122 Southern Expat transcript (Harper Lee)

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Sara: [00:00:00] This is Famous and Gravy biographies from a different point of view. To participate in our opening quiz, email us at hello@famousenggravy.com. Now here's the quiz to reveal today's dead celebrity.

Michael: This person died 2016, age 89. Her father was a prominent lawyer with a lofty sense of civic duty. At one point, she herself transferred to the University of Alabama to study law and to go into the family business.

Friend: Shirley Jackson?

Michael: Oprah Winfrey. Not Oprah Dead.

Friend: Oh,

Michael: okay. Not Oprah Winfrey, who as of this recording, I'm happy to say is still with us. Alright. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1960.

Friend: Sylvia Plath. Oh no. You're gonna get me on one that I don't know. Pulitzer Prize in 1960, so I don't know why I'm going. Barbara Walters.

Michael: Not Barbara Walters, who We've actually done a that show before. Yeah. We did a Barbara Walters episode in 1949. She settled into a cold water apartment in the east eighties of [00:01:00] New York City. During that time, she found work as a reservations agent, first for Eastern Airlines and later for the British Overseas Airways Corporation.

At night, she wrote on a desk made from a door. Audrey Hepburn?

Friend: No, she's a writer. Writer. Would it be the Vanderbilt?

Michael: Oh, Gloria Vanderbilt. Yeah. Not Gloria Vanderbilt. She had a reputation as a recluse whose public appearance is to accept an award or an honorary degree counted as important news simply because of their rarity.

Friend: Oh my gosh. I, for whatever reason, I'm now I'm going to people like Gloria Steinem or Harper Lee. Or Harper Lee.

Michael: Today's dead celebrity is Harper Lee. Woo.

Sara: Wow.

Archival: What was your reaction to the success of To Kill a Mockingbird? Well, my reaction to it was not one of surprise. It was one of she numbness. [00:02:00] It was one of the hit over the head, not cold.

It was something I never expected that the book would sell in the first place. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers, but I was hoping that maybe somebody might like it well enough to give me some encouragement.

Michael: Welcome to Famous Engraving. I'm Michael Osborne, and my name is Sarah Murphy. And on this show we choose a famous figure who died in the 21st century, and we take a totally different approach to their biography. What didn't we know? What could we not see clearly? And what does a celebrity's life story teach us about ourselves today?

Harper Lee died 2016, age 89.

I am thrilled to have my friend Sarah Murphy back on the show. Sarah previously joined us for our episode with the Queen, Kobe Bryant, Waylon [00:03:00] Jennings, and now Harper Lee. We are rounding all corners of pop culture. Something came up when we did the Gregory Peck episode with my friend Michelle. Michelle is also an attorney.

There is a thing out there where a lot of people go into law because of Atticus Finch, and I'm wondering if he was an inspiration for you 'cause you're an attorney too.

Sara: He is definitely a character that loomed large. I had a brother who was an attorney who had given me a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird when I was 11 or 12.

That ended up meaning a lot to me, and then I ended up teaching it and it was at a British boarding school. I remember at the end of the year, this group of students I had had, we were talking about what they wanted to be when they grew up and a student named James said, Ms. Murphy, what did you think you wanted to be when you were our age?

And I said, well, I thought I might go into politics, probably become a lawyer. He goes, is that why you made us read Merchant of Venice and To Kill a Mockingbird? And I realized that if I didn't go to law school, I was gonna be [00:04:00] forcing some unlived dream on the next generation for the rest of my life.

Yeah. So it, it felt like the kind of career that could let you. Help. Right. Some wrongs, whatever that meant for you.

Michael: Yeah. And I think this will come up inevitably in this conversation that the legacy of Atticus Finch, the real life man, uh, you know, Harper Lee's father and the fictional character has been through a journey and is even still going through a journey.

Sara: Yeah, yeah, it is. And I also wanna acknowledge that. You and I are both white southerners, so we're gonna be like seeing this from a particular angle. But I think that there are lots of things about Atticus that are not perfect, even when idealized, but there is a lot to be inspired by and how he saw the world and how he was encouraging his children to see the world.

Michael: So much to say on this, I think, let's just get into it. Category one, grading the first line of their obituary. Harper Lee, whose first novel to Kill a Mockingbird about racial injustice [00:05:00] in a small Alabama town, sold more than 40 million copies and became one of the most beloved and most taught works of fiction ever written by an American.

Died on Friday in Monroeville, Alabama where she lived. She was 89. What do you think?

Sara: I mean, they left out Pulitzer Prize winning, but I think they were trying to get to just how vast it was. It wasn't that it was an award-winning book. It was that it's so red and so beloved and acknowledged as perhaps the great American novel.

From that perspective, I could understand why just plugging in the critic's success might have been a little bit of a head fake. I'm glad that they ended up including Monroeville, Alabama.

Michael: Let me start with some praise here actually. 'cause I think there's some nuance. I love that they say Beloved and taught this is a book that is so associated with middle school curricula like you.

[00:06:00] I also liked Monroeville, Alabama. The things that, I don't know if they gave me pause, but I'm still thinking through one. They call her Harper Lee, which is the name we know her by, not her name. Nell Harper Lee. I think it was actually the right call. The thing that has me really wanting to talk here is the word first novel.

Yeah. Because it sort of hints at the controversy around the only other novel. Go set a watchman. I almost want to get this. Outta the way I have arrived at the conclusion that novel never should have seen the light of day. Okay. It's a complicated story of how it did come to be. Right? It was marketed as a sequel, but it's not.

Sara: No, no. I mean, it's later in time. So basically go set A Watchman is a draft, which was the first draft she wrote, and she wrote it from the perspective of really a character where someone in her position was more directly narrating. So she was, it was someone older, was an adult [00:07:00] living in New York and talking about her childhood and her relationship with her father and a lot of like dealing with identity and politics and class and race and, I mean, all of its, all of its complexities when you're trying to see things from different views.

She wrote that draft and it was getting shopped around. She started writing the stories that ultimately become To Kill a Mockingbird. And those were different because they were written from the perspective of the child, which ends up being a very important aspect of the book

Michael: by the time she lands a publisher.

Yes, it evolves into To Kill a Mockingbird, but the first draft still exists and lives in a locked vault. This all happens in the late 1950s, early 1960s, where To Kill A Mockingbird comes out like 1960 becomes this sensation. You know, Harper Lee is vaulted to fame. Everybody is wondering for the next basically 50 years.

