Just Us Books’ 1997 paperback edition; cover art by thomas hudson; Courtesy of Eleanora E. TatE
North Carolina Literature into Film
N C L R ONLINE
27
Just an Overnight Guest, From Book to Film by Eleanora E. Tate
One day in early 1982, my agent, Charlotte Sheedy, telephoned me and announced, “Barbara Bryant at Phoenix Films wants to make a movie of your book.” I probably sat down, stood up, gulped, choked, and then croaked, “Oh, my! When? For how much?” “I’m working on the contract right now” is probably what she answered. “I’ll get back to you.” After hanging up the receiver, I probably fainted. Well, probably not. I’m not a fainter. But I know that I must have shouted the news by phone (no email, text messaging, or Twitter back then) to my husband, the late Zack E. Hamlett, III; to our daughter, Gretchen, when she got home from high school; to our dog, Malik; and to everybody else I could reach. The book, Just an Overnight Guest, was published by Dial Press in 1980 and was my first book for children. In it, eleven-year-old Margie Carson of Nutbrush, Missouri, has trials and tribulations with four-year-old, homeless bad girl Ethel Hardisen, who enters Margie’s life when Margie’s mother brings Ethel home “just for the weekend.”1 But Ethel stays and stays. She pees in Margie’s bed, wears Margie’s hand-me-down clothing, and shows terrible manners at the dinner table. Worse yet, Ethel breaks Margie’s cherished seashells and tries
1
Eleanonora E. Tate, Just an Overnight Guest, 1980 (East Orange, NJ: Just Us Books, 1997) 25; subsequently quoted parenthetically from this edition.
to win Margie’s father’s heart when he comes home after a long trip of truck driving. The final straw is when Margie discovers that Ethel is her cousin – Ethel’s father is her mother’s brother. Learning too that Ethel’s mother is a poverty-stricken alcoholic, abusive, unmarried white woman who has abandoned her child, Margie realizes that Ethel will be staying with them for a long, long time because, as her father tells her, you can’t turn your back on family. While assuring Margie that Ethel can’t take his love away from her, he also reminds Margie that “some things won’t change. People have to change” (170). But the biggest achievement for me at the moment was the movie itself – because it was just that – a movie, another form through which my writing would reach an audience. I was pleased, of course. Who wouldn’t be? I knew not to get too exuberant until I could see that movie made of my own book with my own eyes. I had learned long ago not to assume things would happen until they happened. The contract arrived shortly after my agent’s call. It was not to be a feature film, but a television film for educational audiences. That was fine with me. Among other contractual agreements, I’d be a