Boys High School in 1939. He entered Harvard in the fall of that year as the German army marched into Poland. Mailer received his S.B. degree, with honors, in engineering in 1943, and was drafted in early 1944. He served as a rifleman in the South Pacific and wrote the huge best-seller, THE NAKED AND THE DEAD (1948) based on his experiences. Catapaulted into instant fame, he has been at the center of our national cultural consciousness ever since. Mailer is, among other things, an unfrocked prophet full of foreboding about contemporary life; he celebrates the intuitional and instinctive and castigates corporate greed, plastic and the rape of nature. His disagreements with feminists are, of course, legendary. But Mailer is also, in the words of Joan Didion, ” a great and obsessed stylist, a writer to whom the shape of the sentence is the story.”

After a stint in Hollywood writing screenplays, Mailer wrote two more novels, BARBARY SHORE (1951), a novel of the Cold War, and THE DEER PARK (1955), a Hollywood novel about artistic integrity. In 1959 he published ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF, a showcase of all his previous work and his ambitious pans for the future, which uses his personality as the volume’s armature. Its huge influence on a generation also seeking to achieve creativity and self-realization gave Mailer a new audience and set the stage for the sixties, Mailer’s happiest, most tumultuous, and productive years. He published 17 books between 1962 and 1972, including five books nominated for the National Book Award in four different categories. THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT (1968) a non-fiction narrative of the anti-Vietnam War March on the Pentagon, won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize and a Polk Award. He followed with OF A FIRE ON THE MOON (1971), a careful study of the Apollo 11 moon shot, and THE PRISONER OF SEX (1971), a response to the women’s liberation movement. The pace of his writing slowed in the mid-seventies as he worked on his novel set in the Egypt of three thousand years ago, ANCIENT EVENINGS, which appeared after a decade of work in 1983. He won a second Pulitzer for his critically acclaimed 1979 best-seller, THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG, a 1,000-page “true life novel” which chronicled the life and death of Utah murderer Gary Gilmore. In the nineties Mailer published the best-selling HARLOT’S GHOST, the first part of a CIA novel, nonfiction narratives on Pablo Picasso and Lee Harvey Oswald, and THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE SON, a first-person retelling of the four gospels. He closed the decade out with a massive retrospective of his entire career, THE TIME OF OUR TIME (1998). Perhaps he best summed up his protean abilities when he said in ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF, “I become an actor, a quick-change artist, as if I can trap the Prince of Truth in the act of switching a style.” He is now at work on another long narrative, the subject of which is secret.