When's the next book coming out? The next book never comes out, but then [00:08:00] Ghost at a Watchman ends up coming out in 2015. This is actually indicative of the Harper Lee story, like one word will send you on this rabbit hole. Mm-hmm. Of storylines in terms of like what's going on with her ghost set. A watchman comes out under sort of suspicious circumstances after her older sister Alice has died.

And once Harper Lee may not have all of her faculties, let's say. It's lightly edited and it tarnishes the memory of Atticus Finch. But you see some of Harper Lee's talent, but it's not like a great book and it's certainly No. To Kill a Mockingbird. To Kill a Mockingbird

Sara: is a published novel. Ghost at a Watchman is a published draft.

That's what I would say.

Michael: That's the way to put it. Yeah. That word, her first novel, all of that is kind of behind that phrase in the first line of our obituary, so to say, first novel rather than her novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The only thing it doesn't say at all in here that I [00:09:00] wondered if they thought about it was her retreat from the spotlight.

I think calling her a recluse is actually a misnomer. I do too. She's not somebody who's going out of her way to hide from public view. She's just hiding from the press. Those are two different things. She was out and about scene regularly. She just turned down every single interview post 1964. So I initially thought this was a very high score.

I was thinking nine or 10. 'cause I think that there's some elegant solutions to part of the Harper Lee story, but I kind of feel like that part of it is too interesting not to nod at. So I was gonna give it an eight.

Sara: Yeah. Actually, some of the elegance. You might have rounded me up. Okay. So we may have both ended up with aids because I, I do think that it's true that because the retreat was so controversial, like she was considered a very active character in a very like, public facing character in Monroeville, but she was not going to literary criticism conferences [00:10:00] or holding camps on how to write your first novel.

Or, or, or, or, or, or,

Michael: right, right. Or going to the Iowa Writers Workshop. I mean, she was seen, she wasn't Thomas Penant. This wasn't Salinger, but where's the next book is the question that really hovers in a big way. Alright, eight and eight. Let's move on. Category two, five things I love about You. Here's Sarah and I will develop a list of five things that offer a different angle on who this person was and how they lived.

I've been kind of fascinated with the term growth edge lately. This feels like a term that a lot of my friends are using. Am I crazy? Have you been hearing this term? You're not crazy. It

Sara: does exist, but it's not, it has not worked its way into my parlance, I would say. But I, but go. I wanna hear about there has been a real

Michael: uptick in the use of, where's your growth edge these days?

I think To Kill a Mockingbird is a really. Perfect Growth Edge book. I sort of alluded to this a second ago. Ever since about the mid 1990s, there is more and more debate over the virtuousness of To Kill a Mockingbird. [00:11:00] Was Atticus really as like perfect as we remember Malcolm Gladwell wrote this article about him being more of an accommodationist rather than a reformer or an activist.

Mm. There's like all these think pieces. Some of them are pretty interesting actually. If you look at the black characters in the book, they're very two dimensional and then mm-hmm. There's one article I read that I sent me totally thinking Mayella, so that the story is right Tom, you know, black Man is accused of raping Malea, the white woman, or Malea accuses Tom and it's, you know, kind of comes out.

Pretty obvious it was male's father, but Tom gets convicted anyway 'cause the system's screwed and Atticus defends Tom. There's a scene where Atticus puts male on the courtroom stand and kind of victim shames her is like one reading of it. Like imagine for a second we don't know whether Tom's innocent or not.

And so I heard somebody say, Harper Lee is not an evolved feminist. Okay. Right. So there's all these things you can kind of poke at. Yeah. In in the book. And I think there there's a lot [00:12:00] more. But I do think this book, when it came out in 1960, really before most of the. Civil rights movement. I think it's at the growth edge of where white people are, and certainly in the White South in 1960.

I also think it's at the growth edge of Scout and the children in this book. Oh yeah. Like there's a famous quote from F Flannery O'Connor commenting on the book. She said it's interesting that all the folks that are buying it don't know they're reading a child's book. I think it's kind of a child's book in a way.

I

Sara: mean, I, you know, I disagree with that. Okay. I will stand up for this. Yeah, so there was a quote that Harper Lee acknowledged that she was glad that the young adult genre did not exist. When To Kill A Mockingbird came out because it could have gotten stuck in the young adult genre. Yeah. But I think it's a little silly that the young adult genre is assumed only be relevant to young adults.

Like I will defend that genre to the end. Yeah, and I don't think that this belongs here and I, I love Flannery O'Connor, but I do disagree with her on that. And I think that if you look [00:13:00] at what Harper Lee, and if you see what she started with, she tried to write the adult version like she was writing as someone who's separating from her hometown and her father and her family and trying to like establish herself in her own life and then trying to look at it with criticism and affection and then realizing like the affection can be difficult to maintain.

In a sense. It was much more powerfully told from the perspective of the child. It is not a child's. Novel in some ways, one of the most beautiful things about the story is that like what is painful about racism and what is painful about not being able to make democracy work? What is painful about these institutions that Atticus is so dedicated to trying to hold up and let run in a pure way.

And if they do, then justice will be served. Is like all the things that take those things down have to be taught. When you know the mob comes for Jim and Atticus is waiting there to stop them. It's not Atticus who [00:14:00] makes the mob go away. It's scout who pops the bubble and says, Mr.

Michael: Cunningham. Yeah.

Sara: Yeah, that's right.

It's. Scout, who's the one who can hold up the mirror.

Michael: Let me clarify 'cause I think this is perfect, and this is almost exactly my point, that this is debatable or is an argument to be had is exactly. Its value one. Yeah. That's the first thing I would say. The second thing I would say is that I have a son in sixth grade.

I'm ready for him to read this book. I'm not saying it's targeted at middle schoolers because that makes it sound like how it's marketed with that you and I are in agreement, but that it is available at this age of 10, 11, 12, or or 13, is part of its genius. And I, I was actually thinking about, I was thinking as you were talking just now, one of my favorite examples is Calvin and Hobbes because Calvin has the mindset of a six or 7-year-old and the vocabulary of a postgraduate a and that's one of the things that's always been so wonderful about like, can we take very sophisticated [00:15:00] language and remember the child's or the younger person's at least mindset?

Mm-hmm. In the coming of age story. This does that very, very well. You do feel in scout's mind, I guess what I'm trying to get at is that. It sort of works on, on all these levels, on the level of individual, of child, of family, and on the level of a society growth edge. Yeah. All right. That's my thing, number one.

Sara: Number two, she is what I call a southern expat. I will say that some of my favorite people on the planet, including one of like my dearest friends in all the world, is someone from Alabama who moved to New York in their twenties. And I just think that there is something about, or whatever propels people to leave a small southern town and then the relationship that they maintain with that small town is fascinating to me because I grew up in a small southern town in east Tennessee, and then Charlottesville, London, Oxford.

