♪♪ -I'm Donna Green-Townsend.

If you travel the meandering Ocklawaha or Silver River in North Central Florida, through the clear water of Silver Glen Springs and through the lush foliage leading to Juniper Springs and on to Pat's Island in the Big Scrub in the Ocala National Forest, you will come to the place where a classic story for the ages was born.

It was the year 1928 when a young journalist, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, brought her dreams of becoming a great writer to Florida.

That dream took her here, to the Big Scrub, where she received inspiration to write "The Yearling."

The coming-of-age story about a young boy and his pet deer has become one of the most beloved stories in the world.

Before Marjorie Rawlings wrote her most famous book, she wrote a few short stories, sketches and a short novel, including "Jacob's Ladder," "Gal Young 'Un," and others for Scribner's Magazine and Harper's Magazine.

Literary Manuscripts Archivist at the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida, Florence Turcotte, says Rawlings' earthy writing style caught the attention of a noted editor for Charles Scribner's Sons.

-She wrote a short story called "Cracker Chidlings," and she sent it to Scribner's Magazine and they published it.

Well, that got the attention of the very famous editor Maxwell Perkins at Scribner's.

He wrote to her, and he said, "I would like to see more.

Would you like to write stories and would you consider writing a novel based on your experiences there at Cross Creek?"

She was thinking of herself as writing romances and of sophisticated literature, and he wanted to hear more about the people that she was encountering, the landscapes that she was encountering, that she was falling in love with and writing letters.

So that correspondence that came to really fuel her literary maturation and sort of stoke her imagination, in the creative sense, came from back-and-forth letters with Maxwell Perkins.

I can't say enough about how influential he was in her -- in her becoming an American author and a Florida author.

-Perkins' suggestion led to Rawlings' first major novel and a series of story-gathering trips to the Ocala National Forest.

-The connection that Marjorie made with -- with the Cracker people started because of the moonshiner lad that she -- that she befriended.

She would buy moonshine from Leonard Fiddia, and he, of course, made his way into the story of "South Moon Under," her first novel where, where she chronicles the exploits of Lant Jacklin and his moonshining ways, his transportation of moonshine along the Ocklawaha River and the problems that he has encountered in his life of living in the Ocala National Forest or, as Marjorie called it, the "Big Scrub."

-The late 100-year-old East Marion County resident, Richard Mills, was just 8 years old when Rawlings moved to Cross Creek in 1928.

Mills says it was Leonard Fiddia who introduced Rawlings to Calvin Long in the forest, and that's where "The Yearling" story came to life.

Mills, who remembers visiting the Long Homestead as a young boy, told the story with the help of his youngest son Phillip Mills.

-Scribner's Editor Perkins loved Marjorie Rawlings' descriptions of the Cracker families in the Big Scrub in Florida, and he began to gently encourage Rawlings to write more on the subject, especially about the stories Rawlings learned from Cal Long.

-It started in conversations with Marjorie, Marjorie telling Maxwell Perkins, "I'm visiting this family in the scrub," and how delightful they are.

"The old man is --" You know, "There's a boy with a deer," and those kinds of stories bubbling up through her letters to Max and Max saying, 1931 -- 1933, right after "South Moon Under" was published, he's saying, "How about this boy's book -- How about writing a boy's book of the Scrub?"

And Marjorie replies, "I'm not -- I don't write juvenile literature," and Maxwell Perkins, ever diplomatic, said, "This would not be juvenile literature.

This would be a book about a boy in the Scrub.

Okay?

So a novel."

So that's how the idea was planted in her head.

-Rawlings first finished a separate novel, called "Golden Apples," in 1935.

In December of 1937, she completed the first draft of her novel about a boy in the Scrub, entertaining such titles as "The Fluttermill" or "The Fawn" before settling on "The Yearling."

A key storyline in Rawlings' novel centered on a bear hunt where Pa Baxter and son Jody tracked down the bear "Ole Slewfoot."

The hunt was based on a true story told to her by Barney Dillard, from Astor, Florida.

