AMERICAN MASTERS: KATHERINE ANNE PORTER: THE EYE OF MEMORY (TV)
Summary
One in this documentary series that explores the lives and achievements of America's most celebrated native-born and adopted artists and performers. This profile of the life and career of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980) intersperses comments from Porter's friends, family, and colleagues with dramatizations of scenes from her stories. Host Joanne Woodward makes introductory remarks, followed by comments from Porter's nephew Paul Porter, biographer Joan Givner, and writers Peter Taylor, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, and Eleanor Clark, who recall their impressions and memories of Porter and provide insight into how Porter's upbringing and background influenced her writing; her use of her birthplace -- the Texas frontier -- as a setting in her stories; themes and characterizations in her work; and autobiographical elements in her fiction. Still photographs of Porter and her family are shown throughout the program. Interwoven with the interviews are dramatizations of three stories whose central character is a little girl, Miranda (Chandel). In "The Witness," Miranda and her brother and sister listen intently as Uncle Jimbilly (Winfield), a former slave, describes how slaves in the rice swamps were whipped and tortured. In "The Circus," a family outing to the circus is almost spoiled when Miranda becomes terrified by a clown's perilous performance on a tightrope. In "The Grave," Miranda's brother, Paul (Hatten), shoots a rabbit. After skinning and gutting it, Paul and Miranda discover that it was pregnant; the image remains buried in Miranda's mind until years later, when it suddenly resurfaces. Acquisition and cataloging of this program was made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Details
- NETWORK: PBS WNET New York, NY
- DATE: July 7, 1986 9:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:58:48
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T91:0180
- GENRE: Arts documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Writing; Biography; Storytelling
- SERIES RUN: PBS - TV series, 1986-
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Susan Lacy … Executive Producer
- Patricia P. Perini … Executive Producer
- Jac Venza … Executive , Director
- Harlene Freezer … Coordinating Producer
- Calvin Skaggs … Producer
- Joan Kramer … Producer
- Terry Benes … Associate Producer
- David Heeley … Director
- Ken Harrison … Director, Writer
- John L. Miller … Writer
- Jordon Pecile … Writer
- John Morris … Music by
- Jonathan Tunick … Theme Music by
- Joanne Woodward … Host
- Dina Chandel … Cast, Miranda
- Yankton Hatten … Cast, Paul
- Bill Irwin … Cast, Harry and Pierrot
- Adina Porter … Cast, Dicey
- Helen Stenborg … Cast, the Grandmother
- Paul Winfield … Cast, Uncle Jimbilly
- Christi Allen … Cast, Maria
- Casey Davis … Cast, Cousin Charles
- Doris Hargrave … Cast, the Farm Woman
- Dick Harris … Cast, the Ringmaster
- Sage Parker … Cast, Cousin Miranda
- Frances Peterson … Cast, Older Miranda
- Martin Rayner … Cast, the Barker
- Gena Sleete … Cast, the Old Farm Woman
- John Stuntz … Cast, the Dwarf
- Eleanor Clark
- Joan Givner
- Katherine Anne Porter
- Paul Porter
- Peter Taylor
- Robert Penn Warren
- Eudora Welty