Tokyo, DC you really do see what it is [00:16:00] that propels people to want to get to a different place, to like know that it can't be happening like this everywhere. You know? And then this idea that that Southerners and southern literature especially, are very grounded in a sense of place, which is why Monroeville Alabama is how her obituary ends.

It's almost like her life kind of cycled back to that, even though she came to know all the success in New York. But even like the relationships that led to this book being written, or Alabama Friendship Connection,

Archival: I think we are a region of storytellers naturally just by our, uh, tribal instincts, just from our tribal instincts.

We, um, did not have the pleasures of, uh, the theater of the dance of motion pictures when they came along. We simply. Entertain each other by talking quite a thing. If you've never gone or if [00:17:00] you've never known a southern small town.

Sara: I loved being an American in England. Like I loved being an American in Japan.

Michael: I, I relate to this. I loved being a Texan overseas, and when, whenever people started talking to me about it, I found my accent would start to get a little thicker, you know? Oh, yeah. No,

Sara: yeah, yeah. My friends in college would come and listen to me, talk to my parents 'cause they like, what? I like to hear my accent come back.

You know? Like it's,

Michael: but I, but I, I mean, I think what you're talking about is carrying a sense of place with you, warts and all.

Sara: Yeah. And there is a tension in it like this. There's some degree of like having a sense of expectation for how you're supposed to operate within some of the confines of a small town that just feel dysfunctional.

Mm-hmm. And so you go out in the world and do some things and then as a result, you can feel not fully at home in the small town again. Uh, but you can also feel as though you will never be fully at home anywhere, but in that small town. And I feel like you see that in her. Like the idea that she ends up back in [00:18:00] Monroeville is not shocking to me.

Michael: Well, I And that she splits time. Yeah. That she's half in New York, half in Monroeville. I really noticed that too. Sarah and I really relate to that. I mean, it, it's. Slightly different. 'cause I'm born and raised Austin and Austin has become this much larger city. But I am resigned to the fact that when I am not here, this city calls me and I want to be back.

Yeah. And I like feel most me and at home. And then I get back here and I'm itchy and my world gets small and collapses. And I think that is just gonna be my fate. Yeah. And I see that in Harper Lee too. And I, I actually think the southern expat language is a perfect way of describing the conflicted, but ultimately loving relationship.

She talks about To Kill a Mockingbird saying it's a love story, plain and simple. And everybody's always interpreted that to be about Atticus. I see it actually as not just her father. I see it as a love story for Monroeville. I agree. I agree. Yeah. Okay. [00:19:00] Love that one. Okay, I'll go to number three. True crime hobbyist.

Um, I like in a different age, this woman would've had a podcast part of it, uh, and it would've been, it would've been a True Crime podcast. So there's two places where this come up. One, I really did not appreciate how much work she did for this story with Truman Capote on in Cold Blood. I had seen her as somebody who was just kind of riding shotgun with her friend 'cause she and Truman Capote for people who didn't know.

Grow grew up together. Right. And yeah, he

Sara: is the, he is the basis for Dill. The, yeah. Next the friend, the kind of quirky

Michael: friend and, and it's a funny pairing because we don't use this language anymore, but Harper Lee was described as a tomboy growing up, and Truman Capote was sort of an effeminate nerd and like a target of a lot of bullying.

Harper Lee stood up for him when they were little kids. Mm-hmm. And he's the one who encourages her to move to New York and he's helps kind of bring her into a certain set of [00:20:00] circumstances that eventually lead to the book. We'll get to it later when he goes and reports on in Cold Blood. Harper Lee is not just along for the ride, she.

All but co-author, she's facilitating all of these conversations for Truman Capote in Kansas. So much so that when the book finally does come out and she sees the way she's acknowledged, she's pissed. Mm-hmm. This is not honoring the role I had. So then the other place where she's a true crime hobbyist is the second book that never happened that, that there was this too much to go into this story because it's way too involved.

It

Sara: happened and was thrown in the fire. There are a couple different versions about that. There's

Michael: theories about this. Yeah. But there's this reverend that was involved in all these probably insurance fraud cases, but then the guy gets shot and the lawyer had defended the reverend, but then he defends the guy who shoots him, who shot him.

Yeah. In a

Sara: church. Yeah. Like openly in a church. Yeah. The whole story is bananas.

Michael: Right. It is

Sara: absolutely insane. Yeah. So that's the [00:21:00] one Casey Sep covered in furious hours and it is definitely a good read

Michael: and it's as close as Harper Lee ever got to a true second. Novel. They did discover a chapter one, but the rest of the book, as you said, may have been lost the time.

So we never get the second book. You know, to Kill a Mockingbird is fiction, but it feels true Crimey in places like, 'cause it's Yeah. Sort of sourced from real events. The thing I love is that, you know, she likes to play Detective as a writer. She and Truman Capote, apparently that's, that was what play looked like for them as little kids.

Oh yeah. Mm-hmm. And then when they go and report on in Cold Blood, it's sort of like a playfulness to their collaboration around the story. I, I harbor this fantasy. I harbor a fantasy that I'm gonna crack open a true crime story. Yeah. So it's just a thing I like, I mean, yeah, why not? Okay, lemme ask you this, Sarah, do you harbor that fantasy?

Do you ever like dream like I could be a private eye.

Sara: Oh, I am pretty sure I could be a private [00:22:00] detective or a private.

Michael: The confidence with what you said that

Sara: I am definitely the friend. Like if you've, if somebody's like met someone at a bar and they want a little background on them, I'm like, gimme a

Michael: couple minutes.

Yeah. It's the creative license to take deep interest in somebody else and to unearth a good story. I also think my theory on why the second book didn't happen, I think that there was a lack of energy. I think there was a lack of confidence for her to kill A Mockingbird is so well regarded. How would this second book read?

I also think that there

Sara: was just a very specific thing, and we're gonna, because this is gonna take a while, I think maybe we should go ahead and make this What, number four. Okay. Um, she was an amazing daughter. And an amazing friend. The only reason the Great American novel to Kill a Mockingbird exists is because her friends, who she was staying with in New York and the Christmas of 1956, who she met through Truman Capote, [00:23:00] they were like some more like Alabamians and like southerners that he introduced her to.

She starts babysitting their kids, spending a lot of time at the house. She ends up going to their house for Christmas instead of heading back to. Monroeville. So they decide to literally put a little envelope on the tree address to n and they tell her that they're gonna replace her salary for a year so that she can write.