Dillard even took Rawlings along on bear hunts in the Big Scrub to give her firsthand knowledge about bears for her novel.

Dillard's grandson, Barney Sullivan.

-They called him Slewfoot.

He was the biggest black bear ever been killed in Florida, and he was killed across the river and there used to be swamps over in there, and that's where he killed the bear.

From what I understand, the story I got, they caught him in a trap, or the trap got him, but he was so powerful, he got out of the trap, and he broke his foot or something, twisted it, and it made him what they call a slew, and that's where he got his nickname from.

-"The Yearling" won the Pulitzer Prize in 1939.

Editor Perkins helped arrange the sale of the movie rights to MGM for $30,000, which helped secure Rawlings' financial affairs.

MGM began filming in 1941.

Victor Fleming was chosen to direct the film, which was to star Spencer Tracy, Anne Revere, and Gene Eckman.

The studio hired several Marion County residents to create navigable roads, construct log fences and build the cabin and barns on the set in the forest.

Richard Mills was among those hired after he bravely approached Director Fleming for a job.

Mills enjoyed working on "The Yearling" movie set in 1941.

He remembers one day when Marjorie Rawlings drove to the set with "Gone with the Wind" author Margaret Mitchell.

Rawlings had helped the MGM camera crew map out the key locations for filming the movie in advance.

-So you saw Margaret Mitchell and Marjorie Rawlings?

In a vehicle?

-Harsh conditions in Florida with the heat and bugs didn't appeal to Actor Spencer Tracy, who decided to head back to California.

The movie was soon scrapped by MGM.

Marion County residents Gertrude and Henry Heinemann received pay to take care of the animals, and they actually lived 2 1/2 years on the set.

Near the end of World War II, a new director, Clarence Brown, took over the production.

New actors were chosen, including Gregory Peck as Pa Baxter and Jacqueline White and later Jane Wyman as Ma Baxter.

Around 19,000 young boys answered ads to play the part of young Jody Baxter.

Director Clarence Brown decided to take on the search for the young boy.

Claude Jarman Jr. recalls Brown's visit to Nashville, Tennessee, and how he got the part.

-And he would go into the board of education in a city and tell them who he was and say, "I just want to go look in your school room.

If I see somebody I like, I'll talk to them.

If I don't, I'll leave, nobody knew that I was even there."

And that's how he would do that.

And he came to Nashville on a Friday afternoon and looked in the school room and saw me, talked to me.

So it was all on looks.

He looked like -- I looked like what he was looking for.

-Jarman recalls just what it was like in the Florida Scrub in the late spring and summer of 1945: -Well, we finally -- we actually got rained out.

We started in April, and we left at the end of August.

And it was steaming hot, no question about it.

And I don't think there was much air-conditioning around during those days, either.

So we were staying at this little motel in Silver Springs and, uh, you know, going out and waiting around a lot.

And then on the rain, it would rain for a week, and we couldn't do anything.

So we're sitting in a car just waiting.

And if you got a little break of 10 minutes, "Come on!

Let's go!

Let's get this shot!"

So it was very hard.

It was an extremely difficult movie to make.

-Claude Jarman had some help on the difficult shoot in the forest from his double in the movie.

East Marion County resident Bobby Randall remembers the day his mother saw an ad in the Ocala newspaper about trying out for the film.

-She came back with the paper, and I guess it was in the headline or in the front page, she says, "Bobby, stand up here."

Said, "They're lookin' for a stand-in for Claude Jarman."

Well, I knew who he was.

I knew they was filmin'.

I got, "Well, son, says you're the right height, and you're blonde-headed, and you're blue-eyed.

You weigh about 68 pounds or something like that."

And she took me up there.

About 30 people, boys in there.

And there's about six or seven of us they kept checkin' us and checkin' us.

And they said, "Come back..." certain day, which has been so long.

"We're going to take you out to the set."

Well, we didn't know what the set was.

Never heard of anything like that.

[ Chuckles ] And they loaded us up, just the boys -- Mama didn't get to go -- and they lined us up in a straight line, and they was... Somebody about 70 feet, four or five men out there lookin' through something, and I didn't know what it was.

