‘Walking Tall’ notches 50th
anniversary
1973 Action-thriller made Buford Pusser a legend and proved a box-office smash
1970. During that span he was stabbed seven times and shot eight times, and he shot and killed two people in self-defense. His war with the State Line Mob, dubbed by some as “the Dixie Mafia,” resulted in an assassination attempt on his life on Aug. 12, 1967, which resulted in the murder of his wife, Pauline, and put him in the hospital for 18 days with his left jaw permanently disfigured.
“Walking Tall” was filmed July 12-August 24, 1972, in Chester County, Gibson County, southern Madison County and parts of McNairy County. The movie made its McNairy County debut 50 years ago on March 28, 1973, at the Sunset Drive-In in Selmer.
BY KEN BECK FIRST OF A THREE-PART SERIES
As a native-born Tennessean with roots going back to the 1790s and an avid student of Volunteer State history, I am of the opinion there are three Tennessee legends that were larger than life: David Crockett, Sgt. Alvin C. York and Sheriff Buford Pusser.
Pusser garnered national and international fame 50 years ago when the film, “Walking Tall,” debuted in the spring of 1973. A prologue during the opening credits informed movie-goers that it was “a motion picture suggested by certain events in the life of Buford Pusser, sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee, . . . living legend.”
The film was loosely based on Pusser’s biography, “The Twelfth of August,” by W.R. Morris, which covered his career as sheriff of McNairy County from 1964-
It starred Joe Don Baker carrying a big stick as his weapon of choice, while Pusser served as technical director. I watched it in August 1973 at a packed theater in Little Rock, Ark. It was the first and probably the only time I witnessed a movie audience rise in unison and clap (for a good five minutes or more) for a film.
(Note: Tough-guy actor Robert Mitchum passed up the opportunity to play Pusser. “It was one of those one-man law situations, and I saw too much of that sort of thing when I was touring Vietnam. That was
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Hollywood movie men celebrate with Buford Pusser at a preproduction party at Jackson’s Holiday Inn before “Walking Tall” began filming in West Tennessee in July 1972. From left are production manager Floyd Joyer, director Phil Karlson, Pusser, Holiday Inn manager Vally Hill and producer Mort Briskin.
‘Walking Tall’ notches 50th anniversary
tal ambush in which his wife was killed — opened in Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and other large cities in March 1973. The distributor (Cinerama Releasing) and the producer (Bing Crosby Productions) had designed an ad campaign that stressed action and violence. The results were terrible. The ads were then changed to suggest more violence and the reaction was even worse — none of the markets grossed enough to equal what was spent on advertising.
When a film reaches that point, it is usually buried. But two things made “Walking Tall” different: some audiences — as the ads later pointed out — were actually applauding at the end of the film; and, strangely enough, in small, out‐of‐the‐way places like Ogden, Utah, where the film stayed despite a bad start, the grosses were picking up.
the main reason I didn’t want to do it – that, and the fact that the script was too physical,” he explained to The Tennessean.)
The Bing Crosby Productions project cost approximately $500,000 to make and earned more than $40 million (nearly $1.2 billion in 2023 dollars) at the box office. Four million readers of “Photoplay” voted the vigilante action-thriller as Motion Picture of the Year. “Rolling Stone” proclaimed “Walking Tall” as the best American film of the year, while some movie critics panned it as the worst.
United Press International’s Tinseltown journalist Vernon Scott wrote: “In ‘Walking Tall’ a real-life Southerner is brought to the screen in a heroic role in a straight-from-the-shoulder movie that doesn’t attempt to flay the South with traditional movie stereotype.”
“Walking Tall” producer/co-writer Mort Briskin told Scott that Pusser “is really a folk hero throughout the South. This is a story of courage. One man against a gang that would scare the Mafia to death.” What fans of the film may not know is that when “Walking Tall” opened across the nation in late March 1973, it appeared to be a flop after the first few weeks. Daily Variety in June 1973 and Newsweek in October 1973 concluded that its initial release proved a failure in large metropolitan venues but was a striking success in rural areas.
In 1974, New York Times writer Peter Funt explained how a new publicity campaign spurred the low-budget flick to become the eighth-highest grossing film of the year.