Michael: It's like pure patronage, right? It's like we believe in you. Quit your job for a year. Do this. We're gonna make it happen.

Sara: Yeah. How does that, like I have the most amazing friends in the world. I can't believe all the things that my friends have done for me. But nobody's been like, here, let me just pay your salary for a year.

And you go chase a dream. Seriously,

Michael: it's, it, it's an, it feels like an unheard of gesture. Yeah.

Sara: Like I taught this book, I've read it forever. I didn't know that was really the story. Me neither. Yeah. I knew that, that, that

Michael: because had that not happened, would we ever have gotten this book? Like what her would, her life have looked like?

It's so extraordinary.

Sara: And so I start looking at like the series of events that kind of leads [00:24:00] her 'cause like she did go to law school. She was at the University of Alabama studying Yes. Law at Tuscaloosa. She does a summer program in Oxford, England, 1948. That fall is her last semester in Tuscaloosa Law School.

She comes home at Christmas in 1948. Monroeville decides she's not going back. She waits tables at like a golf club, saves up some money, moves to New York in 1949, but then beginning of 1949, within. A year and a half May, 1951, her mom is diagnosed with two malignancies of pretty aggressive cancer. They think she has three months.

They tell her not to come home to Monroeville and then like literally within. Like days, weeks, her mom dies of a heart attack. The following month, July, her brother dies of a cerebral hemorrhage, literally the month after his mother dies. Right? And so she gets to New York and her life just starts falling apart.

And then she'd gone back to Monroeville for a period of time because Atticus was sick. And [00:25:00] so she was ba and he was keep going of Atticus. His name was actually, I'm sorry, sorry, sorry. AC Lee, her father,

Michael: her father

Sara: AC

Michael: Lee. Yeah. But actually I wanna just pause on that because I do think that the amount of, not pure autobiography, but almost autobiography in the books is very real.

So it's a very forgivable mistake.

Sara: And I also think this is the difference between Ghost at a Watchman Atticus, and To Kill a Mockingbird Atticus is that going back to the child lets her see him in his most elevated state after she's been basically caring for him. He had ulcers, he was eating baby food at this point.

So he is like a very diminished version of himself. And then her friends give her this. Remarkable gift. And they're like, you know what? Like your life is not over. It is not about going back to Monroeville and giving up on all these dreams. We're gonna give you a year, do it, and then we ultimately get to kill a Mockingbird out of that.

And so the type of friend you have to be in order for people to see that in you and then root for you in that way is [00:26:00] amazing.

Michael: That's a great observation, Sarah. I was thinking, aren't these remarkable people, but the lens you are putting on it. The kind of friend you have to be for other people to see that in you says a lot about you.

It's actually happens to segue really well into my thing number five, because part of my reaction to what you had to say now about great friends and family relationships, it actually goes against this reputation of her as a recluse. There's a lot of different books you can read to try and get a hold of the Harper Lee story.

It's really pretty hard. I think the best one was the Charles Shields biography. There's also the Mockingbird Next door that comes out later in life. You can read some of her texts as semi autobiographical, but one thing that you get. Over and over again in all of these texts is like her friends are almost this like shadow figure that are clearly part of all of her life.[00:27:00]

It leads me to my thing number five. I wrote one and done lottery ticket. I think it's a really interesting question about how much she was tortured by the fact that there was never a true follow up. Exactly. I think that there are signs, no question that Harper Lee was probably in her head of like, ah, why can't I get a second book out?

There's this effort to write a book about the reverend that we talked about that never comes to fruition and her drinking picks up and there's people like said, yeah, just come, you know, she could be a little mouthed off. On the other hand, she lives. What I see as a very enviable lifestyle for most of the second half of her life.

She's splitting time between her hometown and New York. She does have friends. She has stable economic income. The question isn't God. What else might she have written that's a fan question. The question I. Considering is maybe this is an okay [00:28:00] life, you know, I mean, not to skip ahead to the Vander beak, but maybe you write one great book that is arguably one of the greatest books of the 20th century that gets studied, that pushes on the growth edge of America.

It's not a rest on your laurels thing, it's actually, but I feel like it's easy to agonize over where do we get meaning and validation and are we doing enough and are we reaching our potential? This one book kind of is good enough, isn't it? Yeah, I dunno. And so, I mean, yeah,

Sara: like what did she owe us?

Nothing. You know, like she, like, she didn't, but, and what I'm really

Michael: trying to do is like separate the us out of this because I think like if I were to get in her head, I'm sure there's a part of her. You know, everybody's asking for another book for 50 years, basically. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like, you know, she kind of tries and kind of is feeling the pressure.

Like there's supposed to be another book, but is there supposed to be another book? Yeah. Who's to say that there's absolutely supposed to be another book? It's kind of a [00:29:00] self-love question, Sarah. It's like, do you love yourself enough to achieve some level of peace around no second book? Did it torture her that the book number two ever came out?

I mean, it's actually, it's mostly

Sara: mystery. I mean, she goes immediately on, basically like the final draft is done before she goes to help Truman with all these interviews for in cold blood. So she's kind of onto a new project already, you know, like she's done that and then she does get the rights from the family to write about this absolutely crazy Reverend Story that you can read about in furious Hours.

That probably was heavy for her and probably did weigh on her because she had the rights to the story. It was like there was some expectation that that was gonna happen.

Michael: She also sees what happens to Truman Capote once in cold blood comes out. Yeah. And he turns into a hot mess for the rest of his life where drugs take over and he wants to be in high society and he is a terrible friend, and their friendship deteriorates because he can't participate in it.

This is the famous and gravy point I'm [00:30:00] trying to make here. Yeah. Which is at what point do we say what you have contributed is good enough and you should learn to love yourself just for having achieved anything at all. Yeah. Like this is what I would want to say to her if she is in 1962 and she thinks she's supposed to write another one, and I'm able to magically transport to that time and say, you'll never write another one.

But that's okay. And And learn to have that feel. Okay.

Sara: Yeah. You

Michael: know what I mean? I think I, this is what I mean about a question of self-love. This is not exactly how I interpret her story, but I also think things didn't go that bad for her for the next 50 years. She Oh yeah. Has economic stability. She has friendships.

She has a close relationship with her older sister Alice. She is reminded over and over again how important this book is to other people. I don't know. That's good enough. One and done. Lottery ticket, maybe not so bad.

Sara: If I'm only gonna do one thing, if there's one thing that is like to kill a Mockingbird.

[00:31:00] Good. I'm, I'm great with,

Michael: exactly. Alright, let's recap. So, uh, thing number one, I said growth edge thing number two. You said Southern expat. Southern expat. Number three, I said true crime hobbyist thing number four. You said she was an amazing friend and daughter Thing number five. One and done. Lottery ticket, maybe not so bad.