It was a camera they was lookin' at us through.

It seemed like a pretty good while, and then here come Claude Jarman.

They sent him up there.

That's the first time I ever saw him.

And, uh, he come out of nowhere.

I don't know where he came from I just was close up whenever I seen him then.

Stood by each of us, and after a while, one of those Hollywood men come and said, "Son, I guess you got the job."

So, just as simple as that.

-MGM paid Randall $50 a week or $37.50 after taxes.

Claude Jarman remembers Bobby Randall.

-Well, I'm sure there were a lot of scenes where -- there were a lot of running scenes that he probably did that I didn't do because I had left in August to go, and we finished the film at the studio.

And then, in January, I came back.

-Bobby Randall soon learned being in the movies isn't always glamorous.

-I'd started out just standin' in front of the camera, and the best I can remember, for a close-up, the sun had to be right at the middle of the day and not even a whisper of a cloud over it.

And then they had reflectors, and they had lights, and I had to stand like a statue.

It seemed like an hour, but I was just a boy.

I thought I was gonna die.

I know why they had a stand-in because you couldn't do anything after that.

And then he'd step in.

-Though filming in the Ocala National Forest between April and August of 1945 could be trying, the cast and crew also found time to play.

Here in these home-movie clips, provided by the Gregory Peck Foundation, you can see the film crew hard at work.

But also in these home-movie clips, you can see actor Gregory Peck, who played Penny Baxter in "The Yearling," swimming in what looks to be Juniper Springs.

♪♪ ♪♪ He got in some time for fishing on a nearby lake close to the movie set.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Gregory Peck and his first wife, Greta, also found time to have fun with the animals on the set.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Bobby Randall remembers a day when the movie crew left him in an enclosed area with the deer on the set.

-Well, they locked me up in a pen, and I stayed about two hours.

-With the deer?

-Yeah, and I finally said, "Well, hey, let me out of here," and it made him mad.

I thought they just forgot me.

I should've just kept my mouth shut.

Let him get used to me, you know?

I didn't know any better.

-Randall had a key part in running with a herd of deer in the film.

-Well, it's been a long time, and I don't know just how it is, but I looked at it, and it looks like there's something built there out of the bushes.

And they had two men, one of 'em with a thing poppin' it and another one -- and may have had two with BB guns, and they held them high.

I said, "Why are they doin' that?"

I know why -- because they was hittin' the deer in front, and a certain place, they stopped just behind where you could see the camera.

You know, they was back here.

In certain places, they had to stop, and they kept on runnin'.

I don't think they done it but one time that one scene there.

95-year-old Lawrence Kinsey, from East Marion County, remembers helping to get the deer to jump.

When he worked on the film back in 1945, he was just 19 years old.

Lawrence Kinsey remembers the day they picked up one of the bears for the bear-hunt scenes at the Ocala Train Depot.

Marion County resident Kathlyne Walkup Sheppard had relatives who provided some key elements for the movie.

My Uncle Son, who built the flutter-mill for the stream scenes, also was inside the cabin.

And when you see the smoke curl come out of the cabin and waft into the air into the sky, it's such a beautiful scene in the movie.

He is inside with the bellows puffing away with that bellows to make that smoke curl in such a beautiful way."

-Celeste Godwin Viale's father, Freeman, worked on the "Yearling" set.

-His father died on November 5th.

And he said, "After we buried my dad, I knew I had to find a job."

And he said, "My first job was working on 'The Yearling.'"

Anything with moving equipment, helping them set up scenes like the rail fences, any of that construction type thing that needed to be done, he did that.

A few times that we would watch "The Yearling" together, he would say, "Oh, I remember that," you know, with a sigh.

At 4:00 in the morning, they had to get up and go out, and they would replant the corn field, the tobacco patch.

And then when, filming stopped in the evening, they would have to dig 'em up and put 'em in a trailer because if not, the deer would come and devour everything, or, you know, other animals would get in and just wreak havoc in the crops.

