Jesse Stuart: An American Writer (1997)
60 minute video documentary.
I began work on this documentary in 1995, shortly after moving from Western Kentucky University to join the faculty at Indiana University South Bend. This is the third of my documentaries on writers of the mountain South—Jim Wayne Miller, James Still, and Jesse Stuart. These men knew one another very well. James Still and Jesse Stuart were students together at Lincoln Memorial University. Jim Wayne Miller, a generation younger, was a personal friend of both, and was a major critical resource relating to the work of both. I did not realize at the time I was making this program that I would not work with Jim Miller again He died in August of 1996, having seen only the opening few minutes of my rough cut. I appreciate the opportunity to have worked with him over the span of fourteen years more than I can adequately express.
Additional critical and historical commentary are provided by John Spurlock, Professor of English at WKU, and H. Edward Richardson, Professor of English at the University of Louisville. A most crucial resource was the Jesse Stuart Foundation and its director, James Gifford, who provided me with the many photographs appearing in the documentary, arranged access to sites in Stuart’s W-Hollow home, and granted me permission to present Stuart’s Split Cherry Tree illustrated by artist Tom Foster and narrated by actor Warren Hammack.