‘Horatio Alger story’ of Harriet Jacobs to be shot in Edenton

“EDENTON — About 40 young women came out to Swain Auditorium in response to an open casting call to portray on camera Edenton-born  Harriet Jacobs.

“Stacey Harkless, the film’s producer, said she would love to see a three-night miniseries.

“Much of the story [will be filmed] in Edenton, because the town is an important part of the story, and it would be expensive  to recreate its locations elsewhere.

“Harkless said the film will focus on the role faith plays in Jacobs’ story and will not include graphic depictions of violence or sex.

“Harkless said she read ‘Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl’ and was struck by its emotional power. It was difficult to believe, she said, that the book had not already been adapted as a movie. [It does have a history as a stage production.]

“Harkless stressed that the film was not envisioned as a ‘whip and chains epic’: ‘It’s a Horatio Alger story It started in slavery, but it ended with her becoming one of the most incredible people on the planet.’”

— From “Casting call busy for movie on Jacobs” by Reggie Ponder at the Chowan Herald (Aug. 21)

 

If it’s not in today’s link dump, you don’t need it

— A visceral provenance indeed: The staircase where Harriet Jacobs was beaten.

— The hoopla for “The King’s Speech” gives cause (were any needed) to look back at the insightful and unblinking work of Durham’s Barry Yeoman, e.g.,  “They Called him B-Biden” and “Why My Stutter Makes me a Better Reporter” and “Wrestling with Words.”

— From the farthest front, 77 accounts by North Carolinians at Gettysburg.

— Jock Lauterer’s latest A Thousand Words selection, from Dorothea Lange, depicts  74-year-old Caroline Atwater in the doorway of her Orange County log home on July 1, 1939.

Just wondering: Might she be kin to Anthony “Shine” Atwater of “Reet and Shine,” the  inexplicably uncelebrated dual biography by Michael Schwalbe? (Ranking one-two worldwide in frequency of the Atwater surname: Chapel Hill and Durham.)

— ” ‘Hush puppies don’t have sugar in them,’ she stated categorically.”

Link dump: Mind-reading from 150 years away

— What was his great-great-great grandfather thinking?

— A play about Harriet Jacobs, a film about Carl Sandburg.

— Death noted: Clyde King, whose long baseball career began with an overnight transformation from Tar Heel to Brooklyn Dodger.

— Roadside marker in Fayetteville is state’s first to  recognize a Muslim.

Lost Colony researcher‘s  “two drops of Croatoan blood… have boiled over.”