-I'm Alva Kinsey Jr. My dad was Alva D. Kinsey Sr., and he appeared in "The Yearling."

He played the far-away shots of Gregory Peck where you didn't actually see Gregory, but mostly a lot of running shots he told me.

He talked about that movie, probably my earliest recollection, you know, from the time I'm a young man of 10 or less, until practically the day that he passed away.

At his funeral -- we showed the movie at his funeral at a big -- we used the Ocklawaha Bridge Baptist Church.

It has a movie screen.

We showed it on the back wall of the movie screen silently as we had his funeral when the movie played through.

So, uh, most of my life, I heard stories of "The Yearling."

He was quite excited about having been involved in that.

-Kinsey's father, Alva Kinsey Sr., died in 2006 at the age of 94, but in an interview with Alisa Griner that was filmed by Seeber Fowler two years before he died, Alva Kinsey Sr. recalled how happy he was that MGM hired him.

-MGM brought in a variety of animals and animal trainers for the movie.

The 1946 premiere souvenir booklet for the film indicated they used 469 animals, including 126 deer, 9 black bears, 37 dogs, 53 wild birds, 17 buzzards, 1 owl, 83 chickens, 36 pigs... 8 rattlesnakes... 4 horses, and 17 raccoons.

Alva Dame Kinsey Jr. heard a lot of stories about the filming in the forest from his dad, especially the difficulties and excitement involved with filming the bear-hunt scenes, the scenes where Jody and Pa Baxter hunt the bear 'Ole Slewfoot, who had been ravaging their farm animals.

Back at the movie set, the dogs the movie crew planned to use for the bear-fight scene did not work out as hoped.

-So they turned the bear into this dog pen they built with three sides, and the bear runs right across Juniper Creek, and leaves, and they never see him again, He just left.

And the locals are snickering because they're going, "We saw that coming a long ways off."

They thought, like, the bear would be intimidated by the deep water of Juniper Creek or something.

Said he went as straight out the back as he could go at a full run.

And I was watching the movie, and I see this one scene where the bear's running, gets in the water, swims the creek, and goes straight on, and I was wondering if maybe they didn't film that.

They didn't intend on it happening, but they filmed it.

So they built a full pen with four sides on it, and they had to make it small so they could make a small area to get the dogs in the shot with the bear.

The dogs, the hounds that they had, wanted nothing to do with that bear 'cause most dogs are scared of the bears.

And if they got near the bear, they got hurt.

He said there was this old man standing there, probably wearing overalls, but if not the suspenders that you see in the movie, and he's chewing on this piece of straw, and he kind of points over there, and he says, "I got a dog that'll fight that bear."

He said, "But he's not a hound dog."

He said -- they said, "Go get your dog.

We don't care what he is.

We'll make him look like a hound dog."

And as far as -- the best I remember, I think daddy said the dog is solid white.

And it was a bull dog.

It was a hog dog.

A catch dog.

For people that hog hunt, the dog will actually catch the hog and hold it.

So they said that the old man comes back later with the dog on a string, and they send him to makeup, and they said the old man goes over to the door and opens the door and just lets the rope go.

The rope just goes through his collar, and he just lets the rope go, and he sends the dog in, and the dog just walks in the pen, and he shuts the gate.

At that point, he says, "Sic him!

", and when he did, that dog turned and looked at the bear and went straight -- ran straight to the bear, without flinching, reached up and got that bear by the ear and would not let that bear go, and that bear is thrashing around, trying to get rid of that dog off of him.

And the dog caught him just like he does a hog.

They said the bear hollered.

The dog had the -- And then, at that point, they released the other dogs, who came in, who, I guess, with all the excitement, ran over there, and they started fighting the bear.

And they said that's how they made the bear-fight scene.

-I'm not sure I know all the -- everything that went into it but as I understand it, they got the bear from maybe a zoo.

The bear was not prepared to fight, but those dogs were prepared to fight.

The dogs attacked the bear.

There were two dogs, and they were -- I don't know -- bear dogs.

I mean, they went right after -- right after the bear.

