The Cabin in the Cotton
As a young couple in rural Mississippi in the 1930s, Eleanor and Hank Stovall were understandably excited when a Hollywood film crew came to Stovall, MS to shoot exterior shots for the 1932 release Cabin in the Cotton, featuring a relatively unknown actress named Bette Davis. The big star was Richard Barthelmess, but Davis stole the show. The film includes the line that Davis described as “her favorite movie line ever”
The Stovalls welcomed the film crew into their home for lunch every day - it’s not like there were a lot of restaurants around. During lunch one day, it was discovered that the kitchen was on fire. In rural Mississippi in the 1930s, that meant that the whole house was going to be ashes in a couple of hours.
The film crew, a bunch of burly guys accustomed to hauling heavy gear, went to work immediately and started carrying furniture out of the house. They were able to clear the ground floor and upper floor before fire took the building.
In the movie, there is a scene in which the commissary burns. The footage of that building engulfed in flames is, we believe, footage of the original house at what is now 3326 Stovall Road burning down.
The film was released in October 1932, with a premiere staged in Memphis, TN, 70 miles north of Stovall, MS. A group of civic boosters decided to take the opportunity of that premiere to create a festive celebration of cotton and its importance to the Memphis economy and society. With that event, Cotton Carnival (now Carnival Memphis) was born. Today Carnival Memphis is The Party with a Purpose, combining the “royal” frivolity of a Mardi-Gras style celebration with an altruistic focus that raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for children’s charities in Memphis.
