Fifty years of 'wild' memories

Growing up, David Swafford enjoyed a sense of kinship with Montgomery Clift, Elia Kazan and Lee Remick.

The three actors spent time in Charleston, Tenn., in 1960, filming "Wild River," a film about a Tennessee Valley Authority man (Mr. Clift), who crosses paths with a stubborn matriarch and falls in love with her granddaughter (Ms. Remick). Mr. Kazan directed.

"I grew up hearing a lot of the older people talking about the movie, and they would get so excited talking about Hollywood people being here," Mr. Swafford said.

Now. Mr. Swafford is trying to make a documentary film to preserve the local history associated with "Wild River."

The movie was filmed largely in Charleston, Tenn., with additional locations in Bradley County and along the Tennessee and Hiwassee Rivers.

Earlier this year, Mr. Swafford took his mother on a drive to try to find one of the filming locations and lost his way. He asked several people for directions to the spot and none knew of "Wild River" being filmed in the area.

"I even argued with one of them who said it was filmed in a completely different place and I said 'I know that's not true,''' Mr. Swafford said. "These were younger people who weren't aware of it. That just bothered me."

He went to Museum at Five Points to research the history of "Wild River," assuming there would be a book, a documentary, something created to preserve this piece of local history.

"Nobody had written anything about it," he said.

He went to the libraries, tracking down articles from the time of filming, and eventually decided to compile a documentary, cobbling together bits of information with oral histories.

"I want to preserve the memory for the people it meant so much to," Mr. Swafford said. "Most of the people who have memories of the filming were children at the time, so their memories are spotty." He wants to try to preserve that spot in history "while we still have some people left to talk to about it," he said.

One of those people is Judy Harris Spurgeon, a Charleston native who was picked to play Lee Remick's daughter. Mrs. Spurgeon was 7 years old when she shot "Wild River," her first and only movie.

"I remember how they set up for things, all the big equipment," she said. "Mr. Kazan, was wonderful. He would let me stand right next to him when he shot the scene. (Mr. Kazan, Mr. Clift and Ms. Remick) were very tolerant. Montgomery Clift played with me quite often. He was engaged with myself and the other little boy in the film."

A fond memory for Mrs. Spurgeon is the day she finally got to have a costume change.

"I had to wear the same clothes every day," she said. "It was a big day when I got a new set of clothes."

"Wild River" screened at the Film Forum in New York City this past October. New Yorker critic David Denby wrote: "The movie couldn't have greater present-tense resonance: how do you get people who loathe the federal government to do what's good for them when the government recommends it?"

"The message of the movie to me was that with progress, there's a cost," Mr. Swafford said.

In 2002, the United States Film Registry of the Library of Congress selected "Wild River" for preservation, citing it as being a "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant motion picture under the National Film Preservation Act.