And so they could only film -- They had probably three or four cameras at the same time, and they turned the dogs loose.

Today, I don't think you can do that.

-Celeste Godwin Viale, whose father, Freeman, worked behind the scenes for MGM, says her father actually knew the man who had dogs who were more willing to take on the bear and says there probably were some dogs who didn't make it out alive.

-But Joe Fort, who lived in Moss Bluff, he brought his bear dogs and knowing there're plenty of bear in that area, and that the bear fight actually was a real bear fight, and one of the dogs was killed by the bear.

I'm sure, you know, later, as SPCA became involved, more and more involved in movies, I'm sure that some of those scenes were so graphic, they edited them out.

-Bobby Randall remembers seeing the bear-fight scenes.

-And some of those dogs got killed, I think, because I was standing where I shouldn't have been, and two of them brought one of them by, and he's just shivering, and in a few minutes, "He's all right.

He's gonna be all right.

Yeah, I think so."

I think they gave him a shot and put him out of his misery.

But that bear would catch those dogs -- grrr!

-- and a trainer had to run up there and squirt ether under that bear's nose to get him to turn loose to get that dog.

I wouldn't had his job for a million dollars a minute.

[ Chuckles ] -Oh, my word.

-Another dramatic scene in "The Yearling" involved Pa Baxter getting snake bit on the way toward looking for the family's stolen pigs.

The actual hand in the film clip getting struck by the rattlesnake belonged to Ross Allen.

Allen was famous for his snake and alligator demonstrations at the Silver Springs Park in Marion County.

Lawrence Kinsey.

-Claude Jarman Jr. and Gregory Peck enjoyed meeting Ross Allen and seeing all of his snakes and other reptiles.

Jarman says he has a different memory of the rattlesnake scene.

-You know, there was a Plexiglas screen so the screen -- the deer was -- the snake was on the other side.

-Aha.

-So when he comes down, the snake literally goes at that.

So he was safe.

-In the movie, he shot a doe and asked his son Jody to take the deer's organs so Pa could use them to draw out the snake venom.

He later gave Jody permission to find the doe's orphaned fawn.

Finding fawns was pivotal to the movie.

Claude Jarman.

-The one that I spent most time with was little Bambi.

Everyone had a name -- Bambi, Nina -- you know, we had all these -- Jughead was one of 'em.

And Bambi was the only one who literally would fold up his legs and would sit in your lap for hours.

-Many of the young fawns during the Florida filming were provided by two teenage Marion County boys.

Marion County resident, from McIntosh, Kathlyne Walkup Sheppard says her brother-in-law, the late Jack Owen, knew just how to find them.

-My brother-in-law -- he is the husband of my sister, my only sister -- was like a second father to me.

And he -- he just raised me with his stories.

And so I heard the stories of catching the fawns for the movie many, many times.

He learned, as a boy, to track those mother deer and find those babies.

And he found probably 10 of them, he said, and collected them for MGM and they would pay him $25 for every one that they used.

and I think maybe half of the ones he caught were the right size at the right time for the filming stages for the story to be told.

-As the fawn in the movie grew, he continually threatened the Baxters' corn crop.

That threat of losing the family's food supply to Jody's pet led to the climax of the film when Pa and Ma Baxter told Jody to shoot his deer.

♪♪ ♪♪ It was Claude Jarman's first professional acting job, and his ability to cry and show emotion on camera was critical to the story's success.

♪♪ -I became that little boy.

And it was -- You know, there was no -- there's no other way to do it except when you get involved in it and you're able to do it.

And, fortunately, we had done a lot of other things before we got into the crying part.

In fact, we were almost ready -- we'd almost been working three months, and so it was then -- You know, the first scene I did crying was when I shot -- I shot the deer, and that was...

It was amazing.

[ Laughs ] Okay?

-Claude wrote in his book, "My Life and the Final Days of Hollywood," that when he demonstrated his ability to cry on camera, Gregory Peck said, "It changed the whole nature of the picture."

♪♪ -Gregory Peck and I spent a lot of time together.

I think any time he was in a scene, I was in a scene, so we were always together.

