Highest Mountain

“I’d climb the highest mountain” is a 1951 movie starring Susan Hayward, William Lundigan and Rory Calhoun. We first saw snippets of the movie the other day at the History Center in Gainesville -- significant because it was filmed in this area.

Today, quite by accident, we met a local lady who was Susan Hayward’s “stand in” on various movie shoots. Her name is Shirley Black McDonald -- a fourth-generation White County native and a resident of Cleveland GA. Mind you, this is 57 years later and we can see how this lady was a good movie-star stand-in.

Susan loves history and write a weekly newspaper column on local history. She didn’t say anything about this. We learned about her after we met her. We have to go back and visit again.

When we do, we’ll ask about the movie and how chiggers “discovered Susan Hayward. This latter question was a planted one in a book Susan edited.

Susan edited a book written by her husband, Emory Jones. Being fourth-generation, Susan is definitely “from here,” meaning that she has more than a few generations of family “from here.” Lois and I, for example, are “from off.” That’s the way the locals distinguish folks.

I asked Susan, “How do folks around here feel about shipping the Cherokee’s off to Oklahoma in the early 1839’s?”

She replied after a pensive pause, “I think they are pretty ashamed of themselves.”

We were told that the movie is available at the White County Historical Society. Wrong; they were out after having sold 500 copies for $25 each. They checked around town and none were to be had.

We checked Amazon and there are copies available for under $20. We’ll wait until we return home to revisit all the sights of this area in the movie which are still recogizable. We’re looking forward to it.