Okay, let's take a break. Let, let, let.

Hey, famous and gravy listeners, Michael Osborne here. This show is produced by 14th Street Studios, which is a production and consulting firm focused on creative development. We take ideas and shape them into podcasts that people want to hear. Famous and Gravy has been an incredible success story, and we believe it's built on a foundation of strong ideas, smart editing, and knowing your audience.

So if you've been carrying around a [00:32:00] podcast idea or you want to make your existing show stronger, we would love to work with you. Send me an email atMichael@famousandgravy.com. Category three. One Love. In this category, Sarah and I will each choose one word or phrase that characterizes Harper Lee's loving relationships.

First, we will review what we know about the marriages and the kids. No marriages, no kids. So her father who we talked about is model of Atticus mother. We didn't talk about this before, but there's some stories out there about her having very severe mental health kinds of issues and was not. Capable of mothering by the time Harper came around and older Sister Alice really looks like a mother figure.

She's 14 or 15 years older than Harper Lee Alice goes to law school and is for most of Harper Lee's life heavily involved in all of her business affairs. She's representing the estate, she is handling the finances, and the two of them live together in a way that almost looks like a, it's not a [00:33:00] marriage obviously, but it almost is like a collaboration.

It's a partnership. And she, Alice die at 103. She hangs in there for a long time. Yeah, she does. She does. Okay. There is a question, but it's all rumors of like her sexual orientation. Nobody knows. Yeah. So where did this leave you? What did you come up with for One Love?

Sara: So my phrase is, it's call nil. I look at her relationships.

I think that she had. Those close family relationships. But I do think that there was a relationship with Truman that became a primary relationship in her life. There was a discussion of, even after their friendship had kind of fallen apart, Truman basically had a breakdown, locked himself in a bathroom in his apartment, and then no one there could get him to respond or come out of the door.

This is even after like estranged and everything. All anybody knew to do was to call n and I think that she probably had a lot of those types of relationships. So like when her brother dies and [00:34:00] leaves a widow, a three-year-old and a nine month old, she would then have had an aunt role that could have been quite big.

I am sad for her in that way. That there, that, I don't know, like what she missed out of that. And there was this idea that she was this tomboy and Truman was, you know, such this oddity of Yeah. And that they somehow had this relationship kind of growing up.

Michael: Yeah. It's funny with the two of them, you do see compatibility that ends up falling apart when Truman falls apart.

But timeline wise, what's sort of noteworthy is to Kill a Mockingbird is. It's pre-publication when she is with Truman Capote, initially in Kansas, reporting on the crimes that become in cold blood.

Sara: And this is where I get mad at him after in cold blood comes out and people start talking to him about Harper Lee's contributions to that.

He then starts making allusions to the idea that he was somehow very helpful in to Kill a Mockingbird. You know? Yeah.

Michael: And that those rumors live for a little while and they've [00:35:00] all but been, I mean, by an incredible source. Dispelled.

Sara: Yeah, exactly. But he's saying it on talk shows and stuff. Yeah. And so I do think that the competition was ultimately what didn't survive in that relationship, but that also would not be unlike a young married couple who kind of falls apart, but yeah.

Right, right, right, right. Yeah, I just think that there are a lot of, there are a lot of kind of parallels there. And it might be that it was just that she, I mean, she was a coyo from the University of Alabama, and it would've been unheard of for her to have been in a relationship with a woman. And so it just, everything would've been hush hush.

Or it could have just been that like her life was largely in service to other relationships and friendships, and that she had a lot of people who needed her. That's why I was obsessed with, like, how did we get here? Like what was, yeah. Yeah. Well, I,

Michael: I think that that's the thing I wanna say that I'm not sure we've said quite clearly enough, more than any other episode of Famous in Gravy, the amount of information out there that we're working with, it's just in a different place because she was so.

Unwilling to [00:36:00] center her own biography or center herself in any kind of way. In a way that I really admire. But it's also mm-hmm. Just mysterious, there's a lot of speculation in terms of the kinds of interpretation that you and I are gonna. Be able to come to just based on what's out there. But I love that though.

Call Nell. I mean, I, what I hear in that is, dependable friend. It's difficult to pair off

Sara: if that's really your life,

Michael: you know? So, yeah, I think that, and I don't, I don't know if we're talking about her or you here,

Sara: but

Michael: I don't,

Sara: well, I don't think, I, I

Michael: don't, don't think I'm as good of a friend as she was, but I think that I, I would disagree with that.

I think you're an incredible friend. And I also see you in a web of relationships that sometimes we make a whole bunch of noise, especially on this goddamn show, about the importance of pairing off. And it's not about that. Like, it's about being, you know, loved and being surrounded by people you loved and being somebody who, somebody might call you if they need you.

And I, I, mm-hmm. See that in her. And I see that in you. [00:37:00] Let me give you my one love thing. I went American Eagle Scout. I almost went Eagle Scout 'cause I wanted to do something with Scout. She's scout. That's how I see her. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and I was thinking Eagle Scout, because the Eagle Scout is such a, like, noble, dependable, trustworthy, I think we don't use the word tomboy anymore because it's gendered, but it was used in her lifetime.

So I'm gonna use it here. There's a little bit of a tomboy thing with her. So Eagle Scout there and then I went and I was like, I need to tack on American Eagle. 'cause there's something American and patriotic about, and not patriotic exactly. But she is quintessentially American. So the ways in which I see scout, absolutely, she's independent, she's precocious, honor and dependability.

This is kind of what we were talking about. Um, the sister is her lifelong companion and protector. There's a tremendous loyalty between them. The friendships with Truman Capote, also with Gregory Peck, the way those two talk about each other is just delightful.

Archival: You may recall when Atticus came home from the courthouse or [00:38:00] his office that day, it was a habit, I think, for the kids that took to run down to the corner.

And the boy grabbed his briefcase and they walked down the street together talking till they got to their house. And we were doing that little scene. And, uh, while we were doing it, I glanced across the street, behind the camera, I saw Harper and I saw that her cheeks were glistening. And I thought, wow, we're just tearing her up.

We're just breaking her heart. We must be marvelous in this scene. So I walked over to her and I said, Harper, I think I saw some tears on your cheeks. I went out of the corner of my eye while we were playing that scene. She said, oh, Gregory. You've got a little potbelly just like my daddy,

Michael: and they stayed in touch. And even when she was working on the second novels, like maybe Gregory will be in that role. And then Monroeville, [00:39:00] I think that there was a, a loyalty and an honoring of her hometown. So, and when American Eagle Scout. All right, uh, let's move on. Category four, net worth. I am excited for this one in this category.