Not so much with Jane Wyman.

But with him, it was -- we were buddies.

And he was -- he had just made a couple of films where he was becoming -- I think he was only about 29.

He was in his 20s.

But he made a lot -- "Duel in the Sun" -- he made a lot of movies afterwards -- "Spellbound," "Gentlemen's Agreement."

He became a big movie star, and "The Yearling" was probably one of the ones that really set him off.

But he was wonderful to be with.

Very, very patient.

How can you not be patient with somebody when you're dealing with animals you have no control over and dealing with kids, a kid who'd never made a movie before, who's finding his way.

But it was -- he was great.

-And according to Celeste Godwin Viale, who had relatives who worked on the movie set, Gregory Peck even went in search of alligators with her uncles on the Silver River.

-My Uncle Robert and Uncle Bunk, because they were both involved with the river and activities there, said to me that Gregory Peck wanted to see an alligator in the wild, in its natural habitat.

And they actually just used, like, a little ordinary boat as they're going down the river.

And they look, and there's this huge gator up on the bank.

They got out, and they pull the boat up so Gregory Peck can step out.

And as they do, my Uncle Bunk told the story as, all of a sudden, the gator woke up, and it came up on its toes, opened its mouth, and hissed.

It blew.

You know they have that, "Kkkkhhh!"

kind of sound.

And they realized it was starting forward.

And it actually was heading for the water, but they're in between the gator and the water.

He said, "And Ol' Greg, Ol' Greg dove under those seats, and we were right behind him."

[ Chuckles ] -One time, they had -- Gregory Peck had to go back to the motel there -- Well, it was cabins back then at Silver Spring.

-Mm-hmm.

-And I needed to go back for something, and they said, "Mr. Peck, would you mind if Bobby Randall rides in with ya?"

And I was an ol' country boy, and he introduced hisself, and I sat right there and couldn't say nuthin'.

I didn't say a thing... [ Both laugh ] ...the whole time.

-Claude Jarman Jr. had a very close bond with director Clarence Brown.

Brown spent hours helping the young actor to prepare for each day's filming.

Claude remembers how Brown was a perfectionist, often requiring numerous takes of a scene.

-He had this horrible saying that we laughed about.

You would do a scene, and you know that it was really -- you couldn't do it any better.

And everyone would -- Gregory Peck, we'd all say that kind of looks good.

He'd say, 'Hey, that's great.

Cut it and print it.

Now once more for Paris."

-[ Laughs ] -"One more for Paris?"

Yeah, that was his thing.

-Jarman says he often reflects on the unique opportunity he had working on "The Yearling."

-What you have in that picture, you have a role that actors would die for.

I mean, how many -- how many pictures do you see where someone is in every scene, every scene in the picture?

Maybe there's one cutaway or something.

So, actors die for those kind of roles, you know?

So I had that role.

I never had it again.

And a lot of people don't -- never even come close to it.

But it was there, it embraced me.

I was able to get inside of it.

You know, I went around barefooted.

When we went back to California from Florida in August of 1945, I put shoes on.

I couldn't keep 'em on.

I'm on the train, and my feet are so hot, I had to walk around barefooted.

-[ Laughs ] -'Cause I'd been barefooted for like four months, just calluses on my feet.

-Even 75 years later, Claude Jarman Jr. can still remember his lines and everyone else's from the movie.

-I could -- I literally could -- I knew all -- I knew the other roles, too.

I knew Gregory Peck's role, I knew my role.

-Oh, my gosh.

-When you're 12, your mind is just a sieve, you know?

You think about everything.

-I think of every parent just cringes when they think of, you know, what you had to say to them when they made you shoot that deer, and you said, you could still quote that about "I hate you."

-"I hate you.

I hope you die.

I hope I never see you again."

[ Chuckles ] -Wildfire smoke and rain forced MGM to move most of the cast and crew to California at the end of August in 1945.