Funt penned, Walking Tall — based on the true story of crusading Tennessee sheriff Buford Pusser, whose face was shot half‐away in a bru-
Charles Pratt, president of BCP, decided to take another chance and constructed a new ad campaign that asked: “When was the last time you stood up and applauded a movie?” In addition to the new advertising approach, Cinerama started booking the picture into smaller suburban theaters where managers could be persuaded to stay with it while word‐of‐mouth spread.
The late Dwana Pusser, Buford’s only child, echoed Funt’s words when she shared her personal story with my co-writer Jim Clark and me while we assisted with her 2008 autobiography, “Walking On,” telling us, “Charles Pratt, the president of Bing Crosby Productions, called in the troops. . . . and they reevaluated the original promotional plan. It basically played up the violence, and, in retrospect, perhaps that kept a lot of families, especially parents with younger children, from going to see it.
“Pratt and the others conceived a new promotion — this time based on the idea of a good man who bucked ‘the system’ and who had a wife who was true blue. The posters were redone to reflect the decision.”
Thus a new batch of newspaper ads, radio and TV commercials were cooked up, with copy that read, “Buford Pusser is a flesh and blood hero, one that can be touched, tell his own story, and sign autographs,” and the movie poster tagline was changed to: “When was the last time you stood up and applauded a movie?”
That’s a far cry from the original ad campaign that went: “He was going to give them law and order or die trying.”
In late June 1973, Atlanta film distributor James Whiteside told UPI, ‘“Walking Tall’ is grossing out ‘The Godfather’ in the southeast. . . . Most movies start out making a lot of money and end up making a little.
‘Walking Tall’ started out small and makes more as it goes along.”
In Nashville the film’s gross grew 11 fold during its seven weeks whereas the first week gross was $1,182 and the seventh week gross was $11,964.
So how did a Hollywood production company wind up in rural West Tennessee shooting the story about a young sheriff battling bad guys with a big stick?
According to Dwana, writer-producer Mort Briskin was listening to his TV set while shaving when he heard the “60 Minutes” interview that Roger Mudd conducted with her father in 1969.
Dwana said, “He called his secretary and said, ‘Find this man; get in touch with this man. I want to talk to him!’ When Briskin called my father, Daddy thought it was a big joke. He laughed, ‘Yeah, right. You really want to make a movie about me.’ And Briskin was trying to explain, ‘No. I’m very, very serious.’
(Hollywood veteran wrote 16 screenplays of his 29 motion pictures, conceived nine TV series and helped create films like “The Jackie Robinson Story”
(1950), “Willard,” “Ben” and “Framed.”)
“Of course, in the early 1970s, there were no fax machines or personal computers with e-mail capacity, so Daddy asked Briskin to send him a Western Union telegram over to Savannah. ‘I want to see if you’re legitimate or not,’ he told him.
“About an hour or two hours later, Daddy got a telephone call from the man with the local Western Union office. ‘Buford, you’re not going to believe this. I got a message from a man in Hollywood, California, and they want to make a movie about you.’
“Daddy said, ‘Are you sure it’s from California?’ He said, ‘Yes, I’ve got it right here in my hand.’
“Daddy drove over to the Western Union office and got the telegram. He then called his good friend Jack Coffman and said, ‘Jack, you’re not going to believe this, but somebody’s wanting to make a movie about me. Isn’t that hilarious?’ He really thought it was just a big joke.
“When Daddy really was able to verify that both the message and Briskin were legitimate, he called Jack back and said, ‘You’re not going to believe this. These people are real.’ Once it really sank in, he was excited and amazed.”
Sources for this series include: articles in The Jackson Sun: June 18, 1972; July 2, 1972; July 12, 1972; July 17, 1972; July 19, 1972; August 28, 1972; March 29, 1973; April 22, 1973; June 23, 1973; Memphis Commercial Appeal: June 25, 1972; Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle July 12, 1972; The Memphis Press-Scimitar Jan. 5,1973; The Tennessean: May 5, 1972, June 25, 1972; and “Walking On,” by Dwana Pusser with Ken Beck and Jim Clark (published by Pelican Press, 2008).
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Buford Pusser, left, and actor Joe Don Baker, who portrayed Pusser in the original “Walking Tall” film, share “the Big Stick” in a publicity photo for the movie, which made its McNairy County debut 50 years ago on March 28, 1973, at the Sunset Drive-In in Selmer. Produced for $500,000, the film earned over $40 million and was named “Best American Film of the Year” by “Rolling Stone” magazine.