We each write down our numbers ahead of time and discuss our reasoning. We'll then look up the net worth number in real time to see who's closest. And finally, we will place Harper Lee on the famous and gravy net worth leaderboard. I'm all over the place on this.

Sara: I'm throwing a dart. Okay, here. I, I am too.

Michael: I wrote down initially a very low number, but 40 million copies is a lot. The movie is a lot. The fact that it gets sold. Four curriculum in schools and has been for many, many, many, many decades.

Sara: I had similar thoughts to that. I also think, I don't know how good her deals would've been on. The movie rights, she didn't participate in the screenplay.

I think she let that be separate. That's correct. And I also think there was a sense that she was propping up some people and I don't know how many [00:40:00] people, so I'm not sure. Oh, that's

Michael: interesting. Yeah. Yeah. But what's also funny is you hear these accounts like she would liked the salad at Burger King. She liked to gamble an hour out of town on the Gulf Coast.

I mean, she had very blue collar tastes. Yeah. Let's do the reveal. So Sarah Murphy wrote down 12 million. Michael Osborne wrote down 15 million. Okay. Harper Lee's net worth was estimated up 35 million at the time of her death. Go girl

Sara: Up

Michael: now. Damn. I'm just gonna say I am closer. That is insane. One book 35. I know. Okay. This substantiates my point number five, aren't we good? Like, this is the argument I was trying to make. Like, look, you write one great book. One and done. I wrote my lottery ticket. Everybody wants to interview me. Fuck y'all.

I'm out. I'm going. I'm going. This is the famous Eng Gravy question for [00:41:00] me. We have all these debates about her legacy. We can talk about Atticus all we want and is this book important or is it at our growth age and should we hold it up or should we view it the same way today as then, whatever. That is all interesting stuff.

It's for another podcast. Yeah. Our podcast asks the question, would you want this life? You're God, right? I'd like to write absolutely every day of the week, one book and 35 million Peace out. This is all who's doing as you said. You go, girl. Oh my God. All right. Let's place Harper Lee on the famous eng gravy net worth leaderboard.

Okay. At 35 million, she's tied for 43. Also at 35 million. George Romero of zombie movie fame and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Yeah. Who of course played Capote. All right, let's move on. Category five, little Lebowski, urban Achievers.

Archival: They're the little Lebowski. Urban achievers. Yeah, the achievers.

Michael: Yes. And proud

Archival: we are of all of them.

Michael: In this category, Sarah and I will each choose a trophy, an [00:42:00] award, a cameo, an impersonation, or some other form of a hat tip that shows a different side of this person. I'll kick us off on this one. This is something I alluded to earlier when I asked if you were inspired by Atticus Finch. The University of Alabama Law School has the Harper Lee Prize for legal fiction that they award and have been awarding since about 2010.

John Grisham has won twice. Michael Connolly once. The other names I didn't recognize. I love this. I love the idea that there are characters in legal fiction that inspire people to go to law school, and I love that there is a Harper Lee Award for this at the University of Alabama. Everything about it is perfect.

I think we need symbols of virtue and we need to debate about those symbols of virtue. I like that. There's a law school out there whose football team I do not care for. That is saying we ought to give an award for the best fictional lawyer. Because it speaks to the idealism, uh, you know, that surrounds this profession.

I mean, and we make [00:43:00] fun of lawyers all the time, and rightly so, but like there are also present company excluded, but, but there is also a, you know, very noble path here and never are we reminded of that more than in great works of fiction. So that's my little Lebowski.

Sara: I think that is great. And I think that law schools are full of people who if they thought they could right to kill a Mockingbird would be doing it.

And so I think that, yeah, so I think some of them even try and fail. Okay, so my Lebowski, the first African American president of the United States of America was a guy named Barack Obama in his farewell speech in January, 2017. He says, if

Archival: our democracy is to work the way it should in this increasingly diverse nation, then each one of us.

Need to try to heed the advice of a great character in American fiction, Atticus [00:44:00] Finch, who said, you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

Sara: I mean, it is another embodiment of the golden rule and loving thy neighbor.

But it is, it's about empathy. Yeah. It it, it is about empathy and it was also very physical 'cause it was like walking around in his skin. So it was acknowledging like, in this diversity, we have to understand that to the extent Atticus Finch was really in a fight trying to defend the institution itself, like letting justice be served.

So he wanted to represent Tom Robinson to the best of his ability when he was convicted. Despite everything being obvious to everyone in that courtroom that. Tom Robinson not only did not, but could not have done what he was accused of doing. There wasn't just injustice for him or for the black community in the balcony of the courtroom.

It was for everyone. Yeah. They had an [00:45:00] incestuous father walking around celebrating. Everyone else is just kind of returning to their lives, which is why that scene is so powerful. When Scout is told to stand up because her father was passing. It wasn't that he was a great man, it was that he was a man who was trying to make.

The system do what it claimed to do, which was to be fair and equal for everyone there. He was really trying to make the system work like he believed in the system

Michael: to return to your moment about Obama. This is his final speech, right? Yeah. As President invoking Atticus and sort of standing up for institutions.

Uh, that's an awesome bobowski. All right, let's take one more break.

Okay. Category six words to live by in this category, we should choose a quote. These are either words that came out of this person's mouth or was said about them. What did you have here, Sarah?

Sara: These technically came out of her fingers.[00:46:00]

Michael: There's no shortage of quotes from the book, but is that where you're going?

Sara: Yeah. So Atticus is taking Scout to bed. He's literally putting Scout to bed at the end of the book, and she's talking about having finally seen him like Boo Radley when he's kind of standing in the corner. There's this recognition of this person who she's been really taught to fear and who has been kind of immortalized in a lot of different ways, and she says, Atticus, he was real nice, and he atticus's hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking it around me, and Atticus says, most people are scouts.

When you finally see them. Nice. Might be just the simplification of hearing this from a child's voice. 'cause I don't know that it's nice that there's something that you can understand and appreciate or love or identify with in another person. And so to the extent that To Kill a Mockingbird is a lesson in empathy, [00:47:00] in some sense.

She was this southern expat who was trying to describe the South to a non Southern audience in a way that they could receive it. And I think that's part of what she's saying is if you could see these people the way that I see them, they are not just hate and vitriol. There's a reason that they have responded in the way that they have.

And there has to be some way to have some progress.

Michael: Let me give you mine. So I went in a different direction. I took liberties with the way we describe this category. This actually has, this is very, um, tangential and it's not a Harper Lee quote, and it's not even something that was said about her, Eric. I make the rules.