Most of the indoor scenes were shot in California, especially the scenes with Jane Wyman as Ma Baxter, the Forresters, and young Fodderwing.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Claude Jarman Jr. recalls seeing Jane Wyman's husband, a young Ronald Reagan, showing up on the set by Lake Arrowhead in California.

-Jane Wyman, she was a very -- a lot of fun.

She was very, very nice.

She had just pretty much hit it, and -- and she made -- I don't know -- I forget what her movie was that she made that was -- She was very -- it was kind of a breakthrough for her.

And, uh, she was married to Ronald Reagan at the time, and, uh, when we did some scenes up at Lake Arrowhead in California, he came up.

He had just gotten out of the service.

So I have some pictures of him up there.

She said he was too boring.

[ Laughter ] -The time in California worked out well for actor Gregory Peck, who split his time working on two films at the same time.

He not only had a role as Penny Baxter in "The Yearling," but he also starred in the western film "Duel In The Sun."

A central theme of "The Yearling's" story is the passage from boyhood to manhood.

After shooting his pet deer, Jody Baxter ran away.

After trudging through the swamps, he collapses into an old canoe that then drifted down a river, where he is spotted by the crew of a steam-driven paddle wheeler.

That canoe was made by the late Marion County resident William Henry Mason.

-The movie crew actually distressed the wood so that it looked much older for the filming.

But it was a new canoe made for the movie.

-"The Yearling" has become a true classic for the ages.

Kathy Walkup Sheppard says, for her, it's because the film involved a storyline so close to so many others' family histories.

-And I descend from people who lived those very same lives.

And so I know the truth of their lives and their struggles.

That's a part of my history and background, too.

-Jennifer Pohlers remembers how her grandfather, the late Richard Mills, who worked on the first effort to make the movie, later went to work for the U.S. Forest Service and took thousands of people on tours of Pat's Island in the Ocala National Forest, telling the story of "The Yearling."

Pohlers says the movie has helped preserve Marion County history.

-And one of the things I loved about "The Yearling" is, I can see the way my ancestors lived because I had ancestors who were living in Ocala National Forest in the 1800s during the time when "The Yearling" took place.

And so I can see how hard it was to get food, how you couldn't waste anything.

You couldn't sometimes treat the animals like pets because they could be dinner.

-Marion County residents Jennifer Pohlers and Celeste Godwin Viale agree that the book and the film give true depictions of just how fragile life was in the 1800s.

Many families lost children from a variety of causes.

-You'd get things like malaria in Florida, and now we think, "Oh, yeah.

You just get that in South America or Africa."

No.

You lived in Florida, there was a good chance that a mosquito would bite you and you'd get malaria.

Yellow fever, typhus, scarlet fever, diphtheria.

There's things that, nowadays, we don't -- kids have no idea how rough it was, yeah.

-Antibiotics weren't even -- not even known about, you know, until World War II, I think, penicillin was developed.

So you think, you know, it's a miracle that anybody survived but the children especially.

It was kind of like a 50/50 chance.

-Looking at my family tree, a lot of the women lost kids.

A lot of women had miscarriages or they would die young.

I know that one of my great-great-grandmothers had lost two children before her third one lived to adulthood.

The first two, one died soon after birth, and the other one was about, I want to say, 3 or 4, and, um, a family member or friend had been visiting a family that had scarlet fever and brought it into the home, and, of course -- and then he died from it.

I think, a lot of times, the women suffered a lot more for it 'cause you had to keep going.

You had to keep feeding the kids.

You had to keep getting -- the farming still had to go on.

So I don't know that you could stop and grieve.

And so I think that's why, in the movie, there's that time that she has to go and visit the site and just be when Jody's asking Penny about it.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -To not know someone who had the loss of a child or an illness that affected a child permanently, you were extremely blessed.

You were a rare individual because just injuries and illnesses were so prevalent at the time.

And I think I'm glad that she included Fodderwing in the book because I think with that -- what Marjorie Rawlings did was show that, you know, when you watch the movies from the Old West and all those fake stories, um, they're all about adventure and drama and excitement and everything, but life was so very hard, and I think she touches the real emotion that a family had to try to deal with things.

