Photographs depict Faulkner's world

Blake Aued

DM Staff writer

You're looking at a nice black-and-white photograph of the Square. Then you notice that everyone seems to be driving a Packard around a courthouse that looks smaller than it should. A farmer's market is set up on the courthouse lawn. There's a recreation center where Uncle Buck's should be, and a grocery store in place of Ajax. And where the heck is Square Books?

Welcome to Faulkner's World.

The University Museum is featuring a collection of photographs of and about the ubiquitous William Faulkner, and just in time for the annual Faulkner Conference coming up in two weeks. The photographs were taken from 1949-1952 by journalist and lifelong friend of Faulkner Phil Mullen, and contain "a priceless record of Faulkner and his contemporaries ... in his own environment," said Exhibit Coordinator Deborah Freeland.

About half of the photographs were taken in conjunction with the filming of a Ford Foundation documentary on Faulkner that was filmed in 1949, the year he won his Nobel Prize. The other half chronicles the filming of the Faulkner novel "Intruder in the Dust," which was filmed in Oxford in the spring of 1949 and released in October of that year.

The museum will be screening "Intruder in the Dust" Sunday at 1 p.m. It will be followed by a panel discussion consisting of both Ole Miss English professors and Oxonians who were involved in the filming of "Intruder in the Dust."

Mullen's photographs present an interesting record of Faulkner's life and of Oxford in the early 1950s. The viewer sees Faulkner in his home at Rowan Oak, at the drugstore, talking with his lawyer Phil Stone (who published Faulkner's first book "The Marble Faun"), and speaking at his daughter's high school graduation. An interesting little factoid: all of these pictures were staged by the Ford Foundation, including the graduation ceremony.

The photographs taken during the filming of "Intruder in the Dust" are very candid, on the other hand. Here the viewer sees Faulkner looking very worried as other people take control of his work.

Also present are photographs of the film's stars, including Claude Jarman, Jr. ("the Leonardo DiCaprio of his day," said Freeland) as Chick, Elizabeth Patterson as Miss Habertham, Porter Hall as Nub Gowrie, Charles Kemper as Crawford Gowrie and Juano Hernandez as Lucas Beauchamp.

Especially interesting are the photographs of Hernandez, surrounded by African-American admirers who likely have never seen a black actor before.