I break the rules. I make the rules. Exactly. I make the rules, I break the rules. It's something I came across in the research that I couldn't get outta my head that I think is hovering over this conversation and the book in a really great way in 20. 19. Aaron Sorkin Reimagined To Kill a Mockingbird. And really it's a real interesting story.

It gets like how they got the rights for it and [00:48:00] the kind of wranglings around it. He put on a play on Broadway, the Play Star, Jeff Daniels. I actually went to see this during its run. Did I ever tell you my story about this? It's pretty wild. I'm in the audience. I happen to have a trip to New York. My mom hooked me up with a ticket.

It turns out to be an awesome ticket. I take a seat right before the curtain lifts. There's all this commotion behind me. I turn around, the Secret Service is there, and they are seeding the Clintons Hillary, bill, Chelsea and Chelsea's husband. And I'm like, those are the fucking Clintons lights Go down.

Curtain goes up To Kill a Mockingbird goes on. This is in 2018 when Aaron Sorkin in Trump won ERA is asking the question. We need to look at Atticus Finch. A little differently now, perhaps in this moment. That's the question he's trying to raise with his To Kill a Mockingbird and Hillary is right there.

I'm like, looks like I'm watching To Kill a Mockingbird with Hillary Clinton tonight. The intermission, I had to go to the bathroom and I had [00:49:00] to like fight through Secret Service. I'm like, I got the ticket stop. I'm actually, and my seats were actually better than theirs. I'll show you the picture. Anyway.

Anyway, anyway. Aaron Sorkin wrote this article about this, you know why he's redoing this play? And he mentions my friend David Fincher, who directed the social network, used to say, art isn't supposed to answer questions. It's supposed to ask them. And that's what I think to Kill a Mockingbird does. I don't think it answers questions.

I think it asks them. So when I talk about Growth Edge and the contribution of this book, that's what I get from 'em, and I love that quote. So those are my words to live by. Those are great words. I love that story. Yeah, I thought you might like that. Okay. Category seven, man In the Mirror. This category asks a fairly simple question.

Did this person like their reflection? Yes or no? This is not a question about beauty, but rather a question of self-confidence versus self-judgment. I'm actually a pretty confident yes here. We don't know much about a lot of her life after [00:50:00] 1964, but the way she bows outta the limelight, it's such a baller move.

Like, I'm not, nah, not, not just no to interviews. Hell no. I have no need of this form of attention and adulation and what many people I, I feel like the grand mistake of celebrity is mistaking attention for love. And I feel like she actually understands that difference really well and becomes all the more clarified as Truman Capote falls apart.

And as she's like proximate to celebrity. I mean, she's friends with Gregory Peck. She's friends with other people in Hollywood too. Yeah. The fact that she is saying, ah, not for me, I'm good. Sure. You can raise questions about like, is she getting the love she needs? But I don't know, it kind of. Addressed this earlier.

I I was a pretty confident yes. I

Sara: think yes too. If you hear even the description of how she was at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, we're talking about the fifties, and she still ended up [00:51:00] being a coyo, but she wasn't dressing like she was supposed to dress or doing what she was supposed to do.

And, you know, she was like happy to engage in political battles in writing with other students and leadership. There had to be some strength of purpose. Mm-hmm. And power and self-assuredness too, I think knowing who she was. Yeah. Like, yeah. Yeah. Like some, some knowing who she was, that is where that like is supposed to come from.

I think

Michael: earlier I said I see her as Scout. I remember it's in the movie, I think it's in the book, that scene where Scout has to put on a dress and act like a girl and she's all pissed off about it. I mean, that I, I, that's, that's one of those instances where I do see. Harper Lee rebelling against the gender norms of southern white women.

Mm-hmm. And you see that again in law school. You see that a little bit in her personality, in in moments where we get glimpses of it. I'm calling it confidence or self-assuredness. I [00:52:00] think she knows herself well enough that I go, yes for man in the mayor on this. Yeah. On this category.

Sara: I also think that there are some people who like really look forward to like that.

I don't carry years of, yeah. You know, she puts, have I reached the fucking change

Michael: of life yet?

Sara: Yeah, right. Totally. I think she, I think she kinda gets that and, and I was looking at this picture of George Bush actually is the one who presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And you see her there as, there's this brightness you can kind of, you can see.

Some semblance of a tomboy from Monroeville, Alabama, right? You know, like in her little pants suit and blazer. And her haircut is mainly still the same. She seemed comfortable with who she was, and that's just who she stayed. And I think that there's something beautiful about that.

Michael: All right? Yes and yes.

Let's move on. Category eight, cocktail coffee or cannabis. This is where we ask which one would we most want to do with our dead celebrity.

Sara: I actually wanna see her in New York. I wanted Manhattans at some, like wherever she would hang out on the Upper [00:53:00] East Side, you know, like whatever her like. Spot was, I said

Michael: the exact same thing.

Oh, I wanna, I wanna go table for three. Let's do it. Yeah, totally. I, and I like, and she's a heavy smoker. I wanna start smoking again. I wanna, I, I kind of miss it a hundred percent. I want to go out because there, there, she has a love of New York and she likes her little corner, you know? Mm-hmm. And I mm-hmm.

I am very curious to double click into that and learn more about what her New York is. And what I read is that the three places she lived stretching from her time at the airlines as a receptionist all the way until she had a stroke and couldn't live independently. It was all like within a 15 minute walk.

You know, I, I wanna learn more about her taste. I wanna learn more about Yeah. How she experiences the city. I wanna learn about her relationship to art and creativity, not necessarily her process. I don't need to talk about to Kill a Mockingbird. I'm, I am genuinely interested in her. The people who talk about her do say she is [00:54:00] witty, she's funny.

She can be a little caustic. She's like delightful. She sounds actually like quite a awesome personality. Yeah. You know, we, we just, we don't get to see it much for the next 50 years. So that's what I

Archival: would want. And another thing that I've noticed about people at home, as opposed to say people in small town New England, we have rather more humor about us.

We are not taitan, we are not rye, we are not, uh, laconic. We, we work hard of course, but we do it in a different way. We work in order not to work. Any time spent on business is more or less time wasted and get

Michael: her a little liquored up too, like a little, you know? Yeah, that sounds that, that sounds great.

Sounds great. All right, Sarah, we've arrived category nine, the Vander Beek, the final category named after James Vander Beek, who famously said In varsity blues, I don't want your life in that varsity blue scene, James makes a judgment that he does not want a certain kind of life based on just a few characteristics.