-In 1979, Kathy Walkup Sheppard experienced personal tragedy.

It was during that time of grief she learned of other tough times in her family's early history -- how her mother suffered from diphtheria and her father contracted malaria.

Both survived.

But she also learned how her great-grandmother Sewell lost several children to typhus in one year.

-So, we have the graves here of so many Sewell family members.

I'm seeing John W. Sewell, Nancy Lenora Sewell, Nora Lenora Peebles, who was also a Sewell, Frieda Mason, Richard Sewell, Wesley Sewell, Wallace Sewell.

And these relatives that I have, who lived the same life that Marjorie wrote about at the very same time that she wrote about Penny and Ma Baxter, you know, I remember the sections of the book about Ma Baxter's children being born frail and one never saw the light of day.

And here I have this story in my own family of this same type life.

The same people living in the same area and five of my great-grandmother's children died in one year, in 1904.

There's a message here.

Sewell.

We found a Sewell grave.

Can you read the inscription?

Born August 10th, 1877.

Died August 24th, 1904.

So that's one of the graves of the five who died.

♪♪ ♪♪ Pa Baxter's view of death stay with me.

But it's sort of the gist of, "A fella has to take it for his part in life and go on."

It's heartbreaking, but he doesn't allow it to break him.

He has to go on, and Ma Baxter has to go on.

But you see her humanity and his "stoicness" in contrast because she tends the graves, and she carries the flowers, and she mourns still, uh... as a mother would.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -The Yearling movie garnered seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, taking home Oscars for Best Cinematography and Art Direction.

Young Claude Jarman received a juvenile acting Oscar.

He went on to star in 11 movies, including the 1949 film "Intruder In The Dust," directed once again by Clarence Brown, and the 1950 movie "Rio Grande," directed by John Ford.

♪♪ Gregory Peck starred in more than 60 films in his long movie career, receiving five Best Actor Academy Award nominations, including an Oscar nod for his role as Penny Baxter in "The Yearling."

He later won the coveted award for his role as the defense attorney Atticus Finch in the 1962 film "To Kill a Mockingbird," based on another Pulitzer Prize-winning book.

♪♪ Jennifer Pohlers says she hopes "The Yearling's" story continues to be required reading for students in school.

-And I hope it's something that we continue to have our kids read in elementary or middle school grades and keep the memory of it alive.

-Barney Sullivan agrees.

-The story of "The Yearling" will probably go on for another 100 years.

I think that it would help our younger generations if they could see that film, plus more films like it.

-Kathlyne Walkup Sheppard is so thankful Marjorie Rawlings wrote about characters who were so much like her own ancestors.

-I think it was just somehow foreordained that paths cross, she and the Cracker folk, and that she would love them and they would eventually embrace and love her and, uh... to preserve the authenticity of their ways of life.

-Let's put it this way.

If it hadn't been for Marjorie Rawlings, I would probably still be living in Nashville, Tennessee, because it was that -- her writing that book that, uh, enabled the opportunity for me to change my life.

Changed my life, no question about it.

"The Yearling" is still a very important part of my life.

I could probably, in another -- Give me a day, I could probably recite the whole film.

Ms. Rawlings, I think that she's somebody who people will never forget, and I think she's made a name for herself, and rightly so.

And, uh, I'm just proud that I was kind of being a part of -- of what she's -- what she's achieved.

-Actor Gregory Peck actually received a letter from Marjorie Rawlings after MGM presented a screening of the movie for her in 1946.

♪♪ "The Yearling" movie continues to be a popular film decades after it was made in the mid 1940s.

Marjorie Rawlings' book has never been out of print and has been translated into at least 10 different languages.

The Yearling Trail, on Pat's Island, in the Ocala National Forest in Florida, continues to be a popular hiking destination.

A quote included on the signage spells out how Rawlings described the area to her editor Maxwell Perkins.

Quote, "I was astonished by the utter lack of bleakness or despair in a group living momentarily on the very edge of starvation and danger.

I found a zestfulness in living, a humor, an alertness to beauty."

I'm Donna Green-Townsend.

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