Walking Tall

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2009)

Walking Tall
promotional poster for Walking Tall
Directed by	Phil Karlson
Written by	Mort Briskin Stephen Downing John Michael Hayes (uncredited)
Starring	Joe Don Baker Elizabeth Hartman
Music by	Walter Scharf
Editing by	Harry W. Gerstad
Distributed by	Cinerama Releasing Corporation
Release date(s)	June 22, 1973
Running time	125 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$500,000
Followed by	Walking Tall Part 2

Walking Tall is a 1973 semi-biopic of Sheriff Buford Pusser, a former professional wrestler-turned-lawman in McNairy County, Tennessee. It starred Joe Don Baker as Pusser. The film was directed by Phil Karlson.

Plot

Pusser, at his wife Pauline's behest, retires from the professional wrestling ring and moves back to Tennessee to start a logging business with his father, Carl Pusser. With a friend, he visits a gambling and prostitution establishment, the Lucky Spot, and is beaten up after catching them cheating at craps. Pusser is seriously injured with a knife and receives over 200 stitches. He complains to the sheriff but is ignored, and soon becomes aware of the rampant corruption in McNairy County. Pusser decides to clean up the county and runs for sheriff. Buford Pusser wins, and becomes famous for being incorruptible, intolerant of crime, and for his array of four foot hickory clubs which he uses to great effect in destroying clandestine gambling dens and illegal distilleries, and even against criminals.

Some residents praise Buford Pusser as an honest cop in a crooked town; others denounce him as a bully willing to break some laws to uphold others.

Pusser is ambushed more than once, and finally he and Pauline are ambushed in their car. Pauline is killed, and Pusser is seriously injured, admitted to the hospital after being shot for the second time. Still in a neck and face cast, he rams a sheriff cruiser through the front doors of the Lucky Spot, killing two of the men who attacked him.

As he leaves with two deputies, the town arrives and throws the gambling tables and furniture into a pile in the parking lot and lights a bonfire, while Pusser wipes tears from his eyes.

As the movie ends, a police report is shown on the screen, and an announcer tells the story of Pusser's death on a Tennessee highway, about 4 miles from Selmer, where Pusser was killed, and the car was destroyed by fire.

Sequels

The original Walking Tall was a hit, but the sequels, Part 2, Walking Tall (1975), and Final Chapter - Walking Tall (1977), both starring Bo Svenson, were far less profitable. A short-lived 1981 television series Walking Tall (again starring Svenson) further dramatized Pusser's life and career. Buford Pusser himself was killed in a car crash; his daughter, in another car behind him, found him in the ditch. He died upon impact or shortly afterwards, and the wreck remains a mystery as the brakes were tampered with before the crash.

Factual inaccuracies

A number of the best-known scenes in Walking Tall are fictional. For example, Pusser never went into a roadhouse with a stick and beat up everyone inside. He did, however, take two friends and beat the owner of the Plantation Club in 1961 (Morris:1971). The prior McNairy County sheriff, James Dickey, did not die trying to run over Pusser in a confrontation; he fell asleep while driving and died in a car crash less than one month before the 1964 election (Morris, "State Line Mob," 1990).

In the movie, Pusser kills two characters, Callie Hacker, the female bar owner, and a fellow thug who tries to kill Pusser but winds up killing the family dog. In real life, Pusser did kill two individuals, Louise Hathcock and Charles Hamilton. Callie Hacker was loosely based on Louise Hathcock although Pusser actually killed her out of the presence of other witnesses (in the original movie, he kills her after she shoots at him across a bar) in a side room of the Shamrock Motel.

Pusser is shot at point blank range in one scene, supposedly by 'a couple of boys from Alabama' as one character says. In reality, Pusser was shot by his mistress, Pearl, after a quarrel (Morris: State Line Mob, 1990) although his arch nemesis, Towhead White, had in fact escaped from prison in Alabama during the same time frame.

Obrah Eaker, played by Felton Perry, was loosely based on Pusser's only black deputy, Dave Lipford.

The portrayal of his children contains a few inaccuracies as well. Leif Garrett portrays Mike, an eight-year old at the beginning of the movie. He barely ages during the show, but Pusser's stepson, Mike Vance, was actually 18 years old when Pauline Pusser was killed.

Pusser's father was actually the Adamsville police chief when Buford first ran for election as sheriff.

According to a 1973 newspaper on the wall of the Pusser Museum, Buford said that the movie was 'sixty percent true.'

The original 1973 movie was filmed in the summer of 1972 in west Tennessee, but not in McNairy County. Town scenes were filmed in Henderson, county seat of Chester County, 19 miles to the north of Selmer, using Chester County locals as extras and in some minor roles. Scenes were also filmed in nearby Jackson and in rural Madison County. The scene where Callie Hacker was killed was filmed in the Pine Ridge Club in Medon, which is still in operation. The scene where the incumbent sheriff is killed when his auto runs off of a bridge was filmed on a rural road north of Milan.

Controversy

In some circles, the name Buford Pusser has become synonymous with police brutality. This is bolstered by the fact that Walking Tall was marketed, perhaps erroneously, as a right-wing film upon its original release.^[1]

The rock band Drive-By Truckers released an album, The Dirty South (2004), containing a 3 song suite about Buford Pusser, which references the movie and proceeds to tell "the other side of that story".

The southern rock and country band State Line Mob included a song titled "McNairy County Line" on their 2008 album, Ruckus, which honors Buford Pusser and tells the story from a factual point of view.

Remake

In 2004, a remake starring professional wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was made. Although it took many elements of Pusser's life and the original Walking Tall, many things were changed, such as Johnson's character's name (Chris Vaughn) and setting the film in semi-rural Kitsap County, Washington, although it was filmed in Squamish, B.C., Canada. Two sequels to the remake were produced, and released in 2007: Walking Tall: The Payback and Walking Tall: Lone Justice, both made in Dallas, Texas and released directly to DVD. These sequels starred Kevin Sorbo as Nick Prescott, the son of the town's sheriff who takes the law into his hands when his father is killed in an alleged car accident.

Cast

• Joe Don Baker as Buford Pusser
• Elizabeth Hartman as Pauline Pusser
• Lurene Tuttle as Helen Pusser
• Noah Beery, Jr. as Carl Pusser
• Dawn Lyn as Dwana Pusser
• Leif Garrett as Mike Pusser
• Logan Ramsey as John Witter
• Felton Perry as Obrah Eaker
• Bruce Glover as Grady Coker (Buford's deputy)
• Brenda Benet as Luan Paxton
• Gene Evans as Sheriff Al Thurman
• Rosemary Murphy as Callie Hacker
• Douglas Fowley as Judge R.W. Clarke
• Kenneth Tobey

Movie Quotes

• "Five minutes before midnight August 4th, 1974. State Trooper Paul Irvin was dispatched to the scene of a car crash near Selmer, McNairy County, four miles from Buford Pusser's home. This is his official report. The driver, Buford Pusser was killed, his car destroyed by fire. There were no other vehicles involved, there were no witnesses." - End scene, spoken by an unseen announcer.

References

External links

• Walking Tall (1973) at the Internet Movie Database