So here [00:55:00] Sarah and I will form a rebuttal to anyone skeptical of how Harper Lee lived. What are the biggest. Counter argument points to make about why you would not want this life. Why does James Vander bet have a point

Sara: prolonged diminished state after a stroke is hard.

Michael: I, I do think the final chapter of her life does look pretty rough.

Yeah. I, I think she's, she's deaf and blind. This is part of the reason there's real questions about potential elder abuse. If the learning that net worth was at 35 million made me all the more suspicious about who has power and who's able to siphon off a little bit here and there,

Sara: you know? Yeah. And then, I mean, the relationship with her mother was very tough.

And like we referring to some of those mental health challenges, the cha challenges within the family. There may have been some other rounds of that. Yeah. But that may Yeah.

Michael: Oh no, lemme lemme respond to that real quick. Yeah. 'cause I agree with that. You learn a little bit about her mom and she's like, oh, [00:56:00] these a tough.

Parent situation. Yeah. At the same time, the way the rest of the family seems to rally around each other Yeah. Is pretty striking and unmistakable. Yeah.

Sara: They do step up. But it's interesting that in To Kill a Mockingbird, she removes the mother and DI's mom isn't there either? So that, I think that is kind of an interesting thing that we're looking at, like motherless children navigating Monroeville or Macomb as it were in the book.

And then that, that 1951 with the mom's death followed by the brother's death tough year. I mean, that was a rough ride.

Michael: I agree with all that. I think that like, look, she lived to be 89. I expect tragedy and some level of pain. It may be more than most, but it's not outside the norm in terms of the kinds of heartache and grief you have to confront and navigate.

I do have questions about partner, you know? Yeah. And about companionship, and I think I see a lot of evidence for friendship and I am of the belief that a. [00:57:00] Rich supporting social system. You know, it's better than a troubled marriage. To me, the mystery is also why didn't we see another novel? Maybe what she should have done was not be a novel writer next.

She should have been a true crime podcaster or, or I

Sara: would've loved, I mean, what would be the best is if she like wrote under a pseudonym we don't know about yet.

Michael: My thing number five was like one and done lottery ticket. Isn't there a case to be made that not only is this good enough for the fans, but shouldn't that be reason enough to want this life?

I don't want that to be misinterpreted. I'm not making the case that. One bestseller or one blockbuster or one big thing and then coast. Yeah. It's more like one thing that's so significant that the creative output is enough to leave a sense of purpose and validation that you don't have to feel like you have to climb a higher mountain.

I'm certainly more attracted [00:58:00] to the creative life that is evolving, maybe evolving in terms of mediums or evolving in terms of genres or whatever, you know, so the fact that there is like kinda one great book. There's other stuff and, and as you said, a published draft. That gives me pause. So I think that's all in the counter argument.

Mm-hmm. For why you would not want this life, for why you would want this life. I, let's start with 35 million. I mean,

Sara: I'm not gonna start with 35 million.

Michael: What is the number one reason why you would want this life?

Sara: She was very well loved by people who knew her very well and loved them back Clearly. She was successful in making a creation that was both beautifully written and that is still a powerful touchpoint for what her country is trying to be. [00:59:00] How can you be as relevant now as you were then?

And she is definitely as relevant now as she, you know, I, I just, I, I just think it, it's gonna be. Everyone's a growth edge for a while. You know, like I just think in the Gregory Peck episode, you're co-host and friend, and my fellow lawyer colleague says, you know, like, I'm not singing for you. Like this isn't, you know, that's not what like a Mockingbird is.

I loved that she said it and I was like, absolutely. That is not like the role of either African Americans or Boo Radley who was kind of in a diminished capacity of some sort. But I think to see Scout as a child, like walking Boo home and then coming back off the porch and looking at her life from Boo's perspective and then seeing how he responded even though he did have some challenges of his own and, and so to see her somehow see all of that.

As a child is really an amazing thing to experience and it is empathy like that. That is absolutely what it is.

Michael: [01:00:00] Yeah. I, and I, I really, you know, it's funny having had the conversation now about her life, that statement about it being a love story. You know, if we have one book in us, it should be a love story, however you interpret that phrase.

Sara: And in a sense, like she immortalized the same idea that like, you leave home and you can never leave home. You know? And then you can also never go back to exactly what it was like. She was able to immortalize what it is she loved about her hometown and some of the people she loved most, and the place that formed her in such a way as to show it as flawed.

Mm-hmm. And complex, but also. Not perfect, but redemptive in its capacity to continue to become more perfect.

Michael: I think we could turn this over all day. I think that's enough, and I think she's given us enough and I think that this looks like actually a [01:01:00] pretty good life. So with that, James VanDerBeek, I'm Harper Lee and you want my life.

All right, before we do the speed round, if you enjoyed this episode of Famous Eng Gravy and you're enjoying our show, you've got your phone in your hand. Please take a moment to share it with a friend. We want to grow our podcast one listener at a time. Sarah speed round plugs for pass shows. If people enjoyed the Harper Lee episode, obviously they need to listen to the Gregory Peck episode.

What other episode would you have him listen to from the Famous and Gravy archives?

Sara: Okay, so mine, were gonna be Gregory Peck and Joan Didion. 'cause I like, oh yeah, yeah. I have your So Gregory Peck, because To Kill A Mockingbird and Joan Didion another American female writer and I really enjoyed that

Michael: episode.

Harper Lee and Truman Capote are sort of. Hovering around that new journalism thing. Alright, I love that episode. 102 Magical Thinker, Joan Didion. All right, so the definitive biography, I [01:02:00] think on Harper Lee is written by a guy named Charles Shields. He also did a biography of Kurt Vonnegut. So that's the episode I'm gonna plug episode 97, time Pilgrim Kurt Vonnegut.

Here is a little preview for the next episode of Famous and Great. She once said, quote, the urge to act had always been there. It's not even that you particularly want to be an actor. She once said, you have to be, there's nothing you can do to stop it.

Sara: Um, Carol Burnett, she died a while back though. I think.

Michael: I believe Carol Burnett is actually as of this recording still with us. Oh, not, not Carol Burnett famous Eng Gravy. Listeners, we'd love hearing from you. If you wanna reach out with a comment, a question, or to participate in our opening quiz, email us at hello@famousenggravy.com. In our show notes, we include all kinds of links, including to our website and our social channels.

Famous Eng Gravy is created by Amour and me, Michael Osborne. Thank you so much to the wonderful Sarah Murphy for guest hosting on this [01:03:00] episode. It was produced by Ali Ola, with assistance from Jacob Weiss. Original music by Kevin Stride. Thanks